All Payments Denied On Platform, Merchant Services Closed Ticket Without Support

Pixby
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Hello. I've been working on launching an education platform for about a year, with a integrated payment processing, by PayPal, and, up until a week ago, payments were working fine. But, now, all payments are being rejected with error code 10069. I created a ticket with merchant services, but they simply brushed me off and didn't even attempt to help me with the issue. They told me to have an actual customer make a payment on the platform (a step I noted I had already taken in my ticket), and said they were closing the ticket because it "isn't a technical issue." But, that's not true. It's very much a technical issue on PayPal's end. I'm not even sure they read my ticket, in entirety. I even created a video to show them what was happening.

 

Anyway, it seems to me that PayPal is, for some reason, now blocking all payments made on the platform from being processed. Which means there may be some sort of flag, ban, or block on the site level.

 

My PayPal business account, and manager account, don't have any alerts, notifications, or limitations.

Anyone have experience with this? Or a contact I can communicate with directly in PayPal merchant services who will actually read a ticket, respond accordingly, and work with me until the issue is resolved? Because, at present, it seems all they are doing is looking for even the tiniest excuse to close a ticket without actually providing support. In my opinion, they shouldn't close a ticket until the client agrees the issue has been resolved.

So, I need a technician at PayPal to actually look at the issue, and remove my platform from whatever block or ban or flag they have it on. Because, all parties who attempt to make a payment on my platform are being rejected with error code 10069. I've reached out on Twitter for support. Posted a question on Reddit. Called several times, and opened a new ticket to point out the first was wrongly closed, as my issue wasn't resolved. I'm very frustrated with the lack of support.

 

So, have any direct contacts inside PayPal, or another way I can get this appropriately escalated?

 

Thank you.

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8 REPLIES 8

eallsup
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We are experiencing this exact situation, which started last Wednesday 3/8 at roughly 11:30am. All our tickets are being closed without responses, or with inadequate responses. It has been impossible to get any level of support for this issue from PayPal so far.

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Pixby
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My platform is still in a testing phase. So, I don't know when the issue started precisely for us. But, the last successful live test payment I made was on 3/6. So, the timeline adds up. I haven't seen any movement on my second ticket, but was contacted by someone in the "Executive Escalations" office to note that my issue had been escalated. So, fingers crossed something changes, and soon. I have a feeling perhaps PayPal tweaked their algorithms and made them too sensitive, and maybe complaints will have to reach a critical mass before they actually fix the issue. But, that's just speculation.

 

One thing is for certain, though. If someone at PayPal doesn't help me soon, after over 20 years of being a PayPal merchant, I'll be forced to move my entire business to Stripe.

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mich12341
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I am having a similar issue; customers recieve a message that says "Payment could not be completed due to a sender account issue. Please notify the user to contact PayPal Customer Support"

 

I have struggled to find much information around what could be causing the block. It is very important that Paypal fix this; it is crucial for my buisness and I'll simply have to leave paypal behind if they don't

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Pixby
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Contributor

After submitting multiple tickets, PayPal finally instructed me to include the full address of the purchaser, when processing a payment on my platform. Previously, I was only asking for the cardholder's name, card number, expiration date, and card verification value.

 

I was able to process payments for over a year with just those four data points.

 

Now, I also have to collect the street address, city, state, and zipcode.

 

Which is highly unfortunate, as I am not selling goods that need to be shipped. It's a lot of extra information to collect from the user.

 

I have asked PayPal how I can get back to being able to only use the first four data points, as the address verification is supposed to be optional.

 

We'll see what they say.

 

I tried only adding the billing zip code, but that also wasn't enough.

 

Hope this helps you guys.

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eallsup
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Odd. With the limited responses we have been able to get from PayPal, they are telling us that the problem is with our CVV code being incorrect. We are still unable to process, because obviously we're not entering every CVV code incorrectly. We already have their full address information, so that isn't the issue for us. PayPal is still just automatically closing every ticket we make and providing limited responses. We are going to be switching to another processor because this can't continue and customer service has been nonexistent.

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Pixby
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Contributor

Yes, it sounds like you may have a different issue than I did/have. Unfortunately, the way PayPal has their system set up, the merchant support representatives, and technicians, are incentivized to close a ticket as quickly as possible. That's been my experience. Because, my first ticket didn't even appear to have been read thoroughly (being that the rep advised me to do something I had just stated I'd already done, and then told me my problem "wasn't a technical one," when it clearly was).

 

What I did was start tweeting to @AskPaypal on Twitter. I tweeted at the CEO. I found PayPal employees on LinkedIn and tweeted at them. I started emailing different executives and merchant services techs I could identify. Finally, they gave me something called an "executive escalation," but this only happened after I made exhaustive attempts to reach anyone I could. I'm not sure this is the best tactic (it could obviously **bleep** someone off, just as easily as it could get you help), but when nothing else is working, it may be worth a shot.

 

Either PayPal is vastly understaffed, or their representatives truly don't care about helping merchants and users. Maybe it's a little of both. But, the system they currently use to interact with merchants and users is utterly broken. It needs to be torn down and redesigned from the ground up... starting with not allowing a ticket to be closed until the merchant/customer agrees it can be closed. See... if the incentive is to get the user to agree that the issue has been resolved, then the PayPal employee becomes very, very motivated to actually solve problems, and satisfy the user. That one change might fix a lot of the motivation issues that likely exist.

 

However, I'm obviously not on the inside, and so I can't tell just how much of the poor service is due to overwhelming workloads versus an unmotivated workforce. So, I'm not willing to just say everyone at PayPal doesn't care. It might just be too much work for too few staff.

 

I bet another problem is that PayPal is probably still letting a huge amount of staff work remotely, which doesn't help. All employees of any company need to be closely supervised, in person. Otherwise, the productivity loss is just huge.

 

Anyway... keep at them, and don't let up until you actually speak to someone who can help.

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mich12341
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Contributor

Thank you so much for your hard work in reaching this solution! It seems like you put in a real shift with customer support and I appreciate it! The collection of address worked for me; i'm selling tickets to an event - I really don't need to know where people live.  Thanks for the difficulty PayPal 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 

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Pixby
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I spoke with a representative in the "Payflow" department today, and asked him how I could once again process payments without the address. He said it's unlikely that will ever be possible again, because Visa and Mastercard are pressuring the processing industry to do more about stopping fraud.

 

If that's the case, they really need to update the developer documentation to not list the address information as "optional." It should be listed as required, if that is how it will be moving forward.

 

Anyway, glad the solution helped you. It frustrated me for over a week. Thankfully, I'm just testing my platform. But, if I had already been live with customers, I would have been livid things just stopped working suddenly, with zero advanced warning or explanation.

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