PayPal has problems

After reading a post by Alan Meckler of Jupitermedia (you can visit his blog at http://weblogs.jupitermedia.com/meckler/) I remembered how horrible my last customer service experience with the people at PayPal was and thought I would share. Although this isn't directly related to Search Engine Optimization, PayPal is used by many SEO and web development firms as a method of accepting payment.

As Alan pointed out, you never get the same representative twice. It was blantantly obvious that the people at PayPal didn't even read my question, but instead cut and pasted a generic response into their reply to me. I went back and forth about six times and it was like trying to grab a 5 year old's attention while he is holding a red balloon in one hand, cotton candy in the other, all while walking through Disneyland. I decided I'd wasted enough time and picked up the phone and called them.

Not only do they not provide a toll free number to reach them at, but it takes far too long to speak to an actual human. When I finally got a real, live human being, he was very helpful and fixed the issue in 10 minutes for me. I told him about my email frustration and I also submitted a formal complaint to PayPal about it. A month and a half later and I still haven't received a response. (I'm not holding my breath)

My advice is to nix email and get PayPal on the phone. You'll be pulling your hair out for weeks otherwise.