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.

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 ;)

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!

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.

And then comes Friday… ;)

I was at the university when Pedja called me and said that we’re on Mashable! I couldn’t believe it! :) I ran home, and the only thing I was able to think of was “I hope the site won’t crash down!” :)) Luckily, it didn’t. :)

Minutes after the text on Mashable was published, we’ve started to receive orders. One after another one! Not long after that, Engadget and Gizmodo, and lots of others have published their texts too. The amount of tweets and RT’s on twitter search for wtfJeans was unbelievable! For a couple of hours wtfJeans was even a trending topic! :)

Before web shop was online we’ve made a plan to sell Beta for a few weeks during March – we were so mistaken: The BETA was sold out within a few hours! :) Those first 100 of pairs will be sent to our buyers on the 2nd of May.

At 17:30h, the moment Beta was sold out, the price was automatically changed to EarlyBird price (79€). Buyers from the whole world just kept ordering it, although they know that the those 900 pairs will be produced in August and shipped on the 1st of September. :) They don’t mind waiting for it for a few months! :)

So, how the sale is going, there’s a big chance that these 900 pairs of wtfJeans will be produced and shipped much sooner than it was initially planed. ;)

We would like to thank to all the people who tweeted about us. Special tnx to our friends who were posting comments on various web sites and, for example, explaining other ppl that the pocket on the photo is NOT a back pocket etc… ;)

Another thing I need to point out is:
We are not a big company! This is NOT a marketing trick or something like that.

We are just a simple internet-addicted couple who wanted to make just a 2 pairs of jeans for ourselves, and after a few friends said they’d like a pair too, we decided to make a web shop and try to sell 1000 pairs of it. We have never expected anything like this to happen! :)

Off now, to reply to client’s mails, and to start map-pinning all the cities our wtfJeans will be shipped to. From Australia to Singapore, Qatar, Israel, Italy, USA, UK, Sweden, Canada… It seams I’ll need a lot of pins! :)

It’s been only 3 months since the initial idea, although it’s more like years to Pedja and me ;). So many things have happened in the past few months, and we’ve met so many new people and learned a lot of new things. Such a great experience this is! :)

Of course, there were also some days when both of us just wanted to quit everything and buy a few sheep, and take them to some far-away-no-humans place and become a shepherd :)

As of today the part of work on web shop is done. And although shop is online only a few hours, we already have a nice lil’ bunch of orders for beta version of wtfJeans! :) And it’s all thanks to our twitter community. Twittersphere, thank you! :)

The web shop is pretty nice and simple, the payment goes through PayPal and the shipment is 9€ no matter where you’re from.

So, if you’re a geek or you just loooooove your iPhone or your iPodTouch, go ahead : take a look at wtfJeans shop and the gallery on it :)