Buying LGB RhB items on eBay...with PayPal "service"

[vsmith]

If its PayPal only, I dont Bid. Period. M.O or no go! It the best way i know....

[RhB_HJ]

Hi all,

Yes, boys and girls, this will be a bit of a rant.

OK, I have been looking for a GREEN Ge 4/4" from LGB at a reasonable price for three years, same goes for GREEN RhB coaches. I struck it lucky and got the engine as a "Buy Now" and won the auction on the car.

Soooooooo, receive the invoices from the seller and proceed to pay via PayPal. All is honky-dory except I can't print out the payment acknowledgement since PayPal has some temporary technical difficulties. Please try again later.
OK, no problem. Tried three more times with the same result. and followed the instructions to check my PayPal account and my VISA account for posted charges. No charges posted! The next try results in a "credit not available" or some such.
So I call PayPal: "Oh, we have some tech difficulties, could you try this method and that method?"
Same result with my Mastercard. All this happened between Nov 24 and 26. On the 28th I call the two credit card issuers "We have four "Authorization pending" here at VISA. And your card is maxed-out". Now the VISA people were very nice and gave me the respective numbers. The Master card people also had four "Authorization pending" items, but they would release the numbers only to PayPal.
OK it's back to PayPal.
"We have no "authorization" numbers from either credit card issuer!"
"Would you please check??"
"Yes, NO numbers, there's nothing we can do without numbers"
"Pass me on to your supervisor, please!"
"She will tell you the same!"
"Never mind, just get me your supervisor!

I'll spare you the next 6 phonecalls to PayPal and the credit card issuers. Finally I, the customer, arrange for a conference call between PayPal and the VISA people.
PayPal -by this time I'm dealing with the International dept - agrees to send a FAX to remove the "Authorization pending" items.
The "authorization pending" items at Mastercard will just have to expire in due course.

Summary: I spent 8 hours on the phone with PayPal customer service; of the 12 or 14 people I spoke with, there are three who are competent enough to hold their respective job (2 agents, 1 supervisor). The remainder exhibited complete ineptitude, acted like they had learned everything by rote, had a problem thinking, were too lazy or dumb to look up what the previous agent had marked in the case file .........and on and on.
Well, I will never be using PayPal again!. Their customer service stinks!

Oh yeah, just as soon as the rest of the mess is cleared up, I'll cancel our PayPal and eBay business account, meantime I'll start removing the "PayPal Payments" logos from our website. I wouldn't want any of our customers to have to go through something similar.

Of course it was only "a small technical problem" at PayPal. Hmmmmm what happens when they have a real problem?

PS If you're using PayPal and you get a 4001 or 3005 error message during the process do not follow the instructions to retry! Instead call them at 650-864-8000 . Also have a look at the phone list at http://paypalsucks.com/PayPalPhoneNumbers.shtml and read the other info on that site