For many years, PayPal has been the number one choice when it comes to sending and receiving money, securely paying for your online purchases, and quickly accepting payments as an e-commerce owner. But as years have passed, the company became a less preferred way for my online payments, and their support is as bad as it gets.
What is PayPal?
While PayPal is not a company that necessarily needs an introduction, as most people already know what this is about, if you’re new here’s what you need to know; Simply put, PayPal is an online payment platform that allows you to quickly send or receive money, purchase products and services from websites that support this payment method, and enables users to link their bank accounts, debit cards, and credit cards.
You can use PayPal exactly as you would with any other payment platform, including for online shopping, paying your bills, or even sending money to your friends and family. If you’re a business owner, you can also implement PayPal as a payment method in your e-commerce website. It’s also widely used as a payment platform, which means a plethora of websites and other platforms already support PayPal as a payment method.
How do I get started with PayPal?
Getting started with PayPal is pretty straightforward, and there are no complex options or features that you need to enable or configure. The first thing you’ll need to do is visit PayPal.com and sign up for a new account, from which you can choose between a “Personal” or a “Business” account, based on your needs.
As with any other payment platform, you’ll also have to add a strong password and an email account, fill in your personal information, and verify your account by confirming your email. Once your email is confirmed, you’ll have the option to log in to your account and start making purchases or sending/receiving money.
After I few purchases PayPal may ask you to verify your true identity by sending pictures of specific official papers, such as your ID. From what I know, they ask that from every user, or at least anyone I had the pleasure of speaking about the company. You can easily add and link your bank accounts and debit or credit cards into your PayPal account, so they can easily take the money and proceed with your payments if you have no available balance on the app.
PayPal Support Review: Contacting their team is as bad as it gets
Have you ever tried to contact PayPal for an issue that you’re experiencing with the app? Maybe you wanted to ask for a refund or report a website that stole your money or never shipped a product? How about getting a product that it’s not what the company had described, or for an unknown reason you cannot sign in to your account and you’re unable to reset your password?
If the answer is ‘no’, you’re one of the few very lucky people who didn’t have to contact PayPal’s support and experience the worst support that has ever existed. But why is that? Well, with a first look on TrustPilot, you can quickly see PayPal only has a rating of 1.3 out of 5 stars from over 28 thousand reviews. That’s a pretty low number compared with WISE (4.3 out of 5 stars) and Revolut (4.2 out of 5 stars), both of which provided me with great and fast support.
A few months ago, and after having a PayPal account for as long as I can remember, two of my clients sent me a message letting me know that both had tried to send me a payment, and both got rejected with a message that there was a problem with my account. I immediately tried to log in to my account and see what was going on, as I thought PayPal would give me a notification or some sort. I was unable to log in or reset my password, and this is where my journey began.
I remember opening Bing, as it was the first day that I started using it as my default search engine, and searching “PayPal contact form”. I clicked on the official website, only to find out that I was unable to contact their support team without logging into my account, which I was unable to do. Thankfully, there was an option that gave a phone number that I could call as a guest – and so I did.
As minutes were passing by, and me waiting for someone to pick it up, I finally came in contact with a woman that was working in their support team. I told her the problem that I was facing and that two payments had been rejected, and after looking at the matter she gave me another phone to call. After hanging up the phone, I went and tried to call the other phone number that she had given me, but it didn’t work at all.
So I called back in the original number and after lots of waiting, I finally had to close it as I had meetings to attend to. The next morning I also tried to call them, but again, I had to close it after almost an hour of waiting because I had my first meeting coming up. Did that for a third and last time with the same result, no one answered the phone. So I stopped trying, deleted the app, and moved over with my life.
The biggest problems with using PayPal
While PayPal may be one of the most popular online payment platforms in the world, not everyone supports it. For example, I can’t pay my bills using the service, nor I can go to a supermarket and pay for my groceries. Not everyone is using PayPal, and not every store is accepting it as a payment method, so withdrawing the money to my bank account is pretty crucial.
Unfortunately, it may take several days until you finally see the money in your bank account, in some cases having to wait over 8 days for a simple withdrawal. And yes, this is happening when I send money both in my Greek bank account and in Revolut and WISE. While most of the time it takes up to 3 business days, you can’t really depend on this timeframe, as you may not be that lucky.
Fees are another issue; I’ve never really understood them. They’re pretty confusing, and to be honest, I have never been a fan of confusing apps. I’ve also never had a problem when counting the fees using other payment platforms, but with PayPal, sometimes the fee was low, and other times with similar transactions it was as high as it could go. Maybe it was a currency conversion fee? Maybe sending over a specific amount of money increases the total fee? Who knows.
Last but not least, you should not always trust PayPal when it comes to refunds and looking at specific cases with a better “eye”. I remember a colleague of mine who brought a theme from ThemeForest, only to find out a few minutes later that the theme wasn’t working with the latest versions of WordPress. He contacted ThemeForest and they rejected its refund, and when he contacted PayPal, they did the same without even taking a look at the theme. Years after, the same theme is still available for purchase on the marketplace.
PayPal in 2024: Should you use it?
PayPal Review 2024: Should you use the payment platform?
Being one of the most popular platforms in the world, and letting its users sign up and start sending or receiving money within minutes, PayPal looks like a solid option, but is it though?
Application Category: Website
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Pros
- You can get started within minutes.
- Fast and safe transactions between PayPal accounts.
- Most e-commerce stores and online services already support PayPal.
- Fast and modern mobile app.
Cons
- Their fee structure is quite confusing.
- Withdrawals from PayPal to a bank account can take several days.
- Currency conversion and international transfers can have high fees.
- No contact form or email support, and phone calls can cost you lots of time.
- Your account may get closed, deactivated, or stop working without getting notified before.
Based on my personal experience with their services, I find PayPal an unreliable payment platform that may close your account from one minute to another, and thus, I wouldn’t suggest it to anyone. If they had a better support system, maybe this review would be very different, but they don’t.
Although there are many reviewers who weren’t left happy with the company, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to have the same experience. If you’re looking for a way to send and receive payments, or looking at implementing PayPal’s payment system to your website, then you should go for it, but make sure you did research before.
What are your thoughts on PayPal? Have you ever used the online payment platform, and what was your experience with the app? I’d love to hear all about your experience and ideas, so drop your comment down below!
