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You know, I remember the good old days when PayPal used to actually provide great customer service. Sure there were some rough edges now and again but compared to the service they deliver now, they were brilliant.

It absolutely astounds me how a company like PayPal with Google Checkout wanting to take their business would let themselves provide consistently horrible customer service like they do today.

Just this morning I discovered that PayPal had shut off my PayPal account, frozen my money in the account and has flagged my account for review. Now on the face of it, that seems innocent enough and can be easily fixed, but then the emails start coming from PayPal customer service, that you can’t reply to.

This Isn’t the First PayPal Nightmare

Last year I was opening a new PayPal account for another of my companies and the application finally died a slow death. I’ll admit it, I simply gave up. I think the first email for additional information came from a PayPal office in Luxembourg, then Ireland, then China, and then America. A reply to Ireland would result in a response from Switzerland and then China and then God only knew where.

Every time we answered a question or followed the instructions in the email the next global PayPal employee had no record of what we had just been asked to do and completed. That was frustrating enough that I just said the hell with it and went with Google Checkout. So much easier.

But now! PayPal actually has the gall to send me an email like the one below, not let me reply to it and force me to login to their online resolution center where you can’t enter a message, only upload a jpg.

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 3:15 PM, wrote:

- Submit a copy of your monthly statement for the credit card ending in XXXX. The statement must show your name, address and account number exactly as they appear in your PayPal account.

- Submit a copy of your monthly statement for the bank account ending in XXXX. The statement must show your name, address and account number exactly as they appear in your PayPal account.

- Submit a copy of a current utility bill. The bill must show your name and address exactly as they appear in your PayPal account.

- Submit Tracking information for the last five payments received into your PayPal account.

- Based on a review of your account and the information received, we show that you have or are related to multiple accounts that have unresolved
issues. Before we can lift the limited access on your account, you will need to resolve all outstanding issues with these linked accounts, including bringing any negative balances to zero and resolving all complaints for all linked accounts. The domain names for these accounts are:

So Let Me Run Through How Utterly Ridiculous This Is

- Submit a copy of your monthly statement for the credit card ending in XXXX. The statement must show your name, address and account number exactly as they appear in your PayPal account.

I didn’t XXXX out the numbers. They sent me the email this way. I guess they assume I will be clairvoyant.

- Submit a copy of your monthly statement for the bank account ending in XXXX. The statement must show your name, address and account number exactly as they appear in your PayPal account.

See above.

- Submit a copy of a current utility bill. The bill must show your name and address exactly as they appear in your PayPal account.

My business does not get a utility bill. Do any of you other bloggers have a utility bill sent in the name of your blog?

- Submit Tracking information for the last five payments received into your PayPal account.

Wouldn’t that be in the details of the transactions on the account already?

- Based on a review of your account and the information received, we show that you have or are related to multiple accounts that have unresolved issues. Before we can lift the limited access on your account, you will need to resolve all outstanding issues with these linked accounts, including bringing any negative balances to zero and resolving all complaints for all linked accounts. The domain names for these accounts are: [Blank]

The crazy thing is that I’ve never had an issue and I don’t have any unresolved issues and they did not provide me with any additional information.

PayPal is Only Going to Drive People Into the Hands of Google Checkout

Now that eBay has acquired PayPal my fears are coming true. I can think of very few companies that have been purchased by a larger company and then become better than before. What seems to typically happen is that the disparity between the soul of each mature organization struggles to find some common ground to develop a symbiotic relationship with. But it just never happens well.

What used to make PayPal a great company must have left the building.

Frustrating Experiences Aren’t The End of It. No, It Get’s Worse.

It’s one thing to get horrible customer service by people that don’t seem to give a damn, but it is another for a company like PayPal to keep sending out satisfaction surveys and blow even that chance to create happy customers.

Satisfaction surveys take time to complete. And if you have had a bad experience and take the time to provide feedback, you would think that the company receiving the survey would at the very least take 5 minutes to send you an email to apologize for the horrible treatment you got. PayPal evidently doesn’t think like that. It’s not in the cost benefit matrix PowerPoint presentation sent out to PayPal customer service leaders worldwide.

So I’m stuck in this quandary of wanting to make the level of service and the situation better for other customers of PayPal but it’s hard to get motivated to fill out yet another customer satisfaction survey that goes only into a black hole at PayPal. So my ne silence does nothing to change the situation for the better.

Customer Service Secrets I’ve Discovered

Providing good customer service really only requires some basic skills. It must be rocket science because big companies like Citibank and PayPal can’t get it right the bigger they get.

  1. Be Courteous - It takes almost no effort just to be nice and polite.
  2. Be Prompt - Don’t tell people it is going to take up to three business days to reply to their email when they are having a problem.
  3. Be Accessible - Make it easy for people to contact you to bring their issue to your attention. And certainly don’t follow the PayPal lead of “you can’t reply to this email or talk to us” approach.
  4. Accept Responsibility For What You Can - It goes a long way and can win you a load of points with your customers if you just say “I’m sorry you’ve had a bad experience. I accept responsibility for what you’ve been through. Please let me fix the problem so you are satisfied”.
  5. Go the Extra Mile - Mistakes happen in business but working hard to resolve a problem will win you 10 new customers. It’s often not enough to simply check the boxes. Let your customer know they are valuable. It’s not hard to do. Just send a personal email, apologize and let them know your team will be available to help them if they run into any problems in the future.

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Epilogue

I just received the following email from PayPal.

Our review is complete and we have restored your account.

We appreciate your patience and thank you for your help in making PayPal the safest and most trusted online payment solution.

Sincerely,
PayPal

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account
and click the Help link located in the top right corner of any page. If your inquiry is regarding a claim, log in to your PayPal account and go to
the Resolution Center.

The immediate problem is fixed but even the reply above only amplifies the need for a Customer Service Ombudsman or Czar at PayPal.

We appreciate your patience

That line isn’t helpful, just inflammatory. I wasn’t patient. I was pissed off. How can you even presume to know how I was feeling when a human would not even communicate with me. Don’t give me cliches, give me solutions. I’ll have to go back and look but I hope that response email didn’t say “have a nice day”, if it did, I’m going postal.

Whew, no.

Sincerely,
PayPal

Can’t someone sign it personally. Sincerely, Steve is a lot better than Sincerely, [Big Faceless Company]

Please do not reply to this email. You will not receive a response.

So faceless, so frustrating and probably so efficient for PayPal but let me ask you the following:

Does the company serve the customer or is the customer supposed to serve the company. While many big corporations would like all customers to form neat and tidy rows, that’s just not what business is about. A good business serves the needs of their customers, listens to what they have to say, interacts with them on a personal level and makes friends, not cogs.

New Slogan Suggestion

PayPal - It just could be so much better.

Come on people at PayPal, try harder, please. You know what, the customer service is so bad I’d even pay for exceptional customer service. Try that!

Microsoft Did. Don’t Know If They Still Do.

Back in the day Microsoft used to offer this problem resolution service that for $200 you could call and get a senior level specialist on the phone and they would work your problem right then until it was fixed. The $200 price tag was painful but at 3 AM when the server has just shit a brick, the ability to pick up the phone, even for a fee, and talk to someone with authority, connections and the skills necessary to fix the problem was a blessing. Now that was great customer service that I will never forget.

That being said, I haven’t had a chance to call Apple and see what their customer service is like for critical issues because my Macs just keep running and running. Sorry Bill.

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Steve

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