If you thought government bureaucrats were the leaders when it came to nonsensical and inflexible rules and for moving the goalpost whenever you came within striking distance of one, do not despair. There is someone else who beats them hands down – the morons that run Paypal customer service.
How naïve of me to assume Paypal was a global company, and that I could operate my account from anywhere in the world. Never mind the fact that I can access my bank accounts, check my e-mail, pay my taxes, book a ticket, pay my kid’s school fees, all of these over the internet, and from a different country. The trolls at Paypal believe that if you were to ever travel to a different country and try to access your account from there, they have the right to freeze it.
Surely, they are trying to reduce fraud. So the trolls lock up my account, unilaterally reverse the transaction I had made, and even represent to the other party that it was at my request.
Here comes the good part – In order to unlock the account, the only documentation they will accept is a faxed copy of a utilities bill with my name and address on it. How in the world do they expect me to access a document safely sitting at home 10,000km away, then access a fax to send it to a UK fax number. Who uses a fax these days anyway? And if I walked into an internet café to fax sensitive information, can I even be sure of who gets a copy of my documents?
And then there is a question of who pays for all this. All I wanted to do was transfer a measly $7, and to do this I need to access a document 10,000km away to fax it to a place 20,000 km away. I think I would rather stick to cheques and bureaucrats.
And I shouldn’t bother complaining. Paypal’s parent – eBay – is even worse on customer service. I could write 10 whole blogs on my experiences with them. Maybe, I’ll do that tomorrow….
