PayPal - weird messages 16th July 2016

[vik33]

thanks mate, really appreciate that!

glad the problem looks to be over now

[Andy]

Day 11...

Congrats Vik33, it appears you were the lucky last person to see the message that your payment is "pending". It still shows as pending and no, we didn't receive payment for it (yet) but your coffee was fresh roasted and shipped today, we will sort payment with you in a day or so after the dust settles.

The good news is it appears to be working normally now, Amber sent me an email late today to say that the problem was resolved (nice of her to do that) but we had already seen many payments today go though without a hitch.

We still have 5 payments that were flatly "rejected" (as opposed to pending) and we will sort through those with the CS'rs tomorrow.

The wash-up of all this is that PayPal is a great online service, very fast transactions and great for multi-currency and cross border transactions too. Down-side is their fees are high, business support action is very slow and there is no local branch to walk into and throw a tantrum (that would have made me feel better).

They list an address of Level 23, 1 York Street, Sydney, NSW 2000 but that is the registered address of Ebay and Gumtree... so I doubt PayPal are there anymore... besides, I'm guessing security won't let you in the elevator!
Might just have to find a CoffeeSnob in San Jose USA that can do the remote ranting in their HQ foyer for me.

So, hopefully everything is back to normal now thanks mostly to Amber who followed this up a couple of times and kept an eye on it to ensure the fix happened.

May we wait another dozen years before seeing this amount of grief from them again!

[vik33]

Just put in an order for 500g of Sumatra Mandheling in hopes of being in time for tommorow's roasting (27th) but got this message after submitting payment through Paypal

Hope it's all sorted out soon!

[readeral]

When I worked at Vodafone, as an Australian answering basic customer service calls, we gave "ticket numbers". It was just a random number generated by our client management software for the note we put on the customers account. Not searchable or anything, didn't represent anything properly, but it seemed to satisfy some customers that the work we were doing on the phone was now actually logged or something.

Truth be known, of course every phone-call was noted/recorded and the work was submitted to be fixed, but the actual case-work was then offshored to get processed, and took weeks to get done if there was a backlog. If you speak to an Australian (or a manager, etc.), the likely reality is that the grunt work of any problem will still be done by a pleb.

Don't mean to be a downer on all this, but having worked on the inside, the lengths that businesses go to gain 'efficiencies' by splitting the case work from the customer service work never ceases to astound me. It's the best way to make sure that problems take twice as long to fix.

[Andy]

Day 10...
I'm told by Britney that its in the escalation queue which normally takes about 2 days for the magic to happen.
The 2 days is counted from yesterday as that's when Amber reported it... apparently there is no record of Michael logging it with the "team" last week.

Sadly, I'm first name basis with everyone there at the moment, and can still hear that atrocious hold music for an hour after making the call.

Maybe tomorrow is the end of this silly saga?

[artman]

Reminds me of a telco issue I had. They kept escalating it every time I called. After a couple of weeks I asked if it has reached the moon yet with all the escalations....

I have found once you get to speak to someone local you can get some sense and results.

Hope yours is fixed soon.

Cheers

[Yelta]

Day 9 and the saga continues.

Made the call, got Amber again. Pleasant and helpful and even remembered the problem from a week ago which is impressive but nothing much has changed.

She put me on hold and spoke to the "escalation team" who said they should be able to fix it by putting some sort of exemption on the account so it doesn't happen again and all payments in there currently will be cleared.

She couldn't find any record of Michael escalating the problem last week and there was no "ticket number generated"...hmmm...

This time I received a ticket number PT2974046 so that somehow makes it more traceable and might help on future calls if I don't get Amber again. I'm told that is should be sorted in less than 72 hours which puts it about Wednesday.

Talk about a slow turning ship.

I feel your frustration, trying to communicate with big online organizations is seldom easy.

[Andy]

Day 9 and the saga continues.

Made the call, got Amber again. Pleasant and helpful and even remembered the problem from a week ago which is impressive but nothing much has changed.

She put me on hold and spoke to the "escalation team" who said they should be able to fix it by putting some sort of exemption on the account so it doesn't happen again and all payments in there currently will be cleared.

She couldn't find any record of Michael escalating the problem last week and there was no "ticket number generated"...hmmm...

This time I received a ticket number PT2974046 so that somehow makes it more traceable and might help on future calls if I don't get Amber again. I'm told that is should be sorted in less than 72 hours which puts it about Wednesday.

Talk about a slow turning ship.

[Andy]

...and 8 days later and 2 phone calls we still have the same problem.

I'll call again tomorrow (as they don't take business calls on weekends)

**SIGH**

[Andy]

I imagine Andy, that you have reminded PayPal of the turnover in CS and the risk they are putting on the potential income they derive; from the numbers you quoted above...

Mal.

I did mention it on today's phone call but agree, it's pretty much a rounding error in the global turnover. Spoke with Michael (I think it was) who could see I spoke with Amber a couple of days ago. He was apologetic and put me on hold while he "escalated the problem" with the correct support team.

I suspect the problem jobs in the queue at PayPal HQ are numbered in many thousands per day and I have a picture of two stressed employees sitting in a dark corner pulling their hair out.

Phone support is pretty prompt and done by nice people but I really want it fixed now. It's been 4.5 days, way too long.

Hopefully some magic happens soon.

[Dimal]

No doubt mate....
Bloody annoying though...

Mal.

[trentski]

Probably a rounding error for them Mal

[Dimal]

I imagine Andy, that you have reminded PayPal of the turnover in CS and the risk they are putting on the potential income they derive; from the numbers you quoted above...

Mal.

[Yelta]

I use PayPal when I need my fix pronto, bank transfer through different banks can take at least to days. Need to plan ahead!

Cheers

Yep, planning ahead has its advantages.

I've been buying from BeanBay for about 10 years, always pay by bank transfer and have never come close to running out, it's an easy thing to keep an eye on your green bean supply, when I'm under 10 kg, time to place an order.

Bank transfer processed within 24 hrs, NAB, and no PayPal charges, I have a PayPal account, seldom use it.

Not tryin to preach, however it's a system that works for me.

[Andy]

19/7/16
nothing much to say... problem is still there, it got worse last night and then better this morning then worse again.
Seems most payment are "clearing" in half a day and new payments are going on hold again. It's a nightmare at this end trying to keep track of it all.

Orders are shipping as normal though, the only difference will be if we don't have a cleared payment when it ships you won't get an email notification but you can still see the tracking in BeanBay under [My Previous Orders]

Fingers crossed someone who can fix it does so soon!