Paypal and “We’re sorry, but we can’t send your payment right now.”

Paypal is pretty much the only game in town for online payments.  But as with every monopoly, that causes poor customer service.

I needed to pay a translator yesterday, but I fumbled.  I entered the wrong password three times.  When I did manage to log in, I entered the details of my payment – to someone that I have paid many times before – and got the unhelpful message:

We’re sorry, but we can’t send your payment right now.

Which means nothing.  After several attempts, I contacted Paypal customer service via the link – and got back a form letter which told me nothing.  I responded to that … and never heard anything more.  Poor service indeed.

But 24 hours later, I tried again and … it worked!  Yay!

It seems that Paypal lock the account for certain transfers for 24 hours, after which you can try again.  But they don’t tell you this!  I suppose it helps reduce their losses from fraud.  But it’s bad luck for anyone who urgently needs to send money.  Effectively Paypal becomes unreliable.

I wish one of the big banks would roll out some competition for them; really I do.  It is much the best way to send money overseas.

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