What's wrong with my account? (responses)

While on the phone discussing a payment issue about eChecks, a courteous PayPal representative told me in unclear terms that the transaction was prohibited on my account and implied that it was to prevent fraud.

Please explain the trouble you see with my account(s). If you are unable or unwilling to explain the problem so that I can discuss it with you or mediate it then you can expect to lose my future business.

-[adric]

Hi,

I am not entirely ignorant of fraud prevention systems. However, leaving that aside, let me translate your response, which I've been given twice:

You've used the PayPal service to conveniently pay your rent every month for a few years. For reasons we cannot tell you / don't know ourselves you will only be able to continue paying your rent every month through Paypal by paying a 16.00 USD fee every time and putting your rent onto a credit card, which you must then immediately pay off. (Assuming the credit card bank does not treat that as a cash advance and charge
another fee). PayPal does not see this as a problem worth working on because it benefits them financially.

Unless you dispute that, I believe our business is concluded.

-[adric]

On Jul 27, 2009, at 4:56 PM, <webform@paypal.com> wrote:

Hello [adric],

I really do apologize for the inconvenience that it has caused you. 
Please do understand that we have an
Internal security program that looks at each transaction individually. 
This program looks at what transaction have a potential problem attached
to them. This has nothing to do with your credit rating, limit nor the 
available funds on your bank (credit) account. It looks at the 
transaction from a pure statistical basis. When it triggers not let the 
transaction go through with your credit/debit card (bank account). 
Unfortunately, we don't have a way to turn it off since it is a 
self-regulating program. But you can still send the payment using a 
different funding source like through your bank account (if applicable) 
or your credit card. Again, this is for the security of your Paypal 
account. We want to safeguard you from any possible problem that might 
arise if we allow this to go through."

And another:

Dear Ben Knowles,

Thank you for contacting PayPal.

Hello my name is Criselda. I am sorry to hear about this situation, and 
understand your frustration and concern regarding the trouble you're 
having in sending a payment. 

The Instant Transfer feature had been blocked by our security model for 
the $550.00 USD transaction. I can neither give you detailed information
as to why our security system has blocked this transaction nor am I able
to override or manually change the security settings.

Please understand that even though we always aim at processing all 
transactions immediately we still have to take standard security 
measures. We therefore employ complex statistical models to identify 
transaction patterns that are out of the ordinary. This is similar to 
the way banks and credit card companies work when approving individual 
transactions. When a payment is blocked, this is not reflection of you 
or your account activities but rather fits a pattern we have observed in
the past to have a higher risk of failure.

We regret any inconvenience this may have caused and would like to ask 
you to initiate the payment at a later date or use another funding 
source. The available funding sources for the transaction are your 
credit card and eCheck.

We know situations like this can be difficult, so thanks for working 
with us. If you have more questions, visit our Help Center by clicking 
"Help" in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

Sincerely,
Criselda
Consumer Support
PayPal, an eBay Company

Dear TouchBook people ... (response)

Hi folks,

May we please have an availability update? I'd really still like to have a TouchBook, but the expenditure was budgeted in the May-June range and as we slip to August I am having more trouble finding a slot in the budget for it.

An update on shipping would help me secure (new) funding, and I expect would ease other pre-order customers' minds.

I'm sure once a few of us have them in hand to show people we'll be able to secure y'all lots of sales :)

Thanks!

Dear [adric],

I apologize for the inconvenience.

A shipping update is slated to be released very soon. Check back on our website in a matter of days.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to let me know.

Best,
Collin L.
Always Innovating Customer Service