Worldwide breakdown of Paypal service in the night of August 3
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In the night of August 3 between 7.30 and midnight, Paypal, le electronic payment service used by millions of internet users experienced "a hardware failure on PayPal’s in-house network", as announced by a spokesperson of the company, Anuj Nayar.
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More than 75 million clients
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For now, Paypal is said to be thinking of the answer that should be given to the retailers who suffered the most of this service interruption (according to the Wall Street Journal). As a reminder, Paypal claims 75,4 million active users, including small vendors and major accounts registered on eBay. The income generated by Paypal represent about a third of the annual sales figure of the online auction expert, eBay. The business of so-called "secured" payment is therefore very lucrative.
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Relying on Paypal’s customer service ?
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Scott Guilfoyle, vice-CEO of Paypal, personally apologized and holds forth words that are meant to be reassuring as he declares that no financial loss was entailed, and that the purchases made just before the breakdown were indeed taken into account. In case of problem, Scott Guilfoyle recommends to contact the customer service. However, when you know the reactivity of Paypal’s customer service, nearly always unreached, can we really expect an efficient solution? Numerous users have complained about Paypal and about the way the site of the financial company made everything possible to avoid guiding users towards a call center, letting them get lost in FAQs which are often off-board.
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Paypal doesn’t claim to be a secure means of payment
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If this technical incident can have Paypal customers worry while they think they sell with secure payment, it is nothing compared a major movement that is under way of users unsatisfied with the sometimes dubious behaviors of Paypal which, when victim of credit card frauds, then asks the vendor to pay back. Then the user, surprise by such a request, tries to tell Paypal that s/he has paid a high commission on the sale precisely in order to avoid being the victim of frauds. Afterwards, the user is flooded with threatening mails and automated calls from recovery companies often based abroad which try to impress the customer, who wonders if s/he is within one's rights. To be continued.
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Alternatives to the couple ebay-paypal for P2P purchase
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Facing various frauds on Ebay (counterfeiting, VAT fraud, wrong products...) and Paypal (who would offer, according to Paypal’s own employees, no payment guarantee), fans of buying and selling goods fortunately have alternatives, surely more expensive but much more perennial because secured (for the vendor as well as for the buyer) such as priceminister.com who takes care of receiving the payment and pay back the vendor after making sure that the customer has indeed received the goods.
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