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"Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is an enemy action." Paypal has had a number of these gaffes reach a high level of public interest in t
by swdunlop 15y ago
"Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is an enemy action."
Paypal has had a number of these gaffes reach a high level of public interest in the last year. Whether the customer was "in the wrong" is not a material issue -- the consumer perception is more significant. If the customers feel cheated, they are going to draw attention to the issue.
Companies make a deliberate choice about how much they want to invest in customer relationships. Paypal has assigned a very low value, here, in the name of keeping customer service costs low. The results are specific instances of customer outrage which have an interesting network effect -- the irritation propagates quicker, and further, because of the increasing connectivity of the social graph.
The end-result is either Paypal reconsidering their customer investment, or a widening opportunity for another service capturing market share.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoThe problem with this analysis is that we're only seeing a tiny fragment of the whole. All of the work that paypal does to combat fraud and illegal activity is largely kept secret, sometimes for legal reasons. A fraudster, moneylaunderer, or a fence isn't going to blog or tweet about paypal shutting them down, and paypal isn't going to make a fuss about it either. The tragedy is that such things happen routinely, almost certainly more often than paypal screwing over an otherwise legitimate business transaction. The latter tends to happen when there are unusual aspects in play (people operating without a business or non-profit license or using paypal incorrectly but not intentionally fraudulently). That said, clearly paypal needs to improve the way it handles customer service and probably introduce a better way of disputing holds on funds.