Formal Complaint about PayPal

[Bazzinator]

I would like to make a formal complaint about PayPal.

Is there any Ombudsman, Consumer Watchdog available for this? 

I know it's probably too much to ask, but do PayPal have any internal complaints area for investigating complaints about their own staff?  It's not really misconduct that I want to complain about, it's just ineptitude and unsuitability for the jobs they are doing. I have emails with responses and names of PayPal staff that clearly show that whilst they are performing professionally in terms of courtesy, they are not performing professionally in terms of taking the time to understand and resolve issues. 

I do have names of the support staff, and email evidence that can be clearly shown to be neglectful and lazy.

Please help.

PayPal have no regard for their customers. PayPal are a law unto themselves. There is no simple way to complain to anyone about PayPal, so they do as they please. If you try to get a resolution through website links you will find that many of the links are non functional because PayPal do not want to hear from you. If you phone them you will be placed on hold for extended periods because PayPal are hoping that you will get tired of waiting and just go away. If you are a business customer and have access to PayPal through business email you will invariably receive copy/pasted replies, because the support staff at PayPal just see your email as a nuisance to be dealt with quickly. They will not read your email. They will skim over it, entirely missing the point, and then copy/paste a prearranged text that usually doesn't  answer the question.

By doing the above, PayPal staff hope that your problem will become another staff members problem when you re-contact them about the non-answer they give. This creates frustration for the customer and vast numbers of unnecessary cases, revised cases, resubmitted cases and appeals. If PayPal handled all inquiries efficiently on the first contact, some estimates are that PayPal would reduce the number of complaints, cases, phone calls and emails by around 83%.

However, because PayPal have let the situation escalate to the point where support staff are inundated, support staff see their only option being to reply to written complaints by a quick copy/paste rather than addressing the problem efficiently, and to leave callers on hold for extended periods. This creates the vicious cycle of Customer contact - PayPal fob off - repeat Customer contact - repeat PayPal fob off - repeat Customer contact...

If you are patient enough to wait for someone to answer the phone, don't be surprised if the operator seems a little vague. They do this because they really can't be bothered talking to you, and they are hoping that you will become frustrated and hang up.

The whole point of PayPal "customer service" is to frustrate the customer to the point that the customer no longer wishes to waste any time complaining. I'm not sure what page of the PayPal training manual this is on, but it should be moved to page 1 because it seems like it is the prime directive for PayPal support staff.

If your time is valuable, just cut your losses, hang up, and bag PayPal out to as many people as you possibly can. 

[dixon30]

Unfortunately, you have been proved right. Only this week I have been asked for an IC3 form, and to lodge this, then a govt form to say the item was damaged on arrival and then when I asked for the seller's bank account details and address of their bank for the IC3 form I got online they said that they could not supply this for confidentiality and that they didn't accept IC3's anyway. Then another agent said that you cannot do an IC3 (FBI fraud declaration) if not in America - untrue as it had a section for international transactions and PayPal is in the US. They then asked me to get an Australian form completed. I am in New Zealand asked them why they wanted me to get a form from another country?? Absolute rubbish and a different person each time. 😞 I have lost all faith in Paypal. I thought they were an honest reliable service but through this process, I have learnt that the opposite is true. They support a Chinese firm ripping off customers and will not investigate. 😞

[Bazzinator]

PayPal are not overtly dishonest. They are extremely greedy and manipulative. Any company that takes a % skim off every transaction placed through them has to be. It 's the nature of the game. 

They invest very little of their profits on good support staff, because hiring poor support staff usually means that customers give up in frustration so PayPal doesn't have to honour claims that might cost them money.

They also attempt to sneak in additional fees under the radar. Currently they are working on introducing a fee when you withdraw money from PayPal to a bank account. Stage 1 of the implementation was to offer two options for transfers. Option 1 is free, and takes "4-5 days" or "5-7 days" depending which part of the PayPal speil you read. Option 2 incurs a fee and is "instant". In actual fact Option 1 rarely takes more than a day. However, since introducing the two options we have noticed the occasional extra day delay. I would envisage that PayPal will continue to increase the delay of no fee transfers over time in a bid to entice people to use the "instant" option with a fee. When most people are using the fee paid option they will remove the free option altogether. It's just how they do business. 

The way they do business is not overtly dishonest, it's sneaky dishonest. Especially when you consider that it costs them zero to transfer funds, no matter which method you choose. It's just another sneaky attempt to extract more fees.

To escalate with PayPal you need to escalate your claim by going to the bottom right of paypal pages > legal > user agreement > there is a section in there that gives you various options to complain about paypal. The first one is directly to PayPal, but it actually gets looked at by a person with a little more intelligence than their regular support robots. If that gets you nowhere, there is info for further escalation through third party resources.

[ellenpeeters]

I have the same issue as @Boo70 and @dixon30 . I bought 4 custom drawings for 1400 USD from a seller but the first wasn't completed in time, so I cancelled the rest of the order, I never got the other three items. The seller did sent me the first one about a month after the agreed date, but I still cancelled because I didn't need the other 3 anymore. The contract we had stated I could only get a refund if nothing was made for an item yet or if only the first draft was made. The other 3 weren't even drafted or finished yet. She promised me a refund of 1050 USD for the three items in a week. After more than a week I opened a case for the refund. I had done this payment in two parts, each time 700 USD, but only found the last payment. So i opened a case for that payment but could only ask a refund of 700 USD. The seller offered a partial refund 100 USD like right before the deadline, so the case was closed before I could escalate it. I've been trying to get this case re-opened again, by selected another reason for report but it just automatically closes again. Now I can finally find my first payment and report that one but it's apparently too late to file a dispute for it. I even tried to contact Visa to get my money back through them, but since PayPal asked to contact the seller first and I have been trying to deal with PayPal itself too much time has passed to file a claim through Visa. They might still be able to open a claim maybe if I file an official report for fraud to the seller with the police. So I did that and opened a claim through Visa (awaiting their response now, which takes like 10 days). I also filed the payments as suspicious here in PayPal because they are being looked at currently by officials and Visa. But PayPal just automatically closed the case for the suspicious activity (well, it took an hour or so before it closed). Like what? It's still under investigation, how can they close this? I couldn't even upload my copy of the police report. Each time you pay a fee for each payment. What kind of service do I even pay for? Half of the time I can't find my payments that I want to report or don't have the correct option to report. This is like a whole scam to get money out of you, you pay fees for nothing and they send you back and forth so too much time passes and you can't request refunds in any way.

[smidds]

How did you get on with this, I am having the same issues.

I hate Paypal,  their biggest issue is every single member off staff seems to just lie & fob you off to get you off the phone,  hours I have wasted.

Their complaints tab on the account is useless, the only response I ever get is an automated one stating we understand this issue has been resolved, with no other response to my actual complaint.

I'm fed up , I have names of the staff members I have spoken with & I want to make a formal complaint. Out with using the standard link they have, does anyone have such an email address they can share with me, before I go to the ombudsman.

I actually feel sorry for Ebay, the amount of man hours they waste dealing with Paypal garbage

[Bazzinator]

PayPal staff are trained to respond like this. The hope is that most complaints will die a natural death due to frustration.

[Shellz01]

I just had to make a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman. They do not handle complaints fairly and their review process consists of telling you to go and find out information they should. They take up to a month to review your dispute and then come back with absolutely nothing.

[rosiek2]

PayPay wrongly favored the buyer over the sell. I shared proof that the item I shipped was not damaged before delivery; a part of PayPal Policy that will allow the seller to win. Their person internally made an error creating a negative balance on my account. Been dealing with this since March. An Account Supervisor stated my case will be reopened and I will get the negative balance removed from my account. Now they are forwarding me to a debt collector but they don't have me in their system. I am unable to email or contact them because they blocked my account. PayPal is horrible with customer service and does not care about their customers. If they made a mistake they want you to pay for it instead of fixing it. I am paying for a mistake they made in March and still no resolution and no end in sight. I am not paying the negative balance on my account for a dumb mistake their team made. The email they provide to file a complaint doesn't exist. So the only way to file a complaint is here. 

I would never do business with them again. Is anyone else going through the same problem?? This is ridiculous....