I Know What You Did Last Week

Need to know how to spend an entirely unproductive week? Well, it all starts with PayPal. First open an account and try to put their buttons in your website. Talk about the world’s worst customer service. While trying to search for resolutions to my problem, I thought I had, but what I did find was a website called PayPal Sucks. Not wanting to give in to the negative vibe, I held my breath in hopes of seeing light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. 


Well, I am here to tell you PayPal is not what it is cracked up to be. They advertise that they are the solution for small merchants to accept credit cards, but they don’t tell the whole story.  We have had guests who have wanted to pay their fees by credit card, the very reason we take credit cards through PP is that we are too small for the bank to even sniff us let alone show any real interest. Getting deposits works fine. No problemo. Yet when they are sitting in front on our computer and want to cash in the rest of the chips, PP shouts “Hey what the hell do you think I am going to do with that credit card? Eat my plastic, fool! I ain’t taking none of your magnetic stripes.” 


After months of frustration with “Customer Service” I call PP again this Monday. The high school drop out that I am speaking with keeps repeating the same mantra. 


“There must be something wrong with the credit card used.” 
So I reiterate slowly one more time, like English is her fourth language and she has hearing problems besides. 


“We have had at least ten different people used sixteen different credit cards cumulatively and not one of them worked with PayPal.” 


To this she responded “You should have your guests contact their bank to see what is wrong with their cards.”


By this time, I had lost it and started shouting loudly enough to persuade Ron to unplug his earphones, tell Rachel Maddow there was an emergency in the living room, and come running to see if I were stabbing the computer monitor while trying to get at this woman I was Skype calling. 


In a deep breath baritone, I let loose with “If you had the critical thinking skills of a kindergartener with dyslexia, you would realize that it is statistically impossible for ten people with sixteen cards to all have problems with their bank at the same time unless the address for all of them is Riker’s Island.”


She informed me that I would need to contact Technical Support, BUT the only way to do so is to use their website, which has a secret URL, but first you have to travel down the Internet highway until you come to the yellow brick road and get further instructions from some kids called Hansel and Gretel.   


Finally, I get the tech support form to fill out. There are questions there I have no idea how to answer like in what country did the moon set last, while the sun was in a full eclipse in 2004? With a hope and a prayer, I sent the form through cyberspace. 


Nathan responded to any query, but with more questions. Of course, you could write a manual about your problem with their servicers, but they still “need more information to resolve your issue.”


I like the name Nathan, so I wrote him back. Nathan wrote me back and said he tested my buttons on the site and they are working fine. Then Nathan  joined that dark space with the comment “There must be something wrong with the credit card used.”  Damn Nathan, we were getting on so well and you had to screw it up. Again, I told him what I told Customer Non-Support, but I had to type it screaming since I could not get Nathan on the phone. They don’t give out those numbers. Nathan said they could only provide tech support to the UK customers, so was really doing me a favor by trying to help out. He gave me another number to call and a suggestion. 


With Nathan’s idea that the IP address for the computer is somehow triggering a fraud alert on PP, he suggested guests use a different computer. With my handy-dandy netbook, I ventured down to the café downstairs where WiFi is there for the taking. The code is london21 if you happen to be around. While my coffee was being prepared, I log onto our site and try to pay the balance on a non-existent reservation. DENIED!!! Nathan, if you read this, you own me the cost of my coffee.  


I called this Nathan-divined number, which was in Ireland. I needed a translator. My Skype call cost me 5 Euros, because I kept saying “Excuse me?” “Could you repeat that slower?” “Do you have anyone there who is accent free?” He was just as bad. I have to spell BudaBaB four times before he understood. British Council really has their work cut out for them in Ireland, trying to teach them English. By the time my Skypc credit ran out, Cearnaigh tells me that I have to call Business support, because he only handles the UK and Ireland. 


Well you can be assured that Nathan heard about this. If I could get my hands on Nathan I would squeeze my ill-fated Skype Euros out of his hide. Cearnaigh did give me a number for PayPal Hungary. As I dialed that number, I was certain I was going to need a translator to hold my microphone, while I was slicing on my wrists. OMG, the guy spoke English like I do, accent free. He made sympathetic noises why I went through the litany of complaints and attempts at resolutions.  When I stopped to wipe the tears from my eyes and take a drink so I would not dehydrate from all of the tears I have shed, he said I think I know what the problem is. 


Obviously, I had finally come across a philosophy major; this man was a thinker. Then he gave me the bad news. PayPal is country specific. You can use credit cards within your own country only. Once you leave your country, you cannot use your credit card on a PayPal site for security reasons. 


He provides an example, for instance, an Egyptian is home in Cairo watching some really hot porn on his illegally wired cable box and decides to buy the DVD from England. He is able to use his credit card on the PayPal site because he is in Cairo where his credit card was issued. But then, he is on a business trip to London and wants to get the sequel to his purchase. He enters his credit card number now from his London hotel room, but the card is now denied. This is because Egypt is a Muslim country and port is against their religion and there they have to worry about potential camel abuse, therefore, PayPal has to block the credit card.


I know people that have had easier times recouping from rabies than I am was having getting answers. This is all it took to make me happy. Someone who could confirm the fact that PayPal has limitation and is not an end-all for small merchants and in essence it really does suck. 

Related articles

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And the Real Estate Beat Goes On

In this educational journey of buying property over the Internet, there have been many twists and turns. The Realtor that Mike had referred me to was very pleasant and accommodating for about a week, but then turned. He changed personalities so fast, a schizophrenic would be impressed. Suddenly, he felt we should come live there and rent for a few years before buying anything. Standard reasoning should be clear that if you are paying rent, you are not saving money for your down payment. That aside, he totally by-passed the fact that I said we were looking for an investment until we were ready to move back to the States sometime in the future. This felt like a brush-off because it was just that. Time to move on to Istvan's referral.

I e-mailed this Realtor Larry. gave him the lowdown on what we wanted, where we were at mentally and geographically, and asked if he could/would assist. He immediately arranged for a phone call to discuss things further. We spoke, he said he could help and signed us up for e-mail alerts on properties that came in through his agencies listing services. I was feeling heard and helped. I told Larry how much money we had in cash to buy a place. There were dozens and dozens of places within our range, but he suggested we still try to pre-qualify for a mortgage so that we don't use up all of our cash. He put me in touch with a loan officer at Bank of America. B of A is my secret nemesis, but we do have our checking, savings, and money market accounts with the CA B of A and we had our CA mortgage through them, making this a logical way to go.

The officer Larry referred us to, Peter, is a Platinum Member of B of A's corp of loan officers, the top 5% of the entire corporation. Shiny objects distract me and gain my attention, so Platinum was shiny enough to get me excited about working with Peter. After e-mailing Peter, he responded within a couple of hours. He immediately brushed me off, misreading my e-mail thinking we had no US income at all. Trying to keep my B of A contempt under control, I politely wrote back pointing out the error of his reading. Now understand, we only want a mortgage up to $30,000. It is not like we want to finance 75% of a property. We are just looking for a bit of cushion in case a really hot property comes along that is over our cash threshold. 

First Peter did not know if he could underwrite a loan for Americans living abroad. This took a couple of days and he found he could if we had sufficient US income. Well, I have no US income and our foreign income is not acceptable for US banking standards. Then we found out that the rules for giving loans to US citizens who are living abroad has changed in September 2009, not in our favor, of course. 

After Peter did much investigating, I had to scan and send off Ron's last two tax returns and copies of his 1099s for his retirement and Social Security as well as the evaporating pension fund. I included copies of our B of A bank statements, because I thought they were pretty damned impressive, but obviously not so. Peter wrote back stating that he could not run my credit report without any US income making it totally dependent on Ron. Now here is the glitch. Ron needs to have three open lines of credit to fully qualify. The problem here is that before we left the States, I paid off all of our credit cards and cut up most of them to avoid having debt. Ron still has a B of A Mastercard that he has not used in years and a Diners Club card. Ron's two cards are not enough according to Peter. After some pushing, he agreed to run a credit check anyway. We had a mortgage with B of A up until just five years ago. Ron had his truck loan through B of A. This idea that you have to be in hock up to your neck in order to borrow money is why our economy is in the shape it is in. 

We are waiting for the verdict, but it is not going to ruin my day either way. I can go either way. A mortgage will help Ron's Federal taxes, but being able to pay cash for a place and not having any big debt is are dream come true also.

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Money Woes Is Me

Thunderstorms this morning, making the air feel like we are swimming around the room. Humidity does not begin to describe it with the oppressive heat. Last night, we left the screened windows open for air; the ceiling fan was working overtime too. When I peeled myself from the sheets, it was obvious it had rained in. Luckily, my computer and camera were on the shelf under the closed window.

By the time, we made our way down our 2 flights of stairs, across the hotel and then 4 flights of stairs to the breakfast room, artificial resuscitation would have been welcomed. These stairs are not really stairs, they are like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Each one takes a contortionist movement of the legs to reach the next step. A Slinky going down them would give up in disgust and refuse to go further than 2 steps out of fear of heights. Though, the staff run up and down them like they were nothing, but the staff is mostly under 25 years old too. 

Armed with umbrellas that we never needed, we went to explore the city. A walking tour is offered, but we did not make it in time to book it, so we hoofed it on our own starting at the seaside and working our way through the maze of streets. With the electric problems, customers need to shop and plan out where to eat early in the day or there may not be as many options past 4pm. Sunset is at 6:15pm every day and by 6:45pm, it is dark. We were told this is because of the proximity to the equator. It was the same in Kenya, too. If you are looking for a glorious sunset, don't sneeze or you will miss out. 

One of the shops we came across has a number of batiked items, jewelry and hand woven scarves. Many of the products support the Masai Women's Collective to aid them in being financially independent. One of the things that attracted my attention were wonderful lounging pants, one size fits all. The skinny salesman/artist showed us how they work for keeping them in place. I had the idea of getting 2 sets for each of the bedrooms and one for each of us. Guests can use them for lounging or to come to breakfast before showering and then we just launder them when they leave us. They are wonderful 'hang-around' on a lazy day type pants; my kind of clothing. We picked out other things we wanted to buy as gifts, but without cash could only promise to return. Supporting a women's collective and young artists makes me feel like my money is well spent.

Our next venture was to the market. Stall after stall, it was not much different than Cairo or Morocco, but smaller. Everyone has a bargain; everyone wants to sell you something. The items of choice are vanilla beans and saffron. Both are dirt cheap here. In CA, the supermarkets used to keep both under lock and key due to the expense and theft. Here you can buy either for $2.00 a pod for vanilla or a packet of saffron. I will stock up before we leave. At the market and everywhere else people are hawking bags of cashews, spices, or DVDs of Swahili top ten hits. Not that I am interested, but I am curious if there really is a DVD of music in the wrapped cover they offer.

We decided we had better find an ATM and get some cash. What we had was wearisomely low. When we found the bank, there was a long a block long to use the machines. Where these due to the electrical problems or just a run on the bank? I stood in line for over thirty minutes while Ron tried finding another bank. When I finally found the machines in eye sight, I saw the Visa logo only. This was a concern since our bank ATM is a MasterCard. Sure as there is a death at the end of life, the machine would not accept my card. But, it did not inform me of this right out. We played cat and mouse with false hopes before it flashed "REJECTED, cannot make this transaction". Two blocks away was a Barclays Bank, so we went there. Suspiciously, there was no line. We went in the door, it was air conditioned. We could have stayed there for longer if the "We are sorry for the inconvenience, but this machine is currently not working. Please try again later" message flashing on the screen was not so discouraging. Now fear was creeping in. Most places do not take credit cards, but even if they could, without electricity then cannot run the cards. They have not learned or don't want to bother calling it in the old-fashioned way.

Diagonally from Barclays a half block down was another bank. I went there, but no machine at all. The bank had closed down.  With cash concerns, we returned  to our room to think things out. Some of my best ideas come when I am on the computer and sure enough, I remembered while uploading some posts that our other bank card was a Visa debit card. This is not the account I wanted to draw from, but if push came to possibly having to steal to get money, we would do it. First, we returned to Barclays. It did say to check back later and this was later. Now the damn machine was not even lit up. Someone must have shut off the generator. Back to the other bank, with fingers crossed, it swallowed my card and spit out cash. Hope of shopping trips returned, not to mention eating another meal after the provided breakfast. 

Now feeling flush, we went to the Old Fort where there is an old fort, hence the name, but also a tour booking service and tourism information. We booked the Spice Tour for tomorrow. As luck would have it, three Swedish people from our hotel arranged the same tour and requested an air conditioned van or they would  not go. Thank you Swedes.

Across the street from the fort and on the waterfront is a large park that was refurbished and reopened this year. By 6pm, it was filled with food venders cooking on grills and selling their foods. One such was grilling a root type vegetable which we had never seen before.  There was a young couple eating one nearby. I took a chance they were tourists and asked about it. It is called a maniok (we are not sure of the spelling). It is similar to a potato, but a bit different taste. We tried one and it was good, especially hot off of the grill, but not as good as it could have been slathered in butter. Another foodsmith nabbed us to show us all of his offerings. He could have been named Neptune; he had every type of sea creature ready to grill as well as potatoes, sweet potatoes (African are a bit different from what we are used to), chicken or beef on a stick, falafel, and coconut bread. After his whole speech, we turned him down and went to our cafe next to the hotel.

The soup of the day was pumpkin with coconut milk. Could I resist? No! It was delicious; so good in fact, I could have forgotten about a main dish, but I had a chicken fajita, also recommendable. Tomorrow night, we may just may attempt the food on the go, in the park, for dinner.

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Hello Paul Roberts

Hello Paul Roberts,

This comment came through: “Wonderful story, you might look at using PayPal to transfer the money to the school bank account.” Thanks Paul! For a wild moment after reading your comment, I had a long ‘DUH!!’ moment and was ready to give myself a swift kick for not thinking about this. BUT, before I did something self-abusive, my memory loss was reverted. I have a PayPal account; however, gosh darn them, they will not send money to Hungary. Hungary is not in the Euro zone yet and I guess PayPal does not want to muddle around with Forints.

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Tossing Money to the Wind

A Hungarian benefactor living in the US gave our department at the university a check for $2,000. An American check here is worthless. You cannot cash it for less than $60.00 in fees and it takes up to six months. The faculty on the other hand was all salivating at the prospect of spending it. The list included a projector for PowerPoint presentations, an all-in-one fax/copier/scanner, and the list went on. This demanded a faculty meeting to decide how to spend this worthless piece of paper and how to cash it.

While sitting in the meeting fairly disinterested since none of my suggestions were receiving any attention, when it came around to how to cash the check, I felt six pairs of eyes burning into my face. Well here is an idea, we will give it to Ryan and he can deposit it in his US bank account in CA and then give us the money. Oh, boy! Did I NOT like that idea. But, I had them mail the check certified to a friend in CA who deposited into my account. Then the next issue was how to get it back. The options were to take it out in $400.00 increments, my daily ATM allowance from the bank with a $5.00 charge for each plus their ‘we can screw you’ currency conversion charge of 10%. Option two was more fiscally sound. I could shop for what they wanted, pay by credit card and then pay off my credit card immediately with the money in the account. They wisely chose option two for ¾ of the money.

However, the patron gave them yet another check for another $2,000. My nightmare all over again, but this time they wanted it in cash. Yikes! It seemed like a brainstorm to get a cash advance from the ATM on a credit card. I took out the max equivalent of $1,000.00 and shoved it into a pocket in my wallet. I would do this in two installments; after all, they were dependent on my generosity to get the cash either way. They would just have to wait for the cash sequel.

So I have this thick wad of Hungarian forint bills stuffed in my wallet and I am heading to the metro. This was one of those days when the ticket inspectors were checking tickets before you could attempt to get on the escalator to the trains. They mob up there like defensive guards at a sporting event. Traffic is slowed to a snail’s pace and everyone is suddenly in a hurry even if they were not five minutes before. Not being concerned, having my annual pass, I open my wallet to display it as I go gliding by onto the moving stairway. I am bumped in the back by the next anxious passenger throwing me forward as I am trying to put my wallet back in my backpack. That does not happen, though. The wallet goes flying into the air, gravity and airflow of the escalator tunnel pulling it open and forint bills go flying through the air like confetti at a wedding. A thousand dollars of forints are traveling faster than I am and in all directions. People going down are angry and disappointed that those on their way up have the catcher’s advantage and the best escape. I immediately visualize wrestling Hungarians to the ground or getting a second job to recoup this money.

When I finally reach the lower level, my reverie comes to an end, I loosen the tight grip on my wallet and put it snuggly into my backpack thinking of what could have been.

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