Proof a ruthless focus in the right place can overcome almost anything.
They've been shit forever.
> PayPal survives because they keep end users happy, we (the people using PayPal to take payment or integrating it) aren't the end user.
Yeah as long as you just use PayPal once a year to make some payment through your debit card it's okay, but any advanced user who use it more often will eventually get in trouble.
What exactly caused it I have no idea, but might be traveling or using VPN. Once I tried to make fairly big $2000 transaction to pay for my new laptop and spent a week re-verifying my identify with them.
Given two merchants, I'll choose the one that uses a credit card over paypal every day. At least with a credit card I've my bank _and_ the scheme on my side. With paypal, it's me (and my bank) against the world ...
Far less issues than I’ve had with my bank actually (random declines, locked out of my account due to technical issue) in the same number of years.
These new-monopolies all seem to have the same features: robo-traps that trigger problems for users, robo-support (or support-by-script) that doesn't solve the problems, and no apparent motivation to actually solve problems when they happen.
Stronger regulation might fix some of this, but generally there should be some obligation to act ethically and responsibly.
(I know I'm dreaming, but consider how we got to the point where this requirement might as well be science fiction instead of a realistic consumer expectation.)
Ultimately if you get into a bit enough dispute with Paypal you have to consider using the real courts.
I think this is almost exclusively small, inexperienced merchants.
Now, an aspect of running even a small business is that I have some cash on hand, and a profit margin to cover the cost of eating one or two disputes if necessary. If a $100 sale goes down the toilet, I don't lose $100, but only my original cost of goods.
Where I read about horror stories is individual sellers who are selling things like a second hand electric guitar. In those cases, the buyer and seller are probably both not swimming in cash, so having their money tied up in a dispute is in fact painful. And that entire economy is rife with fraud and outright theft. Also, electric guitars are a case where there is extensive room for dispute about the provenance and condition of each piece. This gives the buyer an easy way to claim "item not as described."
In my view the hot business model for using the small payment services is selling an inexpensive physical good with a generous mark-up.
If you shipped the product, you most certainly lost $100, plus whatever additional labor costs were involved in attempting resolution.
There's also the opportunity cost of having that cash illiquid, even if you do win the dispute in the end. Money's time is worth money.
I follow a rule that's common among micro-businesses, which is to waste zero time on disputes. I always offer a full refund right away, along with a boilerplate list of troubleshooting suggestions. In virtually every case, the customer comes back in a few days and agrees that my product works. But because of this, I consider a dispute to be an immediate loss, and not a dollar amount hanging in limbo.
Paypal is used in about 40% of our sales and we didn’t have any issues in about a decade. Even from personal experience as a buyer I can‘t report any major issues.
I keep my eye out for alternative services because like many others, I've heard horror stories, and would not mind having a backup. So far I haven't found anything.
A possible reason for my good luck is that I run an "analog" business. My product is a physical good that I make and ship, so the customer gets something tangible and that's the end of it.
I don't want to cast aspersions, but the horror stories I've read are either one-time incidents with eBay sellers, or complex digital services where the product is an intangible.