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Comment by angryasian | Hacker News Reader

The level of discourse on HN lately is absurd. Here is a new CEO that appears to be looking to change things for the positive, yet everyone wants to be cynical and doubting. Yet when startups have major f* ups, the conversation is much different.

Lets all admit change is slow and that paypal is still one of the more trusted payment solutions accepted globally. It would be nice to be able to use them in the future with some continued reliability.

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The skepticism about PayPal is well founded. PayPal has rightfully earned a reputation of imposing arbitrary decisions on account holders. Maybe if PayPal was more transparent and actually provided some semblance of customer service their decisions would appear more fair.

While its nice that the CEO has personally responded this actually shows a far greater dysfunction. Why should it take escalating all the way up to the CEO level to get someone at PayPal to listen and advocate for the customers position?

The contrast with startups is misleading. PayPal has been in business for a long time and is a billion dollar company. They have the resources to stop making stupid mistakes, but still persist in their bad behavior. They can get away with this because they've cornered a large part of the online payments marketplace.

Sure, a startup is going to make mistakes. And they're expected to. That's all a startup is really - a machine that generates mistakes in an attempt to find (or build) a profitable market.

Yes did you miss the part that they brought in a new CEO to bring change. Lets just blame everything thats happened in the past on a guy who wasn't even on the job. Blaming mistakes on lack of resources is a little naive.

Well put ... PayPal has some housecleaning to do but here is someone that appears to be listening ... listening in a big way.

I give PayPal credit for this response. Rather than being cynical, I'm happier giving credit to someone who wants to make things better.

Mr. Marcus - some of us appreciate your efforts here.

You are forgetting one thing that was previously stated in the comments: this isn't Paypal responding through their normal support channels.

This is a fire-fighting attempt from the CEO of a company that snubbed the people they should live off of, prompted by a bigger than average shitstorm created by their persistent crappy handling of accounts.

Think of it this way: suppose Mercedes went around, burning the cars it sells to their customers - much to their chagrin - and one of the customers creates a big enough fuss for the CEO to come and personally give him a new car. Is that an acceptable handling of the situation in your eyes?

A CEO is a pretty busy person ... when one responds (no matter how it was escalated) it says something about his/her viewpoint.

Many CEOs would hand this off to their customer experience personnel (if they have some still) or maybe marketing department.

This was not a manager's or director's reply though. The wording indicates someone (relatively new to this president's post) who appears to see that change is necessary. He understand that his offer may not be accepted (he get's it) and still offers a direct link to himself.

I don't read this as a PR ploy or gimmick.

If a CEO offered someone a new car PLUS their ear, I'd be watching for changes. PayPal didn't burn everyone's car. Enough damage was caused to affect the brand though. If I was one of the affected, I'd be watching for more action.

I feel that the response was appropriate. There is something in the wording that gives me hope. Maybe I'm just being naive.

I'll watch to see how things turn out though.

Practically every major company has a corporate/CEO escalations department that tries to put out fires that their typical customer service path fails to fix. This isn't a novel approach.

PayPal has a notoriously bad customer service reputation. It's going to take more than a typical CEO apology letter to really fix the issues that are embedded within how PayPal operates. The fact that a CEO has to issue such a letter indicates there are problems that probably aren't going to be easy to fix.

Executive escalation departments are not the CEO. I served some time in customer experience before going into quality and then PM. UE and CE are very important to me. This letter does not have the ring of a typical escalation path.

Either he discovered the issue on his own or someone else within PayPal escalated it to his attention. Either is a good sign. The former path indicates a CEO who is actively listening to users and is deliberately making time to gather user feedback outside of normal channels - a very good thing for any CEO worth their salt. The latter indicates that someone else within PayPal or closely tied to PayPal had the good sense to escalate it to the CEO's eyes - that person deserves a promotion (he/she probably has some relavent skills that PayPal really needs at the moment).

I just don't see this as a typical CEO apology. It's personal and the wording actually suggests something more than a typical CEO response - I've seen a few.

No one should be getting kudos or promotion over recognizing an internet shitstorm because people A) didn't do their jobs or B) did their jobs as usual which caused said shitstorm.

It's like a bully saying he's sorry only when your bigger brother shows up to defend you.

He (the CEO) didn't have to respond at all. But he did. How 'bout we all give him the benefit of the doubt.

Sure, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. But I'm not risking getting my funds frozen in he meantime! I won't be using Paypal for business sales.

What about the Yahoo! transformation currently being led by their new CEO, Mrs. Mayer? My view, and most of the things I've read about the Yahoo! situation is that people are generally optimistic about the change in leadership and feel that she is not only talking the talk, but walking the walk.

I don't have the same confidence in this type of change happening inside PayPal and I'm not sure why. Maybe its because, as a financial institution, I view it as a very "corporate" entity that resists change. Whereas Yahoo! is, in my mind, has a "hacker" feel that recognizes the problems and really wants to make things better. I guess I have more faith in Marisa and the kind of company that I know Yahoo! can become, whereas I've already written off PayPal as a necessary evil that can/will be replaced as soon as possible.

For the moment all this means that a high-profile person got his funds unblocked and has a direct communication channel to the CEO. Meaning he's pretty much back to where he was before PayPal set him back.

For my personal blocked account, it means exactly nothing.

Over the long term that may not be true. FTA: "I'm going to use your story to radically change how we deal with holds, and customer service"

It's going to take some radical change to alter current perceptions of PayPal, but it may be possible.

I think its good that a CEO steps up and reaches out to customers, but many people have had bad experiences with funds being frozen on PayPal along with their terrible phone support, and things like that never get forgotten. I get the impression that addressing fraud on PayPal's global scale is very hard. But they could make things a little more bearable by training their phone support people to be at least a little more polite and customer-oriented.

First off, I agree. However there is a difference between a new player tripping at a hurdle and an old hand making the same mistake. There is an expectation (by me at least) that tricky situations have been encountered by large organisations before, and that a combination of institutional knowledge and good systems prevent problems escalating. New businesses deserve (I think) a little more leeway.

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