HACKER Q&A
📣 is_true

Why most companies don't accept they made a mistake? A PayPal tale


I uploaded my ID to Paypal and they apparently mistook my birth date and got my account permanently limited.

I sent several messages to support until someone told me my birth date and it was wrong by 20 years, which makes me underage. I sent a message stating that that date was wrong and they deleted all messages and never answered again.

Why didn't they just apologized and fixed the mistake?

It happened to me before with another payment company (MercadoPago), I had to get in touch with someone on linkedin to get my account back.

The fact that they deleted the previous messages makes me think that that person shouldn't have told me the birth date they got in the system.

On the other side, on several occasions I got in touch with Amazon's support and they were super helpful and fixed the mistake or got me in touch with someone that could.

Are support people limited with what they can do? Are the incentives wrong?


  👤 r2_pilot Accepted Answer ✓
PayPal in particular is a dumpster fire of a company. I strongly recommend against using them for anything, and especially never link your bank account to them. You would be hard-pressed to find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. (source: past experience and PayPal still has money of my company they won't release)