Chris Barrow’s Blog

Email problems

Chris | October 24, 2008

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I’m using this medium to explain that if you sent an email to chris@thecoachinggym.com in the last 24 hours, it will not have reached me.

Can you please re-send or send to chris@coachbarrow.com

The reason behind this relates to theÂ archaicÂ systems and lack of effective customer service at Paypal, the on-line payment provider.

In this world of super-fast global web communications, you would have thought that authorising your IT consultant (the genius Kimberly Black) to make payments for you would have been a good delegation for a busy traveller like myself.

Not so with Paypal – I asked Kim to renew my web hosting service direct, gave her my Paypal access details – and as soon as they saw her trying to make a payment with my account they closed the whole bloody lot down.

Now, with hindsight, that was probably a good thing in the era of phishing – fair dinkum – but what I cannot seem to get anyone at Paypal to understand is what happened and why – or fix it.

At their request, I have:

written to authorise Kim to make payments;
sent them faxed copies of my passport and a utility bill;
re-entered my Maestro card details;
followed their instructions to re-activate my card;
answered 4 customer service queries in the last 10 days;
noted the deposits they have made in my bank account to test the system;
and all sorts of other minor stuff that has been the subject of emails in the last couple of weeks

Dare I say it – all whilst running a business, living and travelling around the country.

Oh – and by the way – they took over Â£500 out of my account 3 weeks ago – payments I had made to suppliers – and have sat on the money – suppliers not paid.

Has my Paypal account started working again?

Evidently not – as the renewal for my web hosting wasn’t paid this month – and so the web hosting company closed down my emails at 7.30 am UK time yesterday – and Kim is now back-stage, attempting to get the system back up again.

I’m in the unusually position of downloading emails at 5.30 am this morning and, instead of the usual 30-40 I’m looking at 1.

Thanks for nothing Paypal – your procedures are confusing andÂ arcane, your communication sucks and I’m going to find some other way.

Don’t forget – if you need me its chris@coachbarrow.com