I simply had a question as to why my bank account says there were two $31 overdraft fees from Paypal (not a fee from my actual bank). I have always had a positive balance on my Paypal account, so I thought it was weird. Then I realized why it may have happened. I needed to add $1 to my Paypal account to have enough to pay my Ebay invoice. The $1 never finished processing because my insurance company withdrew from my bank account even though I requested they not make automatic payments anymore…but that’s another blog post for another day. Plus I’m dumping that company soon anyways. So because of the unauthorized payment, my bank balance was a negative. Therefore, the $1 transfer to make up the difference to pay my Ebay invoice wasn’t in my account. And of course I asked to transfer $1 from my bank account actually days before I had a negative balance, but for those who don’t know, it takes Paypal 3-5 days to finish processing a transaction. So, if I indeed got an overdraft fee from that, of course I would want to know and surely I’d like to know why there’s a second $31 fee. If it was because of the $1 transfer, then I’m actually fine with that, I chalk it up to one of those situations of well….”that’s life”.
Anyways, in my attempt to clarify the reasons for two $31 fees, first, I call Paypal. The representative seemed very nice. However, after being put on hold, she hung up on me.
So, I call back and get stuck on the phone with a ruder representative. After basically telling me he don’t know what’s going on, he gets super defensive saying I can’t get that money. By the way, I NEVER asked for the money back, I didn’t even use the phrase “dispute charge“. I even told him before he started looking into my account that I simply want to know the reason for the 2nd charge. My theory is that he didn’t know what the hell to do so started getting annoyed. He even hung up quickly.
Next, I call Ebay, because I noticed Ebay never actually took funds out of my bank or Paypal account on April 29th like it states on the website. So I thought, hmmm maybe they have been trying to process this and that’s what caused the second $31. So I call Ebay and get stuck on the line with someone who is either still working on their language skills or is very very new to the job. He also kept repeating what I said slowly and then suggesting I look at my account. Each time I had to correct him and remind him why I called. Then he agreed with me every time I had to correct him, basically pretending like he knew what the issue was. Ultimately he comes up with the idea to have a 3 way call with me, him, and a Paypal representative. He specifically said that he would call me in 2hrs.
So, I waited 3hrs, then I just started working on a jigsaw puzzle I was doing. He called me at 3.5hrs later. That’s not even the worse part. I miss his call and he leaves a message saying to call back at “1 dash 843“….no other numbers mentioned. The rest of the message went on and all I could hear was other customer service representatives in the background. On top of that, I missed his call again while trying to listen to his first voice message and he left another message! It gets better. This time he says to call back at “1 dash, 843 no I mean 8…..4…. 1 dash 8342404260″. So I call the number and I get that automated message saying the number I dialed is not in service. Assuming he really meant “843″ instead of “834″, I tried that and it didn’t work…some girl answered the phone in a very rude way so then I got scared and hung up. Lol
So……I had to start all over and call the main Ebay customer service line. I tell the guy what happened and he tells me the guy I talked to before never left customer service notes about what we talked about and why or even what my issue was. So then he basically proceeds to come off as though he doesn’t even know what to do, so he just says that he’ll call a Paypal representative. Once again, after staying on the phone a very long time the hold music turns off and then he hangs up on me.
So, I decide to just call Paypal and I got in contact with a great representative. It took her less than 5minutes to tell me that I got a second $31 fee because of the $1 was still processing. Apparently a transfer processes twice and if the money isn’t available in your bank account then Paypal cancels the transfer order. At least that’s what she thought. She did begin the sentence with “what I think that extra fee is from…”. But hey, it’s better than nothing and that’s really sad when her response is the best I can. I basically gave up and decided to just work on my jigsaw puzzle. 30 minutes after everything, I look on my computer and see the Ebay invoice charges went through, so at least I no longer have to worry about that.
These representatives better hope I don’t get an email asking about the quality of customer service. I do fill out those surveys. This was the complete opposite of the great customer service experience I wrote about with Citi Cards a while ago. I don’t know if Ebay outsources their customer service, but that was ridiculous. As far as Paypal is concerned, they may need some oversight on a couple of their representative.
