We’ve organized a contest “3 days – 3 tweets – 3 free pairs of wtfJeans“. People had to tweet the reason why should we give a free pair of our jeans to them.

If I knew how hard it is when one has to decide and choose a winner – I would gladly give that job to someone else! :) I felt so bad that I had to choose just one winner every day, and it was hard because each day I was struggling to choose not between 2 or 3, but much more great tweets.

Well, at the end we’ve finalized it, and today it’s finished and we have 3 winners. They are:

First Day – 28/06/10

Second Day – 29/06/10

Third Day – 30/06/10

We’ve received so many great tweets, and a lot of people have participated. And some of them were sending lots of tweets while some others were participating each day.

Well, this morning we’ve decided to do something nice for all of them. We can’t give a free pair of jeans to everyone, but what we can do is to give them promo-code for a discount. ;) So, we’ve prepared and sent via DM’s the codes with EarlyBird price, which is 28% discount of the Regular price.

Winners are happy, participants are happy, and we’re happy… This was a pretty nice week … :)

Win a free pair of jeans! :) The contest has started on midnight and it will last for 3 days. 3 days – 3 tweets – 3 free pairs of jeans. The rules are here. Be creative and good luck ;)

I was suppose to get my new iPhone in a few days, via mail, because it was ordered online at Orange.fr. Today we’ve found out it’s possible to get it straight away in Bemac shops (Apple reseller ) with SFR one-year contract (which I wanted at first place, but we were late to order it). So, what do 2 iPhone addicts do? ;) We’ve canceled Orange order and went to Bemac and bought it! :))

And guess what? It fits into wtfJeans pockets just perfectly! :)

Great news! :)) We’ve managed to persuade PayPal to return money to those 129 clients!

Dear clients, money is back on your accounts! :)) I’m sending you mails with details and promo-codes latter today, so you’ll be able to re-order at the same price as you did before.

We still haven’t resolved problems with PayPal. And at the moment we have 129 clients who still haven’t got their money back from them.

PayPal is refusing all the communication with us an they have more then 11.000 € of our money, on our frozen account.

After the mail in which Francine from PayPal ordered us to return the money to our buyers, we’ve done it and we’ve had no problems with orders under 60 days. And for those ordered more then 60 days ago, we’ve been told to file a written request with the names and order IDs of the clients, and we’ve done it. As a matter of fact we’ve done it 3 times: twice using their form on their site, and each time they would say they haven’t received it, and using their form one doesn’t have a proof of it.

Header of the mail sent on the 26th of May 2010

The last time we’ve done it on the 26th of May. This time we’ve sent it by mail to webform@paypal.fr and a good thing is that now we also have a proof that we’ve requested a money return to 129 people.

Till today, 14th of June, PayPal has not returned money to a single client of ours! At the same time, there’s 11 762,18 € at our frozen PayPal account which is enough money to cover all these returns.

Screen-shoot of our PayPal account, 14th of June

We have no possibility to get that money and PayPal is not returning it. For weeks we’re trying to get the answers when will they do that. But we’re not getting any answers. They keep saying they’re reviewing the case and that we should be patient. It’s lot of money, 11 thousands euros PayPal owns our customers.

And then PayPal says they’re protecting their clients 100%…

We would appreciate it if you’re willing to help us by sharing our story – either on blogs or at mainstream media channels. Thank you in advance.

Thanks to twitter, on Thursday evening we’ve found out there’ll be a BarCamp Bodensee 2010 in Konstanza. It’s on lake Bodensee, on the border between Germany and Switzerland which is about 240km from Strasbourg. Since it was Thursday evening and we’ve wanted to hit the road on Friday, we’ve decided to take a chance and try out CouchSurfing for a first time.

Photo by Harald [ha75]

What a great idea! It took us only 5 minutes to open the account and to find a host – and not just any host, but the one who’s also attending BarCamp! :) Thank you Thomas and Iona :)

The BarCamp started on Friday evening with a Warm-Up Party, and lasted till Sunday evening which meant 2 full days of great networking! About 230 people were participating, and it guaranteed there’ll be a lot of sessions: 45 on Saturday and 27 on Sunday. But, that wasn’t a problem at all since the sessions were held in HTWG Konstanz. It’s an University building 100m from the lake. So whether you wanted to participate in a session or to chit-chat with people at Strand Bar relaxed in a beach chair with a cocktail in your hand – the choice was all yours.

We’ve held one session “Advantages and disadvantages of PayPal’s payment system” and it turned out to be a really great and creative discussion with both experienced and unexperienced users of PayPal’s service.

The organization of BarCamp Bodensee was perfect! And I really don’t know how the organizers, Oliver Gassner as “project mind” and Patric Schmid as “man in charge”, have managed to do that. They’ve provided us everything: breakfasts, lunches and dinners, coffee and drinks trough the whole 2 days. And they’ve had a great sponsors, of course. But I’d like to single out one of them. Peter Eich has provided 50 free bicycles for the BarCampers so that we could see the lake’s area. Another reason why I’m singling-out Peter is that he’s made an video interview with us, and it’s published on his blog. Thanks, Peter!

Photo by Peter Eich

This was my 2nd and Pedja’s 4th BarCamp. And all that sharing of knowledge and experience simply astonishes me. Bunch of people who are more or less in the same industry, talking and discussing about business or a meaning of life (oh, yes, we’ve had that session too :) ) or just hanging around and chatting – it’s just great! I’ve learned some new tricks about how to be more efficient, I’ve discussed the idea of International BarCamp Network, I’ve participated in You Tube Movie Karaoke and I’ve cycled 20km with no problems at all – and all of that within just 2 days. Amazing experience!

And the last but not the least I want to mention a few people:
-Sacha Schlegel from Lichtenstein who was our CouchSurfing room-mate and with whom I’ve had wonderful talks and discussions. Hope to see you soon ;)
-Michele Capobianco from Switzerland, who was my partner at YT karaoke “Pulp Fiction with FB Farmville sub-titles” :))
-Justine Adam, great girl and a great web developer at Novelys in Strasbourg, she shares my “love” for red wines ;)
-the to-me-unknown person who managed to get that red sausages sponsorship – they were yummy/tasty/excellent! :))

So long, and thanks for all the fish/sausages until the next BarCamp Bodensee! :)

If you’ve been reading our last texts, then you know that we were implementing a new payment gateway. Well, the implementation was finished last week, and since yesterday morning our web-shop is working again and we’ve started to accept orders. We’re now working with ATOS payment system and with La Banque Postal. At the moment we’re excepting VISA and Master cards, but hopefully we’ll be able to accept payments via American Express within a month.

Due to those problems with Paypal we were forced to return the money to most of our clients. We’ve contacted them via mail yesterday to notify them about our new payment system. To each one of them, we gave one promo-code which enables them to re-order a pair of wtfJeans at the same price as they did before. Those codes can be used only once and they’re valid until the 15th of June.

PayPal still hasn’t returned the money to about 130 of our clients, although we’ve made couple of requests. Yesterday they told us that they’ve “received the request and it’s being reviewed right now”. So, for these clients we’re still waiting to hear that their money is returned to them, and after that, we’ll contact them and send them promo-codes so they could make re-orders as the other ones.

We’ve also had some clients whose orders are “safe” – which basically means that we’ve managed to collect their payments, but we’ve notified them too, so they wouldn’t worry about it :)

When it comes to new buyers, the price is Regular (109€), and when it comes to shipping: the official date is the 1st of September (as it was scheduled at the beginning) but we’ll give our best to ship it a bit earlier ;)

Charles Darwin said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” I think that some of the most important attributes of running good business are flexibility and possibility to adapt. These days I’m experiencing only the brutal, raw force from PayPal – no flexibility or good efficiency.

Photo by PayPal Sucks Cartoon

After they’ve made us to return and cancel all Early Bird orders, they’re being so arrogant now that we’re trying to end our business with them in a civilized way.

We have 3 clients who have ordered Beta but since they’ve returned us the jeans, the money should be returned to them. On the other hand, it’s not possible to simply cancel transactions older than 60 days, but the money should be send to clients. It’s not a problem to us: we have the money. But, it’s on a frozen PayPal account and we can’t manipulate with it without a big AMEN from PayPal. I’d like to remind you that PayPal has our money blocked since 7th of March, and we have no access to it.

PayPal informed us that if we want to return money to those clients we have to make written requests which will be send trough their website form. It’s interesting that if you do it that way, there’s no written trace that you’ve made that request!

We’ve made one request for one of our clients more than a week ago, and then 2 more and then latter we’ve requested money return to 120 clients (Early Bird). Each day I’m trying to find out some more info via PayPal’s Call-Center (0,21 €/min) but they keep telling me there’s no need to call them and that they’ve transferred our case to a “higher level” and that I should be patient.

Today I’ve finally managed to get some answers. They said they’ve received the money return requests but not for all the clients. I really don’t get it! Does that mean their system is not safe for data transfers? How is it possible to lose those data?! After couple of similar questions they gave me mail address webform@paypal.com to send them my request.

what happens with fees?

I’ve also asked them what happens with fees? Do they have right to charge me twice for the service I didn’t get? First time they’ve charged me 3.4% + 0.25 EUR for each transaction I’ve received. Now they’re making me return the money to the clients and want to charge me the same fee. I’ve asked for that in a written form (to send me mail with details) so I could make a request AGAIN because it seems they’ve lost the first one. :/

I simply can’t understand this way of doing business and how can a company who “cares about clients” act that way? I can’t wait till all this with PayPal is finished, and after that I will never do anything with them again EVER!

There are moments in every business when you’re full of positive adrenaline and when your job completely fulfills you. But there are those other moments when you can’t believe what’s happening to you. Last week we’ve had one of those bad ones.

One of the things you don’t know about wtfJeans, and which we thought is a long time sorted out, is our problem with PayPal. On the second day after web-shop was launched, PayPal has totally blocked our account. We didn’t have the access to the money, and we were also not able to continue the sale, because they’ve also blocked the payments.

We’ve called the PayPal straight away and asked them where’s the problem. They’ve explained us that by the PayPal’s policy it is forbidden to take pre-orders if delivery date is after 20 days. That was one of those things you don’t think about, because you haven’t read the small print in User Agreement :(

We’ve asked them is there any chance to resolve that problem or we’ll have to stop our business. It turned out that PayPal sometimes makes exceptions with the trusted clients, but we’ll need to give them “Proof of the origin of the merchandise” to unblock the account. We’ve sent them that document straight away and they’ve unblocked the payment possibility on our account within a few hours. But, to completely unblock the account we were suppose to send them some more documents.

“OK”, we said, “it’s important to continue the business, and we’re going to send the additional papers in the next few days and everything will be sorted out.”
How wrong we were! :((
It was more than 2 months ago, and that’s when our struggle to unblock our account has started. We’ve made countless calls to their call center and sent so many mails…

We had to send some documents twice, because they said they haven’t received them, and we even had to contact some clients by mail asking them have they received the jeans, and to forward those replies to PayPal. And when we thought it’s finally over, we have received a phone-call from our supervisor Francine from French PayPal who ordered us to cancel all the orders.

We’ve told her that we’ve been working 24/7 for the past 5 months on this, that we’ve invested all of our savings, and even borrowed money from our family. Supervisor Francine didn’t care about our pleas that it will make a huge damage to our business. She was ruthless. Her respond was that we haven’t read User Agreement carefully enough, and that she can’t believe that they (PayPal) have left us working for 2 months and that it’s not normal, and that she doesn’t understand how could’ve that happened. However, I couldn’t persuade her to unblock our account and she requested me to cancel all the wtfJeans orders which were scheduled to be delivered in September.

Next step?

Our first next step is implementing of new payment gateway at our web-shop. It will be from our Bank and it will enable our customers to make the online payments. It should be finished until the end of May. Until then, we won’t be able to take any new wtfJeans orders.

We’ll also hire a lawyer who’ll help us to resolve the problems with PayPal. There’s no other way to sort that out, because after two months of numerous phone-call conversations we weren’t able to do anything.

A piece of advice

If you’re starting your own business, please, be very careful and think thoroughly are you sure you want to do business with PayPal. No matter how easy it looks like for the implementation and start of your business, it’s possible that the cooperation with them will cost you a lot of “unpredicted costs”. Very bad experience that leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth.

This has made a huge damage to us because now we have to do everything, since BETA, all over again. :( And when it’s considered that we’ve sold out all of the Early Bird pairs and some of the Regulars, you can imagine the impact of it…
But OK…although the situation is desperate, we’re not. And we’re still working and giving our best to continue this wtfJeans project. We’re doing complete reorganization at this moment, and we’ll keep on rolling. Stay tuned.

Everyone makes mistakes. But when a mistake is a misspelled word in one short sentence which is printed on a label … well, that is simply stupid. And I feel dumb… What can I say except : BETA buyers, I’m sorry you’ll receive your wtfJeans with a misspelled word. :(