Inconsistent interface cause unintentional use of wrong payment method with worthless CS

Question

I don't forsee anything coming from this, but I will put my experiences on here. I use Paypal quite a bit, and I use the same sites a lot.  I have credit cards, and I usually want to pay by credit cards.  But because I also have bank accounts attached, Paypal forces me to use a bank account as default payment source and credit card as backup.  Because of this, everytime I buy something, I have to change payment sources. Over the years, I got used to the interface where you first enter username and password, and then it shows you how much you're paying, and what payment method you're using, and a button to actually buy it.  Since last year or so, on some sites I would see a different interface where you enter a password and it immediately charges the default payment method.  Because I got used to entering username and password and then reviewing payment information, I accidentally used my default method multiple times, but on relatively small things. What really got me though, was a recent transaction that I made for a website that charged a different currency.  Because the website switched to the one-page checkout, I entered password and it instantly used my bank.  I tried to close the page but the transaction already went through.  I looked at the paypal transaction and the exchange rate paypal was giving was 3% off market rate and I lose out on 1.5% rewards, costing me about $10.  I called Paypal customer service, but it was not open at the time.  I called the next morning, and the guy said that because the transaction went through, I would have to contact the merchant.  I asked him if there were other ways, and he said I could do a stop payment at the bank, which would cost more money than it was worth.  I asked to talk to a manager, and the manager said that he could do nothing.  I then told him that the unintuitive interface was costing me money and he squarely blamed me for the mistake and did not want to acknowledge that there could be anything bad about the UI setup, and did not provide any help.  The manager blaming me for a mistake caused by inconsistent experience is what finally made it obvious that Paypal is fine with playing dirty and tricking customers.  I called a different department and asked if the interface could be disabled for my account so that I can have a consistent experience, and it was declined.  I then checked what causes the different interface, and noticed that it only happens if you have already paid on the website before and it remembers you.  I contacted the merchant, but on the next business day when they got back to me, they said they could not because they already shipped the stuff, which is pretty much what I expected. From the fact that Paypal stands to make much more from a bank transaction than from a credit card transaction (2.x% vs 0.x%) and what I have experienced, I have lost trust in Paypal and I believe that Paypal is using sneaky tactics to trick customers into using bank payments, costing people card rewards and hoping that that people do not notice.  With my customer service experience, it is obvious that Paypal does not care about customers enough to go beyond what all the other payment services provide with customer service. Luckily for me, even though I am out of luck on the transaction that already happened, I noticed that I could just remove all of my bank accounts and it will force the default to be a credit card.  With that, the one-page payment actually will work well if my default is what I want.  Once I can remove the bank account used for my latest transaction, I will hopefully be able to set my default to the credit card I want to use.  If it has some odd rules about selecting defaults, I might just have to reduce my wallet to a single credit card, at which point I will probably slowly migrate off of Paypal.

Answer 1

Step by step, how did you arrive at seeing this agreement?