blog brumax
Friday, March 18, 2005
PayPal is a fraudulent and dishonest company
I don’t usually use words like "fraudulent and dishonest company" these days: too much chance of trouble from lawyers and such. In this case though I make an exception. If PayPal wants to sue me, they can be my guest. I would be glad to defend my comments in court and get as much publicity as possible in the process.
It is of course very doubtful that PayPal will sue or even send me a "cease and desist" on this site because I am sure they hate the thought of any discussion that relates to their low ethical standards.
Bill Cobb, the President of eBay North America sent out a mass email to customers asking for input. So it reminded me of my old PayPal issues and I sent him a summary.
Basically PayPal let me get robbed out of $800 because SOMEONE ELSE'S account got hacked.
Today I read in Forbes about a PayPal Hate Site and it made me realize that Mr. Cobb never bothered to resolve the issue I emailed him about - all I had received back was a generic letter from someone working for him telling me to report it to the eBay fraud department (which I had already done).
So today I sent this email to Mr. Cobb:
Hello Mr. Cobb,
I am not sure why you offered to address concerns if there is nothing you can do about this.
A person's PayPal account was hacked into and I lost $800, not the person who was hacked and not PayPal. PayPal is owned by eBay so you are one in the same company as far as I am concerned. Since no one at PayPal cares or bothers to address these things I responded to your offer to hear from customers.
In the recent Forbes article highlighting one of the several anti-PayPal sites, PayPal said "PayPal welcomes constructive criticism from members to help us continue to improve our service through our community discussion boards, chat rooms and Voices program. The problem with complaint sites is that the issues reported are sometimes out-of-date and have long since been resolved. Other times, customers may write complaints on the sites without trying to get their issues resolved through our customer service channels first. As a result, we can't confirm the accuracy of the information on these third-party sites. "
This is quite simply a lie. These so called discussion boards are very difficult to find if they even exist at all (type in "PayPal Voices" in Google, there is no link from the home page as well.) Also, most of the complaints on the web sites go into great detail about what customers did to try to resolve the complaints from within the PayPal channels.
My complaint is very clearly documented and I even have an email from a PayPal employee in which she states "PayPal has never been hacked" yet in the same email admits that a person's account was illegally accessed and used to commit fraud against me, this clearly falls under the definition of a hacked account.
PayPal is a dishonest and unethical company that is a black eye to the good name of eBay. This is why you have had these large class action suits. More lawyers and longer documents like those you have recently added are not the solution anymore than they were for Enron; the solution needed for PayPal is to repair the overall company ethics and to stop defrauding customers.
You requested and initiated this email correspondence, not me - if you intended to use it as a marketing gimmick or to do nothing with the responses, then it should not have been sent. If you were genuine in your original email then please use your position and authority to do something to resolve my specific claim and, more importantly, create an ethical system that prevents these types of occurrences in the future.
-Bruce ¶ 1:48 PM 7 Comments Links to this post
It is of course very doubtful that PayPal will sue or even send me a "cease and desist" on this site because I am sure they hate the thought of any discussion that relates to their low ethical standards.
Bill Cobb, the President of eBay North America sent out a mass email to customers asking for input. So it reminded me of my old PayPal issues and I sent him a summary.
Basically PayPal let me get robbed out of $800 because SOMEONE ELSE'S account got hacked.
Today I read in Forbes about a PayPal Hate Site and it made me realize that Mr. Cobb never bothered to resolve the issue I emailed him about - all I had received back was a generic letter from someone working for him telling me to report it to the eBay fraud department (which I had already done).
So today I sent this email to Mr. Cobb:
Hello Mr. Cobb,
I am not sure why you offered to address concerns if there is nothing you can do about this.
A person's PayPal account was hacked into and I lost $800, not the person who was hacked and not PayPal. PayPal is owned by eBay so you are one in the same company as far as I am concerned. Since no one at PayPal cares or bothers to address these things I responded to your offer to hear from customers.
In the recent Forbes article highlighting one of the several anti-PayPal sites, PayPal said "PayPal welcomes constructive criticism from members to help us continue to improve our service through our community discussion boards, chat rooms and Voices program. The problem with complaint sites is that the issues reported are sometimes out-of-date and have long since been resolved. Other times, customers may write complaints on the sites without trying to get their issues resolved through our customer service channels first. As a result, we can't confirm the accuracy of the information on these third-party sites. "
This is quite simply a lie. These so called discussion boards are very difficult to find if they even exist at all (type in "PayPal Voices" in Google, there is no link from the home page as well.) Also, most of the complaints on the web sites go into great detail about what customers did to try to resolve the complaints from within the PayPal channels.
My complaint is very clearly documented and I even have an email from a PayPal employee in which she states "PayPal has never been hacked" yet in the same email admits that a person's account was illegally accessed and used to commit fraud against me, this clearly falls under the definition of a hacked account.
PayPal is a dishonest and unethical company that is a black eye to the good name of eBay. This is why you have had these large class action suits. More lawyers and longer documents like those you have recently added are not the solution anymore than they were for Enron; the solution needed for PayPal is to repair the overall company ethics and to stop defrauding customers.
You requested and initiated this email correspondence, not me - if you intended to use it as a marketing gimmick or to do nothing with the responses, then it should not have been sent. If you were genuine in your original email then please use your position and authority to do something to resolve my specific claim and, more importantly, create an ethical system that prevents these types of occurrences in the future.
-Bruce ¶ 1:48 PM 7 Comments Links to this post
Friday, March 04, 2005
Romney is not too bad
I dont see what the big complaint is with Romney from so many Mass residents.
The biggest complaint I hear that is close to valid is "Romney cut the budget for schools." What is the budget for schools? Do these people picture a bunch of kids getting thier crayons taken away? These people might want to look into the school budget that Romney has cut.
For every hard working teacher who is out there helping students learn and making $32,000 a year, there are TWO administrative beaurocrats making $70,000 a year. What do they do? I guess we need a superintendant to hire and fire principals, and to call snow days. Maybe this superintedant needs a staf of, say 30 or so, this is government so lets say 100. Lets say another 100 people to pick out textbooks and order them and to deal with contractors and things. We'll add another 300 beaurocrat employees for good measure.
Well then, what to the other 18,700 non teacher employees left over who work for the state many of whom are making $60,000 a year and driving cars paid for by the taxpayer? What do they do? I say get the admin staff down to a lean mean 1000 people or so, fire the rest - give half the money back to the taxpayer and half to the actual schools, principals, teachers and toward student supplies. ¶ 1:48 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
The biggest complaint I hear that is close to valid is "Romney cut the budget for schools." What is the budget for schools? Do these people picture a bunch of kids getting thier crayons taken away? These people might want to look into the school budget that Romney has cut.
For every hard working teacher who is out there helping students learn and making $32,000 a year, there are TWO administrative beaurocrats making $70,000 a year. What do they do? I guess we need a superintendant to hire and fire principals, and to call snow days. Maybe this superintedant needs a staf of, say 30 or so, this is government so lets say 100. Lets say another 100 people to pick out textbooks and order them and to deal with contractors and things. We'll add another 300 beaurocrat employees for good measure.
Well then, what to the other 18,700 non teacher employees left over who work for the state many of whom are making $60,000 a year and driving cars paid for by the taxpayer? What do they do? I say get the admin staff down to a lean mean 1000 people or so, fire the rest - give half the money back to the taxpayer and half to the actual schools, principals, teachers and toward student supplies. ¶ 1:48 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
