Check out the comments by Walt and Carol toward the bottom. They are both telling us how great it is to use Paypal as a free service even though they both are Ebay sellers! Carol is even a Powerseller!
Not skyline8 on eBay.
posted on September 19, 2000 07:06:54 PM new
This entire action on PayPal's account and their handling of it has caused them to lose almost all their credibility that they had earned so far.
It was a huge leap of faith on my part to sign up initially. I was very suspicious of this offering - not only of fraud, but of the classic now-you-see-them-now-they're-history-dot-com that has been the fate of 99 percent of the companies springing up on the net. It's not important if its just someplace that I went to shop, but somebody who has some of my money? If they close up shop, that's a different story.
If you are keeping my money. You better be extremely honest and upfront with your policies and your actions. You still have to earn my trust and with your post, the company has lost even more.
"We have always said that PayPal would be free for person-to-person payments. When people started using it for e-commerce, we evolved as a company, expanded our features, and in June created Business Accounts (for companies) and Premier Accounts (for individual entrepreneurs)."
Well there's hard evidence the first statement is not true. Paypal said that this service was free for everyone - the words 'person-to-person' weren't used.
Then when you created your business accounts, it was presented as extra services for a fee, not that there were now two classes of customers. This is a second misrepresentation of the facts.
" We told our users that we wouldn't force people to upgrade, but that didn't mean it was OK for business users to violate our terms of use and conduct their commerce with a PayPal Personal Account. That's why we sent out an email in July that reminded business users of our policy."
I looked at your email sent in July. In the first place, a reminder is something you send after you notifify people of something, not the first news of it. In the second place, your 'reminder' was at the end of a long sales pitch which practically guarentees it will not be read. Thirdly, it doesn't define who is or is not a business.
This comes across as duplicity - something a company whose business is based on such a huge amount of trust can ill afford. This after the 'verification' (I'm sorry, the only word I can come up with is scheme) which was totally confusing and also came across as a rank attempt at milking sellers for money in return for not scaring off their buyers.
It feels very much like PayPal has scant reguard for the sellers. It feels like Paypal is attempting to threaten and bully sellers into paying for higher services. Why would I want to do business with a company who has a lot of my money and treats me like that?
"While 250,000 of our users did understand what our terms of use required and decided to upgrade to or open a Premier or Business Account, a number of users either honestly weren't aware of our policy or else chose to ignore it. Since we assume that most people like to play by the rules and hence wouldn't expect PayPal to continue to subsidize their auctions with free credit card processing, customer service, and fraud protection, we sent the login page as a reminder to our active users. That's all it was, just a reminder of a policy that we've publicized before -- not a new one. It wasn’t meant for someone who occasionally sells personal items online; it was meant for those who are part-time or full-time sellers. We're sorry if the page seemed abrupt or ominous to some of you. It certainly wasn't intended to be. We were just trying to make sure that you all knew about our existing "business use" policy. "
Again reminders require an honest attempt at communication in the first part. This was never made - so the word 'reminder' is a loaded one and one which I suggest you drop immediately. Admit that you have changed policies and explain why. Don't pretend that you are trying to shepard errant people into paying for bills that you initially told them were already paid for by the float. Otherwise, you and the company are going to continue to offend the very people on which you rely to sell your company's services. Pretending that the truth is something that it isn't is far more offensive than simply admitting when you've made a change in direction or a mistake. People understand mistakes, they do not appreciate being made out as being stupid or dishonest so the company can pretend it was on the ball.
People do not like 'to play by the rules' when it comes to their money. Not if it's going to cost them. Don't be silly. People will as a rule use every rule to their own advantage.
Paypal has to come up with some good rules and some reasonable and fair consequences to not following those rules. I'm sorry if that's not easy or time effective to figure out, but frankly that's not my problem. Ebay had the same problem when it first started, but then again, it didn't have to build the monumental trust that a banking company has to have. One very obvious problem here is that you want the businesses to pay a fee on every transaction and only the credit card transactions are supposedly causing you a problem.
" We also wanted to be straightforward and notify you that we're considering a new policy to enforce our terms of use. We hope we won’t have to, but if we do, we’ll strive to be fair and we'll be sure to announce the new policy through emails and content on our website at least two weeks before we implement it. Contrary to what has been reported on some threads, no policy has yet been determined; we have not decided on a specific transaction limit, or even whether this would be the best approach. We can say this: We don't intend to surprise anyone by automatically upgrading their account or shutting them down. We may have to limit costly functionality on Personal Accounts (like the ability to accept unlimited credit card payments), but everyone will have a choice, and as we’ve said all along, no one will be forced to upgrade."
Your announcement should be thorough and repetitive. It should not blame anyone through loaded language or implications. It should admit your cuplibility in badly announcing the change in the first place. In no case, should you assume people will ~go~ to your web site to see what your new policies are when you post them. I would also like assurances that you won't 'back charge' anyone if you decide that your definition of 'business' includes them and that the customer has made the wrong decision. The definition of business had better be objective, obvious and fair (not easy, I know). It's stressful for everyone if they feel like at any time the company can decide they owe for charges back over time and might swoop down and take their current pay. In other words your company will be quickly dumped for the next version (company) that springs up without that rule hanging over the customer's head.
I also don't like the term 'Upgrade'. It sounds misleading. Two weeks is a bit short considering that a ten day auction locks you into accepting payment types if someone bids on it immediately.
Another factor that has bothered me a lot since I've used PayPal and that's that people pay me using it whether or not I advertise accepting it, without so much as an email asking my name and sometimes they get the email address wrong and don't understand that the payment hasn't gone through.
In otherwords I have no control over buyers using your service for business, whether or not my account with you is personal or business.
May I suggest that you
A. Have business account levels that cater to different levels of business - high volume, and low volume - and come up with some real values to the low volume seller that would justify to him why he should be using it. Don't put down the low volume seller by marking him as a non-premium account.
B. Have the accounts clearly marked to the buyer as to whether or not it's a business account or not - which would have to be by the userid. Perhaps with a generic suffix. (like the naming convention of dot coms, orgs etc)
" Please understand that PayPal can’t subsidize large volumes of credit card transactions -- especially since we'll be giving a big part of the float back to our users starting next month in the form of income on funds left in your PayPal account. So, if you're selling goods to make a profit, we're asking you to play by the rules and upgrade to the account that is most applicable to you (either Premier or Business). We want to make online payments safe and easy for everyone, but we need your help to do this. "
Ah - here's where we come to the reason for all this, isn't it? The laws must have changed so that you can't take the entire float any more.
Is that why I have a credit for 41 cents?
Online payments for me should be
A. Extremely easy to calculate - a straight percentage or charge - not both.
B. Not taken from my checking account. Either charged to my credit card or ~CLEARLY~ and completely documented in it's removal from the transaction amount. That's what shot down BillPay for me - their charge wasn't in their notification to me, so the amount they notified me about and the amount they credited to my account were different.
C. Fairly charged. I don't want to pay for the freebies if they aren't costing you anything. If you do that the next company that springs up won't and I won't see any reason to keep with you.
To sum it up at this point I don't trust you. If you can't change things without notifiying me properly now and even worse, not be willing to admit that you did so, how can I trust you to not do that again - and in some way that will cost me money?
Kate
BTW - has your company set up it's Unclaimed Property process yet? For all 50 states? You don't want to pay the fines on that.
posted on September 19, 2000 08:24:19 PM new
Quoted from the OFFICIAL PAYPAL STATEMENT above: "We were just trying to make sure that you all knew about our existing "business use" policy."
Ummm... you've stated in another thread today that PAYPAL has not yet defined what constitutes a business .. but they have a policy already? HUH??
Also, I've asked several times and never received a response to this question:
If personal accounts are not to be used by sellers, then why do personal accounts have features allowing inclusion of auction #, etc. for sellers to utilize?
I have a memory like a steel trap .. unfortunately it's rusted shut!
