How is that Paypal gets away with having a customer service system completely unreachable by humans?

“Hey, nice website…consumers need as many of these sites as possible so that peoples’ horror stories are heard. I myself have a little rant about Paypal and USPS. Turns out USPS makes a mistake and ships one of my ebay packages via boat rather than airmail (how in the digital age???). I have the receipt proving that I paid for airmail shipping. My local USPS claims agent confirmed that they did indeed ship it by boat. So of course the customer complains after about a month that they didn’t get the package, and Paypal immediately refunds their money, despite my badgering them by phone, trying to explain what USPS did….”

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…Paypal just doesn’t listen. Well, the package was shipped in Sept.2006, and according to USPS it arrived in Turkey “on or around” Jan. 10, 2007 (“on or around?” again, how in the digital age???). USPS sent me a letter indicating this, but no proof. Also, they are denying all liability and won’t even give a refund of the postage even though they sent it by boat rather than air. Of course, getting the insurance claim is out of the question, too. AND, Paypal is now hiding behind their seller protection policy, refusing to reverse the refund even though USPS is indicating that it was delivered. So I have no recourse whatsoever. But I’m guessing that my customer in Turkey ended up with a free mp3 player. I’m beginning to feel like these offerings of “insurance” and “seller protection” made by USPS and Paypal are just a scam. I paid USPS extra money in order to get insurance. I felt like that might encourage them to take good care of it. What happens? It takes 3 months to deliver a package (and I’m still not sure whether it really was delivered) that should have taken 2 weeks. And now they refuse to compensate me. And as for Paypal, they made a refund to MY customer prematurely even though I was communicating with them and letting them know the situation. The whole time, USPS online tracking said “in transit”. Paypal’s official reason for granting a refund to MY customer: “invalid tracking info”.

— BEN POPKEN

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