{"id":951,"date":"2008-10-01T13:16:31","date_gmt":"2008-10-01T04:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2008-10-01\/951"},"modified":"2008-10-01T13:16:31","modified_gmt":"2008-10-01T04:16:31","slug":"updates-on-my-paypal-and-apple-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2008-10-01\/951","title":{"rendered":"Updates on My PayPal and Apple Woes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

Last month I posted about a Surreal (and exceedingly\nunpleasant) PayPal Experience<\/a>, and also about an Apple customer-service\nfiasco<\/a> coincidentally related to PayPal, but unrelated to the first\nissue. The common<\/span> theme among both unpleasant customer experiences was\n\"policies that make no sense, combined with explanations that make no\nsense<\/b>.\"<\/p>\n\n

Through an almost serendipitous chain of events, I received<\/span> a phone<\/span> call\ntoday from Mike Vergara, Director of Account Protection at PayPal (featured\nin this\narticle<\/a>), who shed light on both experiences.<\/p>\n\n

The summary for both situations is this: there is a reasonable<\/span> basis for\nthe policies I was<\/span> running into, but the communication about them was,\nindeed, woefully bad.<\/p>\n\n

About my PayPal experience<\/a>, Mike\nexplained the chain of events that led to PayPal wanting to further\nauthenticate that I was<\/span> who I claimed<\/span> to be. It was a<\/span> bit complex, but once\nexplained, it made complete sense.<\/p>\n\n

Had they explained this at the time, there would have been no problem\nand no ill feelings. The real problem<\/span>, he readily offered, was that the\ncommunication from PayPal was horrible from the very start. He apologized<\/span> for that, was embarrassed by it, and (this is what means the most to me)\nlisted his “take away” points from having read my experiences. This means\nthat someone who has a direct<\/span> impact on how all customers are treated has\nlearned something valuable from my specific experience. This will have no\ndirect impact on me or my account, but wow<\/i>, the feeling that someone\nat the top is clueful brings general hope. (Sad reality: those at the top\nare often not\nclueful<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n

About my Apple experience, I had wondered<\/span> why Apple required that my\nPayPal account be linked to a credit<\/span> card before Apple would let me use\nthat PayPal account to pay for iTunes purchases. My thought<\/span> was that PayPal\nknows right at the time-of-sale whether I have<\/span> the funds, and so Apple can\ndecline the purchase if the funds are not there at the time of sale. Mike\ndoesn't work for Apple, but was able to shed light on this as well...<\/p>\n\n

It turns out that for business reasons that make complete fiscal sense,\nApple does not necessarily instigate\/complete the payment portion of a sale<\/span>\nat the time of the sale<\/i>. If I end<\/span> up making several purchases over\nthe course of an hour\/day\/week, Apple can save a non<\/span>-trivial amount of\nfinancial overhead by processing the payment for the combined group, as\nopposed to processing each payment individually. The difference<\/span> would not\nmake a material<\/span> difference if the per-item prices were large, but with\nprices as low as 99 cents, saving on the per-transaction charge is\nhuge.<\/p>\n\n

As an Apple shareholder, I appreciate<\/span> this big savings. I'm sure it<\/span>'s\ndifficult to strike a balance<\/span> between policies that help the bottom line at\nthe expense of increased hassles for some customers (and clearly, no one\nwill ever be able to please everyone), but I think<\/span> everyone would agree\nthat the ridiculous customer-service\nexchange<\/a> creates a no<\/span>-win situation. Again, if they'd just communicate\nbetter, offering a clear<\/span> rationale for their policies, so much hassle and\nill will could be averted.<\/p>\n\n

Perhaps not many people fall into my situation (wanting to make iTunes\npurchases without involving a credit<\/span> card), but if Apple considers it a\nproblem<\/span> they'd like to solve, an easy way around everything would be to\nallow a PayPal<\/span> customer to initiate a payment<\/span> to Apple to create a credit<\/span>\nbalance in the customer's iTunes account. PayPal would charge a fee<\/span> to\nApple for this, which Apple would then pass along to the user, such that,\nfor example, transferring $100 from PayPal would result in an iTunes credit\nbalance of $96. It's a win<\/span> for the customer that wants to go that route,\nand it's a win<\/span> for Apple (because they can now make more sales, with less\noverhead). I'll be sure to mention this idea the next time Steve Jobs calls\nme for advice. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n

In any case, I very much<\/span> appreciate Mike's unexpected call, his\ngenerosity with his time, and the reasonable explanation of the\nsituation.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month I posted about a Surreal (and exceedingly unpleasant) PayPal Experience, and also about an Apple customer-service fiasco coincidentally related to PayPal, but unrelated to the first issue. The common theme among both unpleasant customer experiences was \"policies that make no sense, combined with explanations that make no sense<\/b>.\"<\/p>

Through an almost serendipitous chain of events, I received a phone call today from Mike Vergara, Director of Account Protection at PayPal (featured in this article), who shed light on both experiences.<\/p>

The summary for both situations is this: there is a reasonable basis for the policies I was running [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}