Paypal closes its customer service | Hacker News Reader

Paypal closes its customer service

paypal.com

27 pointsnafizh20 comments

Well, it's not like they had customer service before, so I'm not sure what's changed.

> Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency, our phone lines are currently closed.

Never realized they were contactable by phone until now but in any case why are the phone lines closed because of the virus? Does it spread by phone too?

Call centers are a most excellent environment for spreading coronaplague. The work takes place indoors, in a crowded enviromnent, with people talking. Of course health authorities would close them down.

Who said anything about call "centers" ?

If they aren't staffing/closing call centres, then the upthread question "why are the phone lines closed because of the virus?" is even more inexplicable...

People can take phone calls from home just like they handle email tickets

Exactly. It seems like corporations are using the pandemic to ostensibly "protect workers" as an excuse in order to save money on paying workers. If customers blindly accept this sort of BS when there is no risk, then they're fools.

Most call centers have gone remote, including Costco customer service, Chase bank, and major medical system billing departments.

PayPal just threw their hands up and gave up it appears.

Except companies have been staffing call centers from work at home for years. For instance, Jet Blue staffs most or all customer service through work at home and even has a clever method for handling surge capacity through part time staff available on call.

And more importantly, call centre management are pretty much the greatest source of truth in the "nothing ever gets done unless all our staff are absurdly over micro managed" management style stereotype.

There is very little technical difference between a bunch of call center workers crammed into a poorly air conditioned windowless cube farm, and those same workers safe at home at their kitchen table with their laptop and voip headset.

But you can't stand behind them and publicly berate them for taking 3.5minutes for a toilet break if they're all at home...

(Hmmm, startup idea: A service that provides a live video window that allows managers to humiliate WFH staff - that pops up in a non dismissible dialog box over the top of every other window on non-management employee laptops. VCs please form an orderly queue in my email inbox...)

I'm not defending PayPal (they suck), but consider this: It would be difficult to run a business in the financial sector from home. The security requirements probably could not be met by telecommuters. What other choices do they have?

I've spoken with three banks on the phone in the last few weeks. They all work from home.

Probably banks have higher security standards /pay to choose better support staff that can be trusted to follow security protocols.

cause small banks and credit unions are bigger than paypal?

> The security requirements probably could not be met by telecommuters.

I don't see why not. VPN plus appropriate admin lockdowns on the computers being used by the telecommuters should work. That's how other security-conscious businesses do it.

That assumes the call centre isn't entirely filled with 12 year old ex-governemnt auction underpowered desktop computers running pirated copies of Win7, instead issuing staff with modern remotely managed laptops...

Ok but they can respond to emails. How is that any different?

They've currently locked money of mine due to new identification laws (I assume) in my country. Their online ID service was looping and they refused to resolve it by email There might be some critical support things which they handle by phone only?

VPN + VOIP + 802.1x might be one approach.

I think you mean to say PayPal temporarily stops phone support because of covid. They still accept support messages. Their phone support in the past has been aweful so I always prefer their message support.

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