So after two days and several hours on the phone with Paypal, the source of the fraud and identity theft, it looks likes at the very least my money has been refunded.
"If you'd just check your account you'd see the money has been refunded" the woman told me in a snit.
Listen honey, if I could I would, but because I had to close the account because of your fraudulent activity I no longer have access to see if your lying or not.
Remarkably they were able to locate the perpetrators, contact them, get them to confess and voluntarily return the funds, which is why it was resolved so quickly.
"So what action is Paypal going to take against them?" I asked.
"We've flagged the account..."
Flagged? Well isn't that special. I guess it will make it easier to find them when they do it again, if they haven't already.
"I see here they've been flagged before..."
Are you fucking kidding me? How many "flags"must one have before Paypal actually, you know, does something? I'm guessing they wouldn't contact the authorities or, god forbid, close an account unless it had more flags the front of the U.N.
What did we, the consumers, do to so piss off corporate America that they've chosen to make this process so painful? I understand the financial incentive; if fewer people call it saves them money, which is why they bury the contact info on their websites like a pirate treasure. But it's gone beyond that and now seems purposely designed to be as sadistic as possible. Paypal isn't the worst offender; that distinction belongs to Time Warner Cable. I spent two weeks of my life and God knows how many hours with them trying to restore our phone service which they'd "inadvertently" cut off.
Fun fact! Much is made of the Indian call centers, but did you know that if you call in the dead of the night you actually get sent to Argentina? It's true! After wasting three days on hold with Time Warner I got the brilliant idea to call at 2am, thinking that the traffic from the West Coast would be tailing off at that time, and the traffic from the East Coast wouldn't have yet revved up. I spoke to a lovely woman in Argentina and we had a leisurely chat about summer in Buenos Aires after it was determined she couldn't help me.
Time Warner also gets bonus points for telling me I had to go to their website to fill out a work order when I was calling to complain that our internet service had gone out.
But here's the thing: Corporate America keeps saying they've outsourced their call centers to save money, yet they secretly still have representatives here in the good ole U.S. of A. (Shhh... they're in Colorado Springs). And one thing I've learned is that if you raise holy hell, start dropping F-Bombs like crazy and demand to speak to an American they will ultimately transfer you back to ’Murka and Voila!, problem solved. It worked with both Paypal and Time Warner. Once I got an American with Paypal, the problem was solved in 10 minutes. With Time Warner it took about 15.
Paypal transferred me to 4 different people in Bangalore before I finally got the American, so they're paying 5 people to essentially do the job of one. Corporate efficiency at it's finest.
And people wonder why this country is going down the toilet.
