**UPDATE**: It took roughly 14 hours for me to get my access back and I received NO responses other than the one that finally told me it had been restored.  Now I can do something else I couldn’t do with limited access, cancel my account.  Craigslist, fugly or not here I come.

I’ve now officially had it with PayPal’s lack of customer service. Last year I spent several hours on the phone with them trying to change my primary credit card because their website was too stupid to know how to do that (and their minimum wage customer service reps were no better). To any normal person that experience alone should have been enough to cancel their account, but like an idiot I kept using them to pay for purchases on ebay and several other websites that take PayPal.

Today I bought something on ebay and went to pay, but when I clicked ‘Confirm Payment’ I was sent to a screen that said ‘Unable to complete transaction’. What a great, detailed explanation! So I logged into my PayPal account directly and was met with a banner telling me I had ‘limited access’ which, translated, means I can’t use my account at all. Their reasoning is that they “have reason to believe a third party accessed my account”. That didn’t happen and they had no reason to believe that which is obvious by their failure to provide any further details. Even better is that it supposedly happened several days ago, but they didn’t bother to tell me until I tried to use my account. If it had really happened, it seems like that’s something I should know immediately.

But wait, it offers to let me correct that situation by going to their ‘Resolution Center’. Problem solved right? HELL NO. The Un-Resolution Center gives 3 steps that must be completed to remove the limitation. The first is to have them send an automated call to your phone and type in a number they provide to verify it’s you. Great, except they won’t call a cell phone which is all that the majority of people have. Luckily I was at work when this happened otherwise I would have had no way of accessing an ancient land line phone. Step 2 was to change my password. That’s the only step that makes any sense if any breach of security had really occurred (which it had not). Step 3 was to change my security questions. First of all, I didn’t have security questions before so there was no “change”. Secondly, don’t get me started on how ridiculous that whole process is. If somebody is able to get my password they can get those answers too, hence, no increased security. It’s a bullshit policy to make them appear more secure when they are not.

Ok, so no matter how ridiculous their resolution steps were, they were now completed. Now I can finally pay for my purchase right? Wrong. My account is still set as ‘Limited Access’ even though I jumped through all their fucking hoops. No problem, I’ll just call their customer support line and speak to a real live person about this. Well apparently PayPal has been taking lessons from their papa (eBay) about how to provide zero customer service. First, if you’re like me and your first inclination is to grab the phone number and head outside to have a cigarette while calling them, think again. You have to go to a hidden page and generate a magic ‘Web PIN’ to enter in your phone before you even get to a menu of options. Now that you’ve wasted time doing that, you are presented with a menu of worthless options (like ‘How Do I Log In?”) and your only way of navigating is to speak your choices. I don’t want to talk to fucking computerized voice. I want to talk to a REAL PERSON. On most systems like this you can start pressing zero until the computer gives up and transfers you to a person, but PayPal hangs up on you if you do that. Great customer service.

So the only remaining option of contacting these idiots is email, of which I have sent many, which they do not respond to. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with PayPal or who thought ANY of this was a good idea, but as soon as I pay for this one purchase (if that’s ever possible) I am DONE with PayPal and eBay. eBay sealed their fate with ridiculous fee increases and changes aimed at driving out small businesses. PayPal sealed theirs by customer service that has declined to the point of being non-existent. As far as I’m concerned, fuck both of them.