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Show me a company working as a purely Internet bank of sorts and I'll show you a company with pissed off customers. Truth is, this business is very hard. For ev

Show me a company working as a purely Internet bank of sorts and I'll show you a company with pissed off customers. Truth is, this business is very hard. For every time Paypal misidentifies a target and blocks their payments, they correctly identify scammers many more times. We tend to think "is it that hard to tell a scammer from blah legit site?". The answer is yes because guess what scammers are thinking everyday when they wake up? They are thinking 'how can we look more like a legit business so our payments go through'. I say this as someone whose had to go through paypal's painful process several times in over a decade of use.

dangerlibrary 13y ago
Ally Bank seems to be doing pretty darn well...
- badclient 13y ago
  Ally Bank also makes your account next to useless until you go through a very tedious verification process from the get go. In my case, they mailed me some documents that unsurprisingly I never ended up bothering with. On the other hand you can sign up and begin using paypal in minutes.
  - noir_lord 13y ago
    > On the other hand you can sign up and begin using paypal in minutes. Yes indeedy by deferring the "very tedious verification" process until it massively impacts your business and PP has you by the balls.
    - badclient 13y ago
      If you're suggesting that Ally is an alternative to PP, that's nuts. I can see why businesses might be attracted to Ally over PP because of better customer service, but better customer service won't matter if you're not getting the volume of business that may be driven by PayPal.
      - dangerlibrary 13y ago
        I think he's suggesting that he can "Show me a company working as a purely Internet bank..." without pissed off customers.
- alasdair_ 13y ago
  Ally Bank is doing quite well because it managed to ditch the millions of pissed off customers it had when it was General Motors credit department. Give them time and I'm sure you will manage to piss everyone off again, despite their shiny rebranding.
Karunamon 13y ago
I don't think the problem with Paypal are the payment blocks with no notification, the problem is their complete and utter refusal to talk to the customer about it. They have anti-fraud systems. Fine. Fucking let me talk to someone who can put their fingers on the keyboard and get it sorted out without a front page article on Hacker News, Reddit, and The Consumerist to shame them into action.
- badclient 13y ago
  Very fair point.
- skrish 13y ago
  Exactly. This is exactly what Braintree was positioning itself against, offering a 'human touch' to every interaction and having a real person to review the details if you need to scale your business et al. We can only hope PayPal learns something from Braintree & hopefully change them for better or they may end up like PayPal. Only time will tell. As a business they have done great. So, Congratulations to the entire team at Braintree.
- RSASecure 13y ago
  PayPal has been trying hard to change this image. David Marcus, who took the helm, has been shifting focus on customer satisfaction. Here is an interesting article on David Marcus: http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-it-how-david-marcus-is-dismantling-paypal-to-save-it/ http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-it-h...
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    Mm, I don't put much stock in that. Basically, talk is cheap. Marcus posted a lot of flowery language and PayPal's activity does not appear to have meaningfully changed. The MailPile thing happened at the beginning of this month - the fact that this can happen at all, and, as usual, nothing was fixed until that bad press started to roll in, points to a systemic problem and culture at Paypal that just changing a CEO isn't going to fix in a reasonable amount of time.
  - 13y ago

dangerlibrary 13y ago

Ally Bank seems to be doing pretty darn well...

badclient 13y ago
Ally Bank also makes your account next to useless until you go through a very tedious verification process from the get go. In my case, they mailed me some documents that unsurprisingly I never ended up bothering with. On the other hand you can sign up and begin using paypal in minutes.
- noir_lord 13y ago
  > On the other hand you can sign up and begin using paypal in minutes. Yes indeedy by deferring the "very tedious verification" process until it massively impacts your business and PP has you by the balls.
  - badclient 13y ago
    If you're suggesting that Ally is an alternative to PP, that's nuts. I can see why businesses might be attracted to Ally over PP because of better customer service, but better customer service won't matter if you're not getting the volume of business that may be driven by PayPal.
    - dangerlibrary 13y ago
      I think he's suggesting that he can "Show me a company working as a purely Internet bank..." without pissed off customers.
alasdair_ 13y ago
Ally Bank is doing quite well because it managed to ditch the millions of pissed off customers it had when it was General Motors credit department. Give them time and I'm sure you will manage to piss everyone off again, despite their shiny rebranding.

Karunamon 13y ago

I don't think the problem with Paypal are the payment blocks with no notification, the problem is their complete and utter refusal to talk to the customer about it. They have anti-fraud systems. Fine. Fucking let me talk to someone who can put their fingers on the keyboard and get it sorted out without a front page article on Hacker News, Reddit, and The Consumerist to shame them into action.

badclient 13y ago
Very fair point.
skrish 13y ago
Exactly. This is exactly what Braintree was positioning itself against, offering a 'human touch' to every interaction and having a real person to review the details if you need to scale your business et al. We can only hope PayPal learns something from Braintree & hopefully change them for better or they may end up like PayPal. Only time will tell. As a business they have done great. So, Congratulations to the entire team at Braintree.
RSASecure 13y ago
PayPal has been trying hard to change this image. David Marcus, who took the helm, has been shifting focus on customer satisfaction. Here is an interesting article on David Marcus: http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-it-how-david-marcus-is-dismantling-paypal-to-save-it/ http://pandodaily.com/2013/08/12/if-its-not-broke-break-it-h...
- Karunamon 13y ago
  Mm, I don't put much stock in that. Basically, talk is cheap. Marcus posted a lot of flowery language and PayPal's activity does not appear to have meaningfully changed. The MailPile thing happened at the beginning of this month - the fact that this can happen at all, and, as usual, nothing was fixed until that bad press started to roll in, points to a systemic problem and culture at Paypal that just changing a CEO isn't going to fix in a reasonable amount of time.
- 13y ago