So a couple of days ago I was trying to use PayPal which I always do to purchase an account from another website. This account was expiring and I was trying to pyt money into my PayPal account so that I could repurchase it before it was too late.
The dead line for the Account was Feburary 9th, 2009. I started by transfering money from my bank account into PayPal (see Jan 30, 2009). PayPal said it would be 5-9 business days which would be in perfect timing for me to repurchase my account and keep it active.
9 days went buy and finally my money had arrived in my PayPal account. I was excited because I knew my account was ending that night at midnight. I signed on to PayPal to check my balance (as of Feb 9, 2009), then I went to the website to repurchase my account. I clicked the link to repurchase the account and it had taken me to the PayPal page which I would enter my username and password and it would do everything else. One thing I did not notice is that it was only giving me the option of an "E-Check" which takes another 2 weeks (5-9 business days) to process. I did not see this and just hit ok thinking my account would be reactivated isntantly.
To my surprize it gave me a webpage saying that the transaction was in processes. I then went to my PalPay account to see that it was doing an E-Check. I said ok, that is fine I will just wait. I emailed the company which I was purchasing the account from to ask if there was anything they could do as the payment would be late even though I had enough money in my account to cover the instant purchase but PayPal messed up and decided to do an E-Check instead.
There was nothing the company could do but give me a 100% refund which I was happy with. I tried multiple times to see if there was anyway to get a different payment option, but everytime I was only presented with an E-Check option, I thought it was time to call PayPal Support.
I called the support number on Feb 20, 2009 around 9am EST. PayPal's support technician pick up the phone and asked what my problem was. Here is my description which I had given them:
"Hi I was trying to buy an account from **** but the only option I see when purchasing using my PayPal business account is E-Check. I have more than enough funds in my currency to convert CANADIAN to EURO, but I have never had to do that before. How can I use PalPay to purchase the account instantly like I have in the past as you can see on my account"
Then then took a couple mintues to verify who I was and log into my account. They asked me to purchase the account again, so I proceeded to do so and found that I could again only pay using E-Check. The support Technician then proceeded to ask me to exchange my currency into USD. So I happily did that even though I knew doing so would lose money on the conversion. I calculated the correct amount and converted my Canadian Dollars to United States Dollar (losing money at the time). They then proceeded to tell me to try the purchase again. I willingly did so and to their surprize I only had E-Check avaliable again.
They then proceeded to tell me I had to exchange my money back into Canadian. I figured I am on the phone with PayPal support, so I would do it because I wanted this issue solved. I converted back to Canadian Dollar. They told me I needed to create a new currency (EURO) and convert to it to purchase the account (why they did not say this in the first place?). I created a new currency and converted the right amount into the new EURO currency which I had created.
They told me to try and purchase the account again. Same thing happened only E-Check was avaliable. Then the Support Technician told me to reconvert my money back into Canadian. I did it as I knew there would be a record of this showing on my PalPay account.
I did not lose very much money because it was a small amount I was transfering, but I had lost money on 4 currency transfers.
The Support Technician then told me they were experiencing difficulties with certian accounts and purchasing other items in different currencies then they had as their primary currency and that was why they had me transfer into multiple currencies to fix the issues. However, my issue was not resolved. They told me they would mark my account for inspection by a Manager. I asked them if I could be reembursed the money that I had lost because of them making me do the exchanges. I was told this would be handled by a manager who would send an email out to me within the next hour.
1:00pm EST
Still no email from PayPal I decided to call them back and ask them what was going. I called techincal support again and went through the same process for verifying my account and who I was.
I explained that I had called earlier and their technician told me to transfer my money into multiple currencies to try and purchase an account. I also told them that they said there was an issue with accounts when purchasing items with other currencies not in your profile.
They logged into my account and saw the currency exchanges and then looked at my support record to only show that I had not called at all that morning. I was furious, what kind of support is this?
I proceeded to tell my story to the technician on the phone. They said there was nothing they could do because it was not on their support record. All they could do was mark my account so that it would be looked at by a manager. I told them that is exactly what the last person said. This time they gave me a first name 'Maria' for a manager. They would not give me a case number, or anything else. They told me to expect an email from 'Maria' directly regarding the issue within the next hour.
Guess what happened?
A day later and still no email had arrived from PayPal or their manager name 'Maria'. On this day I was fed up and tried to purchase the account again to see that they had fixed my account (which was good), but they did not send me any emails or refund my money on what their technicians had me do on a wild goose chase.
Here is a quick overview of the 30 days that this all happened. Imagine if it was something bigger than $16euros that I was trying to buy.
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