PayPal sucks big time
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.
A lawyer was present at BarCampAlsace6.5, he could give you some advices or assists you. On FB, he asked for some news from you :) Contact me and we’ll give you his infos.
The same thing happened to me and my colleague.
Our PayPal account got blocked for no-reason (and, of course, they don’t want to tell us why) and they took away 5500EUR…
They are bastards, indeed.
Over.
Ok, Yann, Pedja will call you tomorrow. Thanks! :)
That sucks!
(btw: again: great pair of jeans! thank u guys!)
In other words – you didn’t read the the contract, and now you’re blaming them for your losses.
That sounded harsh. Sorry. I wish you good luck with business, but you can’t really put blame on them…
@Mirko,
As a matter of fact we can blame it on them. Why?
Here’s why: “On the second day after web-shop was launched, PayPal has totally blocked our account…We’ve called them straight away…It turned out that PayPal sometimes makes exceptions with the trusted clients, but we’ll need to give them documents…”
They’ve unblocked our account for receiving money straight away, an hour after that call. And they’ve left us to do business for 2 months, and for 2 months we were investing our own money, time and knowledge, and kept working, and now they’ve changed their mind.
Just a thought… Have you considered using Google Checkout?
@Marko,
as Pedja said it in a text, we’re implementing French Post bank payment system. We’ve figured it’s the best system for us.
So what happens with all the pre-orders that were already placed and payed for?
We’re keeping the orders (yours as well ;) ) , no worries! :)
If our lawyer solves the problems with PayPal, nothing changes for you and other buyers.
If not, the money you’ve payed trough PayPal will be returned to you, and you’ll just have to make another payment at our web-shop, trough our new payment system. But don’t worry, we’ll notify you about it via mail.
Have you emailed executiveoffice@paypal.com yet?
PayPal is a company that seems to severely lack moral integrity.
Unfortunately, far too many firms in the “money business” seem to be that way. Just a matter of time, probably, before the entire fractional reserve banking system implodes under the weight of its own usury and injustice… and the bit players on the sidelines, like mortgage companies and PayPal, get sucked into the vortex.
Buy gold while you still can.
We didn’t know for that mail address. I’ll send them mail today, although I don’t think it would help, but I’ll try… Thanks!
“Lack of moral integrity…” – I don’t wanna start talking about it, I agree with you completely.
Few years ago, when I was searching some “cheap” payment gateway, I found http://www.paypalsucks.com/ after that I changed my mind, and I dont use paypal for high money transitions just because this reasons :( I hope you’ll get your money soon!!
Same thing happened with the openpandora preorders: http://www.open-pandora.org/
They ended up using bank transfers.
We’ll be implementing new payment gateway in the next few days. We’ve decided to use French Post Bank. It does take longer to open the account and sort out administration, but at the end, it’s much safer and also a lot cheaper ;)
Thank you for your reply, Sanja. I was getting a little bit worried there ;).
It’s very unfortunate you got yourselves into this mess. You have a really lovely product and I can’t wait to get it.
I hope you manage to solve the problem soon.
Kind regards,
Natan
Have you considered using ccNow payment gateway? We’ve been using it for our shop for more than a year now with no problems at all.
To recap,
- wtfj does not read contract
- wtfj behaves contrary to the contract
- paypal denies service
- wtfj blogs that paypal sucks big time and is looking for sympathy
here, you have my sympathy.
now clean up your act and start doing things properly.
To recap,
- wtfj does not read contract
- wtfj behaves contrary to the contract
- paypal denies service
-wtf calls PayPal and PayPal UNBLOCKS account right away for receiving money, so that wtf could continue working while they’re collecting documents which PayPal asked for in order to unblock account completely.
-wtf keeps working for 2 months, and than PayPal decides that they’ve changed their mind and they block the account AGAIN.
- wtfj blogs that paypal sucks big time and is looking for sympathy
PayPal sucks big time for sure, they are f-ing nazi company.
They firstly accepted us as a company and approved us completely… then after ~2 months they’ve decided that we are a “security issue” for them and they closed our account.
We called them via phone, they were very rude to us, for some unknown reason, and then they told us that they won’t talk to us nor reply to our emails anymore, again for unknown reason.
We requested a reason of account blockage etc. and they replied that they have right not do disclose that kind of information. WTF?!
Of course, we can’t do nothing about that.
Pretty-much the same thing which happened to you.
So, F PayPal, don’t use them at all!
Go with 2CO, Moneybookers, AlertPay, Google Checkout etc., but PayPal – never!
Update:
To all of you “Paypal fanboys” – GTFO!
Most of you never transferred more than 100 bux over PP…
But the time will tell, one day you will write the same blog post as their – because PayPal will steal your money, sooner or later.
Over.
PayPal bastards…
I hope you will be more lucky with French gateway system…