Do you know why PayPal’s customer service is so bad? Well, you are at the perfect place to find the answer to such a question.
No matter what kind of service you might be using, you always want to know that you’re going to be able to get the right support when it matters most. This is perhaps most important when it comes to any company that deals with your money, so why is PayPal customer service so bad?
While many people use PayPal without issue, a lot of customers have significant problems with the company, how they operate, and how their support system is run.
Read on to find out the reasons why PayPal customer service does not have the best reputation.
What Is PayPal?
Before we delve into the kind of support that they offer their customers, we should first talk about what PayPal actually does and where they come from.
PayPal is a financial technology company that is based in the United States but operates all over the world. They specialize in offering online money transfers – mainly for eCommerce, auction sites, and commercial use.
The company was founded in 1998 as Confinity, then became X.com a year later before finally changing its name to PayPal in March 2000. For a number of years it was actually a subsidiary of eBay, but the company has been independent since 2015.
Although PayPal was quite innovative for its time, there are now a wide variety of different services that allow quick and simple online financial transactions, and PayPal’s influence within the digital space has certainly lessened.
So, what is it like to work with PayPal? Are people happy with the kind of service that they provide?
Does PayPal Customer Service Have A Bad Reputation?
For quite a long time, negative reviews and poor opinions about PayPal have circulated online. There was even a dedicated website set up called PayPalSucks.com that has since been taken down – however, communities under the name “PayPalSucks” are still highly active in spaces like Reddit and Facebook today.
If you look at Trustpilot now, there are over 23,000 reviews, 87% of which are just 1-star. The business has an overall rating of just 1.3 out of 5 and many of the reviews are extremely negative indeed.
On other review sites, their reputation is slightly less overwhelmingly negative, but it’s still not great. On Sitejabber they have a score of 2.5 out of 2,454 reviews, ranking them as 73rd out of 77 online money transfer businesses on the platform.
On customersercivescoreboard.com, PayPal has a score of 43.51 out of 200, with their service and support being ranked as “Disappointing”. The two areas where they are most poorly reviewed are cancellation and their ability to resolve issues.
So, why are there so many negative reviews about the company?
5 Reasons Why PayPal Customer Service Is So Bad
Reason 1: How They Handle Potential “Fraud”
As an online money transfer service, you definitely want to know that the company you are working with is proactive and responsible when it comes to potentially fraudulent payments. Unfortunately, many people find PayPal’s handling of these issues to be quite problematic.
PayPal will limit accounts and lock funds when something is flagged as possibly fraudulent, and it can be very difficult to reactivate and gain access again. Additionally, if fraud does occur on your account, it can be deleted and any money that was sent to you can be withheld.
While an aggressive stance against fraudsters is certainly understandable, it shouldn’t come at the expense of your customers. Most banks and many other online financial transaction services have a much better reputation for how they deal with the problem.
Reason 2: There Are Hidden Charges
Of course, every service needs to make its money somehow so you can’t expect things to be completely free, but many customers take issue with some of the charges that PayPal applies.
There are many small ways that PayPal takes your money that can seem pretty egregious. For example, you can be charged for linking cards to your account even if they are completely unusable, and payments that have been canceled or refunded will still incur the PayPal fee – which can be very high.
They also charge expensive hidden fees for foreign currency exchanges.
Reason 3: They Do Not Have The Same Checks And Balances As A Bank
Although PayPal functions in many ways like a banking service, they are not a bank. As such, you are not offered the same kind of protection and they do not need to comply with the same sort of regulations.
PayPal can delete your account for almost any reason and withhold your money from you for a long time without providing any evidence as to why. Many people report that they do not investigate claims and issues with payments very thoroughly and you can lose out significantly as a result.
Reason 4: They Are Not Very Responsive
If you do run into any problems with PayPal, they are also not always particularly easy to get hold of.
While some people have positive experiences with PayPal customer service, many find them to be very difficult to get in touch with. It can take a long time to hear back about your issues if they even respond at all.
Reason 5: Issues Go Unresolved
At the end of the day, PayPal is a very large service with a lot of users so some problems are bound to come up. When they do hear about them, though, what does PayPal actually do?
One of the worst things that customers have to say about PayPal is that many of their problems go completely unanswered. They have a reputation for cutting ties with customers’ accounts and closing cases with no resolution at all, which can leave you hundreds of dollars out of pocket.
Summary
So, why is PayPal customer service so bad? The company has been plagued by negative reviews for a very long time, mainly due to poor responsiveness, lack of action on significant issues, and lost money.
They have a very low rating on almost all consumer review sites and there are even large communities dedicated to airing grievances about the business.
Although most customers manage to use the service without any major problems, there are certainly a lot of things to be upset about when it comes to PayPal’s customer service.