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Pirillo Gets No Satisfaction From PayPal Support
Written by Allen Stern - August 1, 2008
Web celebrity Chris Pirillo announced earlier this week that on his birthday someone was able to hack into his iTunes account and purchase $450 in iTunes gift cards using his PayPal account. Chris spoke with Apple and apparently Apple has changed the way they verify birthdates to make sure this never happens again.
Chris then approached PayPal and filed a claim to get his $450 back. PayPal sent the results of their investigation yesterday which includes, "We have completed our investigation of your claim and have determined that this is not an instance of unauthorized account activity. At this time, your claim has been denied."
Chris replies, "What the HELL are they thinking? My password was obtained illegally. My money was taken without my consent… again illegally. How exactly can they determine that this was not an instance of unauthorized anything?!"
Unfortunately Chris does not note whether Apple has been able to provide a refund for the unauthorized charges. If the gift cards haven't been used, can't Apple just deactivate them and refund the money immediately? If they have been used, the shipping addresses for the purchased merchandise should be great info to provide to the local police.
This type of run-around is something we see often from PayPal. We've written several times about PayPal and their usual lack of communication.
In this case it does seem like Apple is the merchant and should work with Chris to make him whole. But it sure would be great to see PayPal work with it's consumers (i.e. Chris) to get satisfaction for their users as they deal with the merchant.
COMMENTS - Add New Comment
I keep hearing of other people having problems like this with PayPal. It hasn't happened to me yet, but it's definitely made me more wary. And if they ever do this sort of thing to me, I'll be sure to document it in detail, online, for others' benefit. PayPal deserves some hurt for treating its customers this way.
Not only does Paypal do things like this, but they lock accounts for whatever reason they want. Having full access to your bank account and the ability to withdraw from it at any time they please should force them to have the same standards and rules that apply to banks. Unfortunately, they're in a bit of a gray area and continue to routinely screw over their customer base with little worry of repercussions from customers or the government itself. They don't even fear competition considering they've got every other service basically locked out of the person to person auction market.
PayPal is the most frustrating company I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. Unfortunately I forgot my password and they locked my account due to too many password violations. This led to many months of correspondence with their Customer Hostility Department through email, their horrible voice service and traditional post. I sent them the requested verification of my identity but still no refund. Sadly the account is still not resolved and they still have almost $400 of my money. It feels like theft to me.
My advice; stay far far away from PayPal.
We absolutely don't buy anything that's not a physical product using payapl or if we do we use our AMEX, if it involves any large sums of money. PP will say this type of thing and half the time you can't really prove it because there is nothing physical involved.
Once we paid someone quite a bit of money for some writing. He sent us a list of jibberish. We went thru the entire process they wanted us to, supplied all the documentation.
Their first claim rejected it. The second time they said we'd passed the limit of time to complain (b/c we appealed? - they've since changed this policy thank goodness) so we went straight to AMEX who gave us a refund. The reason? PP never responded to AMEX so AMEX assumed PP was wrong and gave us the $2500 charge back to our card.
1. I'm not a celebrity.
2. I toned down my language for this, believe it or not. :)
3. I've been knocking on a few digital doors to try to find resolution to this matter - but it seems that the only way I'm going to get anything done is by going through Apple.
4. PayPal just called me a few hours ago - assumedly to talk about the reversed charges from Apple this morning.
5. This is a total runaround situation - being batted back and forth between two companies. It's not really something I'm used to experiencing with Apple.
6. If you don't know anybody at either company, start pounding the pavement - the only way you're ever going to get anything done is by knowing someone on the inside who is on YOUR side.
1. I'm not a celebrity.
hmm ok :)
2. I toned down my language for this, believe it or not. :)
yea i saw, not one curse word - I was thinking that was because you might have to head to judge judy to get your money back!
3. I've been knocking on a few digital doors to try to find resolution to this matter - but it seems that the only way I'm going to get anything done is by going through Apple.
Yea I agree
4. PayPal just called me a few hours ago - assumedly to talk about the reversed charges from Apple this morning.
Awesome!
5. This is a total runaround situation - being batted back and forth between two companies. It's not really something I'm used to experiencing with Apple.
The only apple product I have is a refurb ipod so I haven't had much chance to deal with Apple on the support/customer service side
6. If you don't know anybody at either company, start pounding the pavement - the only way you're ever going to get anything done is by knowing someone on the inside who is on YOUR side.
Yep, and if people don't have a contact at the company - they need to reach out to their network to find someone. You clearly have a huge network on your own but even for people without a robust network, get the message out and let people share it and someone will be able to help eventually
This is hilarious-- Apple's security issue, the money ended up in Apple's hands, it is Apple's money to refund. And yet it's become another spot for people to spout unrelated frustrations about PayPal, with PayPal in the headline.
Did Apple issue a refund? Nope, not according to this. Did Apple have the security problem? Yep. Did they get the money out of this transaction? Yep.
I've personally had nothing but good luck with PayPal. Live customer service until like 9PM, interest with no minimum balance, cash back on purchases, etc.
Wish you luck with the money, but this should be totally an Apple issue, if they connected an insecure iTunes account to your PayPal account. I still am fogged that the PR hammer isn't on them over this, and I can't believe they wouldn't refund the money just to keep the security problem quiet.
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