PayPal Disputes: Effective, To a Point

Social conditioning is a funny thing; as (non-sociopathic) humans, we’re generally reluctant to engage in behaviour that in years past would have been called “being difficult”, and today would be called something involving lots of four-letter words. (”Being a copulating posterior orifice”, for instance.) The thing is, this reluctance doesn’t just come into play where such behaviour would be atypical - “going primate-feces” in a coffee shop, for instance - but also materializes as a reluctance to use tools provided for that very purpose - calling a customer-service line with a complaint, for example, or filing a “dispute” with a service like PayPal.

The problem is, while mechanisms like these exist to be used, and are often extremely effective at what they do, they still carry a degree of emotional baggage about them that produces irrationality in some.

Case in point: PayPal disputes. In my experience over the last several years, there is nothing more effective at producing a resolution to an issue with an online merchant you’ve paid with PayPal - especially merchants who simply ignore you - than opening a dispute with PayPal. (If you use a credit card, you do of course have the option of “reversing” a disputed charge. I’ve never done this, but I’m told it pisses PayPal off to such an extent that it’s a nearly guaranteed way to get your account suspended permanently.) Yet, as effective as it is at getting you your goods/services/money back, it’s seems to be effective entirely because it pisses the recipient off.

I recently tried to register a domain name through a registrar - one I’d never used before, but who seem to be fairly large, and who have fairly average prices. I paid for the domain - and an extra fee for “private” WHOIS information - via PayPal; the money came direct from my PayPal balance, not from a checking account, or whatever. Most registrars actually “register” your domain within minutes. These folks didn’t.

Thirty hours later, I received an email from them, telling me I had to respond to the email and verify my contact details. I did that. Another day passed, no domain registration. I sent another email; got no response. A third day passed, no registration yet, and I again emailed them. This time I got a response - telling me I still had to verify my contact details… by emailing them. Like I’d just done. I replied, once again. Days four and five passed; no registration. On day six, I opened a dispute with PayPal. One hour and three minutes later, my domain was finally registered, albeit without the “private” WHOIS registration I’d paid for, and there was a mildly pissy email in my inbox, demanding I cancel the PayPal dispute. My odds of ever seeing that WHOIS service are probably slim to none, and I really, really hope I never need to contact their customer “support”, as I get the impression they’re likely to be even less helpful than usual. C’est la vie, I guess.

You may note that I’ve very carefully not said who the registrar in question is; that’s intentional, as they seem the litigious type, and I believe they may be based in the UK, where baseless libel lawsuits are trivially easy to initiate. I will, however, suggest, if you’re looking for domain registration, to either use eNom, who are excellent, or use GoDaddy, who are adequate but unspectacular, and stay far, far away from registrars with hyphens in their domains, and whose websites display a less-than-stellar grasp of the English language…

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