Paypal vs. Regretsy

[wraith808]

Regretsy is a sort of fail blog for Etsy that posts cynical snark about the crafts presented there.  Right or wrong on that point, they give a lot to charity, and decided to do a charity drive at Christmas.  But apparently Paypal likes cats more than children, at least from the customer service SNAFU that Paypal started.

CATS 1, KIDS 0

That started a PR nightmare of internet proportions, especially when Paypal's policies on the issue were dissected in-depth in a rational manner on a blog.

Apparently, the internets can affect corporate actions, because Paypal backed down.

But yeah, this puts Paypal more firmly in the evil column, even though most of us still use it because it's the most convenient choice out there.

[tomos]

I could sort of understand it if their "burocraticness" was burocratic - I mean when they clamp down on someone, they rarely seem to make much sense...

[IainB]

Yes, I had been following the Regretsy v. PayPal thing with acute interest after reading their blog of the 4th. Dec.
Looks like PayPal shot themselves in both feet whilst they had said feet in their mouth.
(I think the vulgar terminology for this is a "clusterf***" - if you will pardon my French.)

By all reports, the apology apparently came out initially as a non-apology, with the word "sorry" being belatedly added to it.
Unspeakable arrogance. I think that this and their whole approach - as recorded on the Regretsy blog - is probably indicative of how they may really regard some of their customers. Their customer support rep. kinda leaves little room for doubt about that.

Hence, the apology statement by Anuj Nayar (as Director of Communications, PayPal) would appear to be a damage control FAIL. Even the title - "Regretsy Issue Resolution" is corporate doublespeak.

It had already seemed to me - a couple of years back - that PayPal had turned into JACP (Just Another Corporate Psychopath) - "evil" in Google parlance. When I opened up an account with PayPal in 2003 to buy a licence for GetRight (from Headlight Software), I was a happy customer and pleased that PayPal's inception effectively poked those other efficient corp. psychos - Big Banks - in the collective eye, and opened up their oligopoly of the payments system.
However, in the years since then, I generally refrained from using PayPal as far as possible, as it seemed that they had gone badly astray - though I have had to make an exception when donating to DC.    
I have recommended to people that they consider joining oDesk, for example, but because of the oDesk system's reliance on PayPal, I always mention that as a caveat.

Ironically, when you log on to PayPal it says:

PayPal. The world's most-loved way to pay and be paid.

What to do?
One of the commenters on Regretsy put it rather succinctly:

As far as I’m concerned, I have no reason to do business with them again until they not only resolve this with April but make it sparkling clear that they have reviewed their customer service policy and implemented a better one. If that rep still HAS a job at PayPal it should not involve dealing with the public. Janitorial services might be allowable.

I'm now waiting for someone to do a Hitler-in-his-bunker spoof on this. Those spoofs always make me smile.

[JavaJones]

This is just one of many, many past examples of similar behavior by Paypal. On the bright side I think this is one of the first where they've actually backed down and apologized! Maybe they're learning...

- Oshyan

[iphigenie]

All I can imagine is that it matched some kind of fraud pattern (fake charity drive perhaps) that the reps had been warned about and the rep didnt go look at the site and people doing it, and just assumed this was someone trying a scam

Pretty painful to read

[mahesh2k]

Paypal recently blocked diaspora foundations donation account too. It took some time for them to get back the account. I just hope that in 2012, more startups come to take people away from the wrath of paypal.