I recently tried to purchase a camera from eCost.com that was priced very competitively. I liked that eCost was advertising that they now accepted PayPal payments. This was useful to me since I had sold a few old items on eBay and had a balance in my PayPal account. I chose the camera, added it to the shopping cart and completed the transaction only to be told by eCost that they were unsuccessful in completing the transaction through PayPal. I tried a second time and received the same message.
The next step was to check PayPal to make sure funds were there. I logged in and saw that there were two pending eCost transactions in my account. I called eCost and told a customer service representative about the problem. She volunteered to call PayPal with me to have the pending charges removed since there were no orders in the eCost system. The PayPal representative had no idea how to handle the problem and kept insisting on getting an order number to be able to help. It was like listening to a broken record that keeps skipping back to the same line, "Sir, I need an order number." (I know I’m dating myself with this reference to "record." You can substitute "scratched CD" if you are under 30.)
Both the eCost representative and I requested a manager. We were put through to someone claiming to be a supervisor. This "customer service" representative from PayPal was even worse than the first one. Furthermore, she was unfriendly and would not help under any circumstance. She also would not transfer me to someone with more authority. I ended the call in complete frustration and requested that eCost handle the matter since their system caused the problem.
That was two and a half weeks ago and I still have the two pending charges on my PayPal account and the eCost representative has been avoiding contact with me. This is frustrating and should never happen. I am ready to close my PayPal account–an account that I have had in good standing since 2000. I also ordered the camera from Amazon.com. I have never had any customer service issue with them.
If you think this is an isolated problem, think again. There is a web site you can visit called, PayPalSucks.com. There you will see examples of other issues. In frustration, I contacted Sridhar Nagarajan, Head of Service Quality, Global Consumer and Merchant Services at PayPal through my LinkedIn.com account and received no reply. I guess service quality is not important at PayPal.
Robert Alonso
Alonso Consulting, Inc.
No doubt this is an issue that highlights the problems with both PayPal which highlights their lack of respect and concern for their customers, and E-cost which purposely bills people incorrectly.
The combination of 2 bad companies makes a bad situation even worse, PayPal is the more respectable of the 2 in my opinion, and should stop E-cost from using PayPal because PayPal is no doubt aware that Ecost likes to overbill, bait and swith, and place orders for things customers did not purchase…just as E-cost is aware that PayPal always passes all responsibility for miss-charges onto the consumer.
The Practices of both companies should be investigated by the government, some laws need to be passed so that the actions of both companies that clearly harm consumers and the economy can be outlawed.
I have the same sort of problem. I believe it is ecosts site. I try to buy a item with paypal and it goes back to old items I had put in my cart. Sometimes my cart is empty sometimes it gas 9 items in it. I have tried everything but cannot delete the old items. This only happens with Paypal.
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