I've stopped being surprised at this genre of story showing up - on HN or elsewhere. This story basically serves to illustrate a couple of things about Paypal that are definitely salient, but haven't changed in years.
* Banks are still shitty and unwilling to actually compete, so Paypal has its market all to itself.
* Because Paypal does not fear disruption or competition, it is not worth their time to invest in good customer service. They know you're stuck.
This is pretty much the same as the stories about trying to get customer service from Google. There are no effective competitors - so, their accountants and shareholders say, who the fuck cares if customers complain? What are they going to do, go to someone else? Doing so would harm the customers more than it would harm the company that they are abandoning.
I use the phrase "not worth their time" even though it implies things about the employees of the company which are not true - I use it because it is true of the company itself as an entity. It's a corporation - it's a sociopath. So it is basically incapable of providing good customer service as long as the return on investment of good customer service is negative, epsilon, or invisible. The employees, as people, probably do want to provide good customer service! But when it comes down to the human, humane desires of a corporation's employees conflicting with the sociopathic requirements of the corporation itself, we only need a brief look at the history of commerce in America. Put your money on the corporation's interests winning every time.
PayPal (and Google) will keep giving customers the finger until the thought of customers leaving actually scares them.
I've been through the PayPal wringer (account frozen, then limited) and actually found the customer service to be stellar. I had a dedicated case agent who gave me his direct line, and he was always available and always polite.
There's a lot to hate about PayPal, but my impression is they have put quite a lot of effort into customer service.
The employees, as people, probably do want to provide good customer service!
There are other good points in this thread about PayPal's risk mitigation model. I think that this basically deepens the parallel to Google. When the service works, it's genuinely great - that's part of why they're such a dominant force. The problem is that when it breaks, generally it breaks in horrid ways. People like the HN crowd, who are strongly disposed towards trying to do new things that previous models may not account for, are the most likely to find cases where the system breaks, and to suffer the effects of the breakage.
* Banks are still shitty and unwilling to actually compete, so Paypal has its market all to itself.
* Because Paypal does not fear disruption or competition, it is not worth their time to invest in good customer service. They know you're stuck.
This is pretty much the same as the stories about trying to get customer service from Google. There are no effective competitors - so, their accountants and shareholders say, who the fuck cares if customers complain? What are they going to do, go to someone else? Doing so would harm the customers more than it would harm the company that they are abandoning.
I use the phrase "not worth their time" even though it implies things about the employees of the company which are not true - I use it because it is true of the company itself as an entity. It's a corporation - it's a sociopath. So it is basically incapable of providing good customer service as long as the return on investment of good customer service is negative, epsilon, or invisible. The employees, as people, probably do want to provide good customer service! But when it comes down to the human, humane desires of a corporation's employees conflicting with the sociopathic requirements of the corporation itself, we only need a brief look at the history of commerce in America. Put your money on the corporation's interests winning every time.
PayPal (and Google) will keep giving customers the finger until the thought of customers leaving actually scares them.