The level of discourse on HN lately is absurd. Here is a new CEO that appears to be looking to change things for the positive, yet everyone wants to be cynical and doubting. Yet when startups have major f* ups, the conversation is much different.<p>Lets all admit change is slow and that paypal is still one of the more trusted payment solutions accepted globally. It would be nice to be able to use them in the future with some continued reliability.
This isn't special... Yet. What happened here can happen even in the most dysfunctional customer service paradigms. A promblem randomly and luckily escalated from the people who can't do anything about the problem to the people who (generally speaking) won't do anything about the problem. As a lucky break, the person/department who generally won't do anything, decided in their mercy to do something this one time. IMHO, what was said in the email is just marketing duck-speak, no matter how sincere it sounds until proven otherwise.<p>The true fix, the actuall turnaround, is when the ability to actually fix problems like this is systemically extended deep into the space previously occupied by the employees who couldn't fix them before.
Here is what <i>I</i> would do... I would take him up on his offer (personal attention from the CEO? Sure!), but I would ask him whether he'd be willing to pick 3 or 4 other customers who had _NOT_ written an article which had gone viral and offer THEM the same deal.<p>I want this to be true. I want PayPal to believe that this behavior is harmful to their business and to push (at ALL levels of the company) to change how they treat their customers. But I won't give them the benefit of the doubt based on one message from the CEO. They burned their second chances long ago, and it's much harder to regain my trust after losing it. I hope that they do.
From the skepticism here, it's clear Mr. Marcus has his work cut out for him. Even with far fewer people ever reporting to me (directly and indirectly) than him, I sympathize with his inability to get the unvarnished truth from his own people. "We're routinely screwing people out of hard cash" is probably a scary message to relay up.<p>His email sounded sincere, and he's new to the job. I'd be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. He must know that the technorati hating his company is bad for business.
Here's the context for those curious: <a href="http://storify.com/goodonpaper/how-twitter-rescued-me-from-paypal-hell" rel="nofollow">http://storify.com/goodonpaper/how-twitter-rescued-me-from-p...</a>
Step one for PayPal would be to <i>always provide a reason</i> when they take action, <i>for all users.</i> Every bad experience I have had with PayPal began with them doing something negative, and <i>never explaining why they did it.</i> I have had methods of payment locked out, I have had funds not released, I have been told I could not make an instant payment, and <i>not once</i> was I given a reason why.
Why now? Why with this story?<p>I've been reading similar complaints to that for years. Some of which were far worse in my view (i.e. taking money out of banks to repay people who weren't even seeking a refund because PayPal changed its mind about someone's product or service).<p>Why does PayPal suddenly care? Is it because there is viable competition now?
If even a modicum of this attitude can seep down into all of the customer facing departments at PayPal, it'd be an awesome thing. I hope they pull it off.
Great email.. one of the most convincing and sincere high level apologies I've read. Perhaps, for once, the future is looking bright for Paypal. I could have done without the "forwarded from my iPad" at the bottom though.
Perhaps one of the reasons PayPal is being more service conscious is they finally have competition encroaching on their territory like Stripe + Square.<p>I guess its never too late to stop sucking though.
While the CEO has only been onboard for 5 months now, these kind of issues plaguing Paypal have been there for years now. I remember a good friend of mine had his Paypal account frozen a few years back because they thought it was suspicious he had received money so quickly (he was selling a popular marketing eBook). After making him jump through hoops to get his money (identification, financial records and scans of his passport, etc) he finally received the cash 7 months later, by that stage he was ruined emotionally and financially due to the fact it was his living (he couldn't pay bills or anything).<p>While I applaud the new CEO wants to make amends, for some like my friend who relied on Paypal to make a living by processing his business payments it's a little too late. Although Paypal is still the industry leader (because they have a stranglehold on online payments) the new CEO knows that offerings like Stripe and whatnot are making Paypal less and less relevant each and every day.<p>I would love to see Paypal change, the first thing they need to do is fire all of their customer service staff and train new staff with a new set of guidelines, implement a clean-cut way of contacting Paypal if something goes wrong and clean their act up.
In the previous post David replied to the comment (on HN) i made about wanting to change paypal's generic template to increase sales through a/b testing.I had a rant about paypal's api suckness and i also ranted about how draconian the fund freezes of diaspora and wikileaks were.<p>He said that he understands and told me to send him an email and we will take care of it.
No email was sent yet as i'm afraid i'll be targeted in the future. I can't put my legitimate digital business at that risk - there are tonnage upon tonnage of forum threads over the web of people's business going under because of pp freezes only because they contacted paypal it's heart breaking and too much of a red flag to me.<p>The only thing i can say about David is that he looks and sounds like a genuine guy who replied and started a discussion with the community and that as we all know goes a long way. So maybe his intentions are good but will paypal have zappos's culture regarding merchants all of a sudden? i doubt it and you all doubt it too because what matters is implementation ie real life.
Credit where it's due: out of all the <i>hundreds</i> of Paypal horror stories, this is the first time I have ever seen a reasonable, let alone personable, response come from that nebulous digital beast.<p>Fair play to the new CEO, he has won back one notch of respect and hopefully averted the slow motion train wreck that had probably already started at Paypal.
It's fantastic to see PayPal finally paying attention to these kinds of nightmare stories, but it's hard to believe it has anything to do with altruism.<p>They are seeing Stripe, Square, etc getting way more mindshare, and they are scared.<p>With all due respect PayPal, good riddance. You've sucked too hard for too long, and now we finally have alternatives.
Why now? Why this situation is it finally hitting home?<p>What confuses me is that David acts as if these are new stories of accounts frozen, staggered access to money, and blocked recourse to customer chargebacks. This has been happening for years with hundreds of publicly written stories of bad will by PayPal.
Posting screenshots of text instead of text make me sad.<p>It excludes visually-challenged people from this discussion, makes old people get out their glasses and squint, and makes cutting and pasting impossible.
The CEO also posted a reply to the original story here: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4485627" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4485627</a><p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidmarcus" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidmarcus</a>
Why does it take a story to make it to front page Hacker News to get attention, to get a "direct channel" to the executives when things go wrong? It ignores the all the horrible complaints and stories from everybody else. It's inequity in itself when the only way you will get attention from big companies is from making posts on Hacker News.<p>Why are they not paying attention to their other day-to-day customers? What kind of business do you intend on building?
Requiring personal supervision from an executive to withdraw funds is a negative against PayPal, because the president isn't going to personally supervise every account).<p>It's good that this executive (President, not the CEO as indicated in the title) is taking initiative to fix things at PayPal. But until things are fixed, PayPal is still a business risk.
Seriously, fuck them. They're starting to act like they care because there are new competitors who've shown how it's supposed to be done. Sorry but not for me, Stripe is my new paypal.
Dear Andy
,
After the many years of Paypal receiving stories just like yours I'm forced to take action. The traditional Paypal long term strategy of "Hahaha, where else are you going to go for online payments?" is not a viable option anymore.<p>It's unfortunate that your story has spread so far and so quickly. I now have to figure out how to resolve this AND try to figure out how anyone let it get this bad. Changing such entreched culture here is going to be hard.<p>I'm going to do my best of not letting Paypal become more of a cliche of how big businesses get their foundations kicked out from under them by smaller, scarappy startups.<p>P.S. Please,please, please don't google Stripe.
I've always wanted to have a spreadsheet or something to keep track of the "HN effect" in which companies respond to public outrages because of their publication here. Though of course they might also get attention from Reddit and other online outlets as well.
Nice gesture, but how many people are going to have the same reach in their complaints? It would be nitpicking to say the email fails the corporate sociopath-speak test with 'leverage the issues', but what irks me is asking for the help of someone your company has just offended. The frame of mind of a non-sociopath would be to say 'how can I help earn back your trust?'.<p>I've given up on PayPal for my meagre needs, but anyone with real money on the line should beat a path from them until their actions truly speak louder than their words. Speaking of words, I noticed a TOS update from them but haven't read it yet, so if they have taken positive steps then add grains of salt to this comment, to taste.
The most effective way to show displeasure with a business is to stop being a customer. Period. You can't blame the CEO here - he's simply trying to stop the bleeding before Hacker News reopens it with a machete.<p>I've briefly worked for a payment processor - and I'm not overstating here - but this industry doesn't give 1/2 a s<i></i>t about your feelings of them, their customer service, or what you think of their CEOs. They only care about getting as much money as possible. Period.<p>Peteris, keep posting of your experience and let's see if the CEO follows through. If he doesn't he'll lose twice as much respect and twice as many customers. If he does, then know you got some very expensive customer service, my friend.
PayPal is starting to feel the pressure of all these new payment startups (eg. Square, Stripe) springing up around them. They know that if they're not careful with their brand image they're going to quickly lose their lunch in the next few years.
To all the naysayers out there: in your opinion, what could the CEO have written to convince you? He doesn't have the option to go back in time to change what happened, only to respond.<p>If I'd receive such an email, I'd give 'em a second chance.
What the CEO is doing is effective. He's signaling that he really wants to fix things and won't make excuses.<p>I doubt the CEO will learn much he didn't already know by a "direct line" case study, but humbling himself in this way might give him the lever he needs to really move company culture.<p>PayPal can keep most of its anti-fraud effectiveness while improving customer service for those innocents who want to recover from misclassification. Either being more trusting, or spending more effort discerning who can be trusted, will cost them money short term. But if they don't do it, they'll lose some of their customers to competitors who will.
I think we should make judgement on the outcome rather than the email (since it's basically speculation anyways). Judge: Do these types of problems happen in the same amount and severity in 6 months? (or whatever time horizon you think is agreeable to see significant progress).<p>And there shouldn't be mockery for him fixing one account. Sure there are many to go, but before this account was in the same boat...so it's an improvement no matter how small. Whatever Andy said in his post really resonated to D. Marcus; now I hope it really is the catalyst for PayPal to improve.<p>edited
shortened it up.
Back in 2006 someone hacked my paypal account and used my credit card that was attached to paypal to purchase a few ipods. The criminal had them sent to their home address. They also changed my paypal password so I was not able to login. I contacted paypal support and they were absolutely not willing to help even. It was terrible customer service. I have never used paypal since.
To everyone, on both sides, that feel this is just a stunt or a sign of real change, just give it time.<p>Either things get better at Paypal, or they don't. Yes, big lumbering companies can change for the better. Microsoft, IBM, and Apple come to mind. Yahoo may be on that road now too. But it takes time to see. The wheels of change move slowly.
Reminds me of the proverb "do good nd cast into the river". If you want the world to know about it I would simply consider it a PR stunt.
Maybe the Paypal CEO had a positive intent and the Marketing team / PR team wanted to brag about it to the entire world. That's how the corporate world is though!