13 
Bought something on PayPal recently, and had your payment taken multiple times, but the seller’s claiming he’s got no money? Yeah, you’re not the only one. A website snafu is causing the big ‘Pal to overcharge buyers and not reimburse sellers, and Twitter’s getting quite angry about it.
The problems seem to have started around 24 hours ago, and businesses and customers took to Twitter to vent their frustration at PayPal. Apparently, customers were getting an error notification when paying, but when they go to their account, they see that payment has been taken three or four times. The flip side is, the businesses aren’t getting the cash either. Some places like Etsy disabled PayPal altogether, whereas other sites took to tweeting their woes out:
Ref @paypaluk technical problems. Some payments definitely duplicated. Not sure if @paypaluk are cancelling these, or whether we should?
— CarAudioSupermarket (@CarAudio_tweets) January 28, 2013
Apparently @paypaluk is down for everyone today – transaction IDs not working and call centre number invalid. — Oogly (@OoglyDesign) January 28, 2013
PayPal responded, saying:
We’ve been made aware of site issues today & are working to get this resolved. Apologies for any inconvenience. Will update asap. Tks, MW
— PayPal UK (@PayPalUK) January 28, 2013
Since then, they’ve said they’ve fixed the issues, but some users are still complaining of the same problems. Although PayPal gets some stick for heavy-handed businesses practices, one thing in its favour is that it’s normally reliable. If it keeps up stunts like this, though, it could start losing customers. [The Inquirer]
From the other article:
“PayPal recognises that we can do better, and as such we have started a huge programme of change to address the problems that frustrate some customers.”
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/01/its-time-to-sort-out-paypal/
So, err, when exactly did you have in mind to start, eh PayPal?
Yeah, if this is the “change”, I’m not looking forward to the next 12 months…
i love the pic..
That would be Mr Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal!
Looks like a dodgy credit card scammer.
They can’t be the same person?
Ha!
They’ll fix the issue, people will get refunds and find something else to whine about.
Just got double charged by paypal and have an active online customer support chat going. I have been told that I need to contact the seller and request a refund and have been told that Paypal are having issues at the moment. I asked why it was now my responsibility to chase this up and got the usual “We understand your frustration”. So frustrating as I know they don’t understand or care. I hate their stinking guts!
I also have an outstanding feedback issue which I have spoken to them about 3 times now and each time have been told that this would be resolved. Same old story, and 8 months later I STILL have the unfair feedback on my account.
I feel for you buddy – what good does contacting the seller do when payments aren’t showing up in their accounts? Definitely something Paypal should be doing themselves.
It’s a total mess. We’ve suspended taking Paypal orders on our sites as it’s causing major customer support issues. Customers don’t know if their transaction went through, merchants don’t know if they actually got paid (though the Paypal site is meant to have been fixed – not convinced as we had missing data this afternoon still) , plus on top of that the Paypal Instant Payment Notification (IPN) system is borked as well, so even if it looks like it went through ok, the merchant won’t know you’ve paid unless they manually check, which is not realistic if you have a lot of paypal transactions.
Turkish: contact the seller (who will be having a lousy time of it as well) who should be able to eventually find the double payment..
I’d recommend *not* using paypal for the moment at all..