no that's not what i'm saying. PayPal explicitly chose to not answer telephone support in order to keep costs down for low-value avg users (which is most non-merchants / non-eBay fanatics).

it was deemed to be "cheaper" to just not deal with a minority % of password recovery cases (that might also occasionally be fraud) than to provide high-cost customer support for low-value average users.

think about it: if you can cut a minority % of your customer base that causes a large % of the cost (or simply just more than they are worth) then you can make more money.

this wasn't such a big mistake in itself, except that PayPal probably didn't consider the network effect of negative brand damage due to not providing very good customer service for such a large # -- though still minority -- of users.

i'm saying this: 1) telephone support is expensive, and doesn't offset low-value ARPU 2)