Hmmm... Day THREE and my funds are still on hold.
Gee, I think they've cleared the ACH system by now, that excuse has left the barn.
So, I have no money, as a matter of fact, if all the checks I have out there came in today I'd be overdrawn. So I can't buy gas for my car, or go out to eat.
I can't even go to the grocery store!
Well, I'll just have to be patient. Let's see, I have a can of vegetable soup and half a box of saltines here in my kitchen cabinet, maybe I'll make lunch.
Then what to do while I wait for my money?
I know - I'll write a letter and send it to the 50 state attorneys general! I'll bet one of them is looking for a good case. And the states are hurting, even with Paypal's dozens or hundreds of lawyers, I'll guess they could force some legal scrutiny here.
Here's my first draft - I need to punch it up a bit, write an intro 'graph, attach examples, but what do you think?
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Dear Sir/Madam,
1. Paypal handles millions, if not billions of financial transaction a year. There are over __ million people whose money is handled by Paypal. Paypal has branched into consumer loans, the money market and other financial activities, however, has escaped the scrutiny that banks and investment firms are subject to.
2. Ebay, which owns Paypal, has created policies that make it much more inconvenient to use alternative services, and so have, in effect, made it difficult to use any other service - and so have eliminated most competitive services. They have used this to force unfair policies and requirements on their users.
3. Paypal has a very complicated system of customer "policies" that they use to self-justify these practices. They are constantly changing, are incomprehensible to most customers, and are used to brush off customer complaints.
4. Paypal software is prone to permitting customers to make erroneous entries. Paypal benefits from these customer errors. Based o Paypal’s sophistication of software development, it6 would be hard to imagine that these problems are not well-known by Paypal.
5. Paypal has gradually been increasing their "held funds" policies, where they collect funds from the payer, and hold them for days or weeks before releasing them to the recipient.
6. Paypal delivers over 3 billion in revenue a year using tactics such as these, and so can afford to pay a settlement in the hundreds of millions of dollars. I think that these abuses pale in comparison to the recent Bank of America suit that was settled by BOA for $410 million dollars. I think you can see that this could be a significant legal case for your state.
Paypal receives dozens, if not hundreds, of complaints from it’s customers every day about these abusive policies. I’ve attached several of the more egregious ones I have found, people have been unable to pay rent, or found themselves in severe straits due to these arbitrary and questionable tactics.
The company has been subject to many investigations, and spends a fair amount of energy deflecting attempts to reign it in. However, as these policies expand and the abuses grow, I think you can see that, in the aggregate, they demand continued scrutiny, examination - and very possibly strong correction.
I would hope you would consider contacting other attorneys general who might have concerns about how this organization does business, and work together to assure that the consumers in your state are protected from unethical or abusive merchant practices.
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