Christian Owens

My recent experience with PayPal Customer Service.

As some of you may know, I run a digital daily deals site, with a small close-knit team of awesome individuals. We (unfortunately) use PayPal to process our transactions.

A few weeks ago, we had the idea that we’d use PayPal Mass Pay (a service which I’ve used before) to automatically settle payments to our Employees, Affiliates and Vendors each night and pay out their earnings via PayPal. Awesome idea right? We only have our profits of sales going into our bank account, our employees are more motivated and our vendors are super happy!

Not the case.

I’ve used PayPal Mass Pay (and it’s associated APIs) many times in the past, it was a super convenient way for me to automate payments/ rev-share deals on software/ apps/ hacks that I’ve been a part of, thinking that it’d be an awesome way to integrate nightly payments into our current business, we set about coding systems that let us calculate payments and generate Mass Payment documents each night. We used PayPal’s developer sandbox, and it worked great.

Now came the time to implement this into our production site. So I login to our PayPal Business Account, navigate to “Send a Payment” then to “Send a Mass Payment” (they’re not exactly hiding it). I’m expecting to see the standard “Upload a Mass Payment Document” big orange button. Instead I see a grey button, and this message:

“We’re sorry, but your PayPal account isn’t currently eligible to send mass payments. Please contact either PayPal Customer Service or your account manager.”

“Ah, Ok then.” I think to myself, it seems like a simple fix, I’ve used this service before on this very PayPal account, so it won’t be a problem re-enabling it for our account. I’ll give them a call.

But I forgot. This is PayPal.

PayPal Customer Service Representative #1:

• Me: Hi there, we have an existing PayPal business account with you, and we’re looking to you use your PayPal Mass Pay service to automate payments to our suppliers. We’ve used Mass Pay heavily in the past, but I’m getting a message saying we’re currently ineligible.
• PayPal: Sorry, Mass Payments don’t exist.
• Me: Excuse me? I’m looking at a page entitled ‘Send a Mass Payment’ and it says to contact you to enable the feature.
• PayPal: Please Hold.
• *Awkward Hold Music*
• PayPal: Hi yes, you can’t use Mass Pay it’s invite only.
• Me: Oh, I see, how does one go about getting invited?
• PayPal: I don’t know.
• Me: Is there anyone I could speak to who would know?
• PayPal: No. You just get invited it’s automatic.
• Me: Okay. What’s the criteria to be invited?
• PayPal: I don’t know.
• Me: Could I speak to someone who does know?
• PayPal: No, no-one knows.
• Me: So you’re telling me not one single person inside PayPal knows the eligibility requirements for PayPal Mass Pay?
• PayPal: That’s correct. It’s automatic. Once you have a big account, you get invited.
• Me: What about the person who implemented the automatic invite system, would he know the requirements?
• PayPal: Maybe, but I don’t know who that was.
• Me: Can you think of anyone who might be able to tell me what the requirements are?
• PayPal: You can contact sales, they might be able to give you more information.
• Me: Ok, can I have the numer?
• PayPal: (UK) 0844 388 0470

Ok, so I dial the sales department, hoping that they’d be able to shed some light on the situation. (Hoping that I’d just spoken to one rather incompetent Customer Service representative).

PayPal Sales Representative #1:

• Me: Hi there, I was referred to this number by one of your Customer Services representatives. I’m an existing PayPal customer, and we want to begin automating our payments to suppliers by using your Mass Payment servi—
• PayPal: Sorry, we don’t offer a Mass Payment service.
• Me: I’m on your website right now. Looking at your Mass Payments service.
• PayPal: What’s your PayPal email address?
• Me: billing@xxxxxxxx.com
• PayPal: Please Hold.
• *Awkward Hold Music*
• PayPal: Yes, that feature doesn’t exist.
• Me: I was just told by your Customer Services department that feature most certainly exists, but it’s by invite only.
• PayPal: Have you been invited?
• Me: No, I’m trying to go about finding the criteria to be invited to PayPal Mass Pay, and how someone goes about starting the process.
• PayPal: Well, you haven’t been invited.
• Me: Yes, I understand that. But I’ve viewed all of the sales pages on your website, and your Mass Pay fee calculator, and it’s something we’d love to use.
• PayPal: Those pages must be a mistake, because Mass Payments don’t exist.
• Me: I’ve been told they do, and I just have to be invited. Could I speak to someone who can tell me what it takes to be invited?
• PayPal: No. Nobody in the company knows that.
• Me: Ok then. Thanks for your lack of help.
• PayPal: Thanks for calling PayPal.

So, thats my story.

PayPal says their clearly available feature ‘Mass Pay’ doesn’t exist, and that not a single person inside the company knows the eligibility requirements.

Well done PayPal.