[PayPal http://www.paypal.com/] has always sucked. This is well accepted on the Internet. Witness: http://www.google.com/search?q=paypal+sucks … Results 1 – 100 of about 1,680,000 for paypal sucks. Here are the specific deficiencies I have most often heard cited: * Freezing of funds for arbitrarily long times with no explanation. * Bizzarely intricate information requests. * User unfriendliness to payors. In my case, I went to eBay to purchase some computer hardware. When I won the auction, I went to pay by credit card in the way most readily presented — which was PayPal. Due to some transactions I did the better part of a decade ago (they still had my address from 1999-2000), I was unable to log in to PayPal (an eBay Company). (Incidentally, eBay usernames and passwords have different validation requirements than those for PayPal, e.g. 8 char passwords.) Then, once I got PayPal to send me a “forgot password” link, it told me to /telephone them in Nebraska!/ Bear in mind that this is in the course of attempting to /give my money to a guy on eBay/, and now “an eBay Company” is my biggest obstacle to so doing. The gentleman in Nebraska was kind, but ultimately frustrating — telling me that a “code 31” means that they had to close the old account, but the presence of a stray two dollars in the account meant it would take 72 hours before I could sign up with a new account. After which point, of course, the seller on eBay would have written me off as a deadbeat. The rep suggests that I open a new email account. Just for PayPal. Just for this transaction. *Who is on the buy side here?!* I am a pretty stingy guy — but when I do actually lay down the greenbacks, I just want a modicum of respect. To PayPal and eBay, I say: congratulations. I now will choose *any* method over PayPal whenever possible.
Archive for August 2nd, 2006
PayPal Continues to Suck
Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006Everyone Is Here in the Future
Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006I just came across what I am willing to call some of the most interesting and (personally) relevant cultural commentary I’ve seen in a while. No talk of Hezbollah, nothing on Bush or Britney — rather, art intended to make people living a software-mediated lifestyle stop and think a moment: (Warnings: Flash required; starts playing immediately with audio; possibly epilepsy-triggering.) http://redhanded.hobix.com/cult/everyoneIsHereInTheFuture.html http://redhanded.hobix.com/cult/everyoneIsHereInTheFuture2.html For those of us in the tech world — especially the parts of the tech world that occasionally sees comrades being struck down by angel funding coming out of the sky — this is worth seeing and thinking about. But not too hard. After all, you’ve got to get a business model and write some new dual-core turbo buttons for your mail merge.