PayPal has a direct ability to pull funds from my bank account, so I want to be confident that it is working well. Also, I would like to give a rant alert. I had a bad experience and I am really peeved. You have been warned! 😉 A month ago I received a suspicious PayPal invoice for $515 USD from someone I do not know. This could be a scam to get money from people, or it could be a mistake. I spent about 20 minutes in the app and googling how to get rid of it. None of the PayPal instructions worked. I decided to disable my bank account temporarily because I could not remove the invoice. I received an error message saying "authorization is pending for the instrument". PayPal has no difficulty processing payments for men using my phone or browser, so I don't think it has anything to do with that. I decided there might be a temporary server problem or outage, so I waited a few days. I tried it again while at home. No luck. I got on my computer and tried it via a desktop browser. I could not disable my bank there either. I googled the situation, and I PayPal has an article that says you cannot delete payment info if you have a pending transaction. Back to the invoice I cannot remove. That is the only pending transaction. I went back to the invoice using the desktop browser and found a "Cancel" button like I read about online. Yay! I click it..... and it just opens the invoice, and never gives you the ability to click "Yes" to confirm the cancelation of the invoice like the article describes online. I contact support (this takes about 50 clicks, and a lot of dodging and weaving because they try to pawn you off on the help articles you already read multiple times). I got a pleasant support person that I told I could not cancel the invoice (the UI appears broken), and I couldn't do the workaround either (disable the bank account). This is where it gets really interesting. Bad support 1) He told me I had no active payment information my account. (Wrong). Bad support 2) Then he told me there was one savings account (Wrong). Then he saw I have a checking account (finally correct - whew!) I asked him to please just focus on the real issue (the invoice) which was the reason I wanted to disable the bank account. Bad support 3) I suspect he didn't read well, because this was in my opening chat message. Bad support 4) He told me I should just ignore the invoice. I know this is a personal preference, but I see no reason to leave something in the app, potentially for years, that can pull over $500 USD from my checking account with one finger fumble. I told him I needed it removed in order to feel comfortable with PayPal. Bad support 5) He told me I should cancel the invoice. Yes, that is right. He told me to do the thing that I contacted support because I cold not do. I pointed out that this appears to be broken, and was the reason I was contacting him. The chat went quiet for quite a while. Outrageously bad process/customer experience: When he came back, he told me I had to contact the people who sent the invoice, because the instructions that he gave me, and the instructions I read online were wrong, and only the invoice sender has the ability to delete the invoice. Bad Support 6) I asked how I was supposed to contact this invoice sender? He gave me their email, which was actually my own email address. I started getting annoyed. I asked him why a potential bad actor/scammer, and a complete stranger, must be contacted in order to manage my PayPal account? I don't know how they got my email to begin with, but contacting them and asking them to delete the invoice in PayPal seems ludicris. And for the record, I think the customer support fellow was probably a lovely person. I think he is probably just working for a terrible company that does not value their customers and is giving him terrible and ineffective tools. If I cannot manage my PayPal account (public facing software features), I can't imagine how badly his system works (internal business application). So, this is a long story, but I am leaving PayPal. Oh - another thing I don't trust about PayPal that I noticed a few months ago. You only have 90-days of transaction history in PayPal. I would think 400 days would be a minimum, so people can do their taxes at least. I don't want to be conducting financial transactions in any system where I cannot see the history. It isn't acceptable. Good Bye PayPal! It was nice until I got to know you well. I did love you for many years, but you have lost my trust.
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