Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Why we no longer accept PayPal!

Personally, we were early adopters of PayPal since it made trade on eBay so easy and "secure," so when as soon as we could, we offered PayPal to our vacation rental guests as a payment option. We've always tried to make payment as easy, secure, and convenient as it could be for both us and our guests. For years PayPal seemed like a good answer...
They even backed me, the purchaser, when I received goods "significantly not as described" and the vendor lied and said I'd used the towels, that I returned immediately. Then in June of this year everything changed regarding our experiences with PayPal.

We had a guest who gave us a credit card number, and out of confusion, also paid via the same credit card via PayPal. Not being a regular PayPal customer, nor having spoken with us yet to realize we would reverse the credit card charge right away, she put in a reversal with her credit card company for the PayPal charge. That was the first week of June. We quickly worked out the proper payment with this guest, and she removed her charge back, all within 24 hours. Funny, she still hasn't received her money back from her credit card company via PayPal...for weeks PayPal told her we had the money...now they tell her the credit card company hasn't resolved the charge back. The credit card company, with whom she has a trusted relationship tell her it's PayPal, and now PayPal won't tell her anything because we are their customer and not her...So the poor woman is still out over $1000 and we can't help her, since we didn't get the money.

But wait, there's more...shortly after this charge back occurred, PayPal issued us a form letter that said they had reviewed our account and would NOW BE KEEPING A ROLLING RESERVE OF 20% OF ALL PAYMENTS for 60 DAYS! Mind you, we've had an account with NO chargebacks for many years...WE appealed, and they refused, twice now, to stop. So every payment a guest makes, they hold 20% of the revenue, yet we have to pay the owners without the revenue even in our account yet!

But wait, there's more...we have a PayPal credit card for the business, and one time we paid it twice in the same month...When asked for a credit to our account, we were told NO "we'll issue a check within 60 days."

Basically, PayPal is using our money, and floating it. While it may not be illegal, we won't stand for it anymore.

Unfortunately, we all lose. For the lack of this convenient payment option, PayPal, we apologize, but we are voting with our dollars and will not allow PayPal to stomp on us (or our customers) any more.

#paypalfail