Jananas

While I was in Thailand I adopted a dog. I had to pay for his crate and flight home and Paypal was the only timely option to pay for it. So I made an abnormally large payment, especially when compared to my normal eBay or etsy purchases, and my account was essentially blocked due to suspected fraud. Not unexpected on my part. They even sent me an email to notify me, which I was thankful for.

So I login in an attempt to rectify the situation. They ask me to change me password and security question, check and check. Get that finished and they need me to confirm that I’m me. There are several ways that I can do this…

1. I can confirm my location… Except that I’m in another country without access to most of my bills (which have my address) and access to a fax machine/ability to mail info in. I do have some electronic bills, but their system doesn’t accept pdfs and instead only accepts jpgs or gifs. Only my bills are sent as pdfs, so I would have had to take a screen capture or convert the file or something – all things that are a little difficult to do when I’m not at my own computer. And all things that require me, as the customer to go through another step to get them the information. So I’m already a little annoyed. [As an aside, I asked the CSR when I called in tonight why they didn't accept pdfs and their answer was that its because pdfs can contain viruses. Yup, totally possible. But (and to me this is a big But), you are an internet company. You should be able to handle some level of attack by viruses if only because its going to happen at some point. What you shouldn't do is make it difficult for your customers to get you the information that you're asking for. Don't make them wait longer than necessary. Don't make them convert files (many of them may not have the skill set necessary to even do that). Its simple - make it easy for your customers to deal with you.]
2. I can confirm my bank account or credit card number… On the Paypal website my bank account or credit card numbers appear as XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-1234 (credit card example used because its easier for me to remember the number of digits). So I would have assumed that ‘confirming’ this would mean entering the entire number, e.g. 1234-1234-1234-1234. If they match, then voila, I’m me. Nope. What this meant was that I could add another bank account or credit card and undergo the process where Paypal sends a couple of pennies, I confirm the exact amount and then the account has been added to my list. But this takes a few days and I may not want Paypal to have access to even more of my account information. Or I may just not have any other accounts. Regardless, this isn’t “confirming” my information its adding new information, which is not the same thing.
3. I can confirm my telephone number. Now I couldn’t do this while traveling because I didn’t have my phone with me while I was in Asia (for obvious expensive Canadian roaming reasons). However, when I looked into this some more this evening Paypal doesn’t even confirm mobile phone numbers. Really? Lets take a step back and think about who uses your service. I’m going to make some wild assumptions here and guess that it tends to be younger, internet savvy people. Who probably use their mobile exclusively and have ditched their landlines in the last few years (if not way before that). In fact, the only people I know who still have landlines are my parents. And they certainly aren’t buying things on eBay. Again, its simple – make sure that your policies make sense for your customers.

I’d forgotten that I hadn’t dealt with this and then went and bought something on eBay tonight. Something that had to be paid for right away. So I called in and had the block removed from my limited account. And the kicker, their 800 number was US only so I got to pay long distance charges to talk to a person because their system was so badly set up that I couldn’t do something simple on my own.

Its things like this that make me wonder. What use is policy if it makes it difficult for your customers to do what you want? Where does common sense belong in the decision making process? Why isn’t there more of a focus on usability?

These aren’t mistakes that are unique to Paypal. Rather, this experience highlights some of the things that frustrate me so much about most businesses.

More from jananas

• The Dilemmas of Working
• Ticketmaster Sucks, or why I won’t get to see Flight of the Conchords
• Life post-school (read, what the f*** are my career choices?)