Does this mean PayPal discriminates against Chinese people?

[elina]

After PayPal thought it got all the documents it wanted, it sent an email:

Your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this time. We have contacted your buyers to confirm they have received the items they have purchased from you.

Once we have received confirmation from the buyers they have received their items from you, we will be able to review your account further.

Because some of our customers choose to ship by sea, which will need more time for the packages to get the destination. We’re waiting for the final result.

Regarding the transaction of number 7L1111111111, which mentioned in the fifth post in this thread, we already got the customer’s receiving email titled with "Great Experience" as follows:

Good day !

Recently, I have placed an order thru your website. The shipment was sent on may 28th and I already received it last friday, june the 8th. Very fast and order received as expected. Very impressive for an eastern Canada city.

Thanks to all at Lovemandarin

Every time we receive our customers’ compliment emails, we think we fully deserve it through our good-value service and hard working, and it will encourage us to do better in the future.

Mrtoga,

Because our English is not very good, specially in spoken and listening level, so we never telephone PayPal, we always fax documents to them, using the fax cover provided by PayPal with a 条码 on it, which is specially prepared for every PayPal customer. I think in this way it MAY be faster for you to solve your problem with PayPal.

[flameproof]

Because some of our customers choose to ship by sea,

For customers paying by credit card you should not do any sea shipments. Simply because the risk of complaint (and therefore chargeback) is much higher. And you don't gain anything at all from it. A customer will not buy somewhere else because he can't do see shipment. Think about it.

[elina]

Flameproof, thanks for your reminder.

More than 60% of our customers want to use sea mail shipment, because it’s cheaper:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/8024-grammar-vocabulary-texts

If we cancel sea mail transportation on our site, we will not have the better competition on the aspect of cheaper price than some other overseas online bookstores. And till now, no one complains, our customers are glad to receive their packages in time with cheaper price. In addition, we can also buy the insurance for the packages at the post office when mailing.

I think your online business is quite different from us, as you mentioned in another thread “My items are high profit”, so I guess you need to use a shipment method, which can let people do online tracking for the packages, like www.fedex.com.

[simonlaing]

Hi Elina,

I found that Paypal want you to have a certain number of successful transactions and or a Western bank account backing up your account to raise the limit.

I think it can be difficult. Espicially since it take 6 weeks to cut a check to China. That is a long time.

Anyway good luck,

have fun,

Simon:)

[elina]

Hi Simonlaing,

I’m sorry, my English is not very good, I cannot understand this sentence: “a Western bank account backing up your account to raise the limit.”, could you please explain it in an easier way in English or in Chinese?

[publiceducator]

Read this and you'll know: http://paidpal.blogdrive.com/

[Senzhi]

Elina, banks in Europe and the States offer in general a higher credit amount than Chinese bank. This is simply because in the EU and the States cost of living (as well as earnings) are much higher than in China (up to tenfold).

As paypal is an American company, they may find credits offered in some Asian countries (inlc. China) too low. Which is why they prefer banks in the west.

[elina]

Publiceducator，

As a Chinese, I have not enough English level and not enough time to read the whole article carefully at present, but I understand the title “PAYPAL-Pray when you use it!”. Thank you for the information.

Senzhi,

Thanks for the explanation. Then I guess the sentence of “a Western bank account backing up your account to raise the limit” may mean that “一个西方的银行帐户为你的（PayPal）帐户作担保，从而解冻被封的帐户”。

Recently, we found this one: https://www.ikobo.com/, it’s said on the internet, that it’s as famous/ secure as PayPal in US, could someone please tell me is that right?

[imron]

Elina, have you managed to get your account unfrozen yet?

Anyway, I'm not sure how famous iKobo is, but I've never heard of it before.

[elina]

Imron,

It's still frozen.

After log-in our account, we sent a message to PayPal as follows, but no reply:

Quote from PayPal email sent on 07 Jun 2007:

Your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this time. We have contacted your buyers to confirm they have received the items they have

purchased from you.

Once we have received confirmation from the buyers they have received their items from you, we will be able to review your account further.

Sincerely,

PayPal Account Review Department

INQUIRY: now it’s June 22, 2007, what about your review?

[muyongshi]

I had something like this happen with ebay just a couple weeks ago. The shut down my account for suspicious activity. I bought one item. Maybe it's because I didn't leave feedback? When asked they told me I had to jump through hoops and it wasn't worth it and never telling me what I did wrong.

I think as a general rule many online services like these are not the most reliable. I really hope this gets resolved soon!

[elina]

Some updates:

On 5 June 2007, PayPal emailed:

On 05/29/2007, I sent you an email regarding your PayPal account. As part of PayPal's commitment to excellence, I want to make sure I met your needs in my response. Would you please take a minute to answer a few questions to let me know how I did?

http://surveys.echosurvey.com/paypal/xxxxxxxx

To respond to our survey, please click on the web address above. If that does not work, please cut and paste the entire web address into the address field of your browser.

NOTE: Please respond within five days so that you can provide timely feedback to me. After 5 days, this invitation will expire.

Thank you for your help!

I thought they were 假惺惺的/ hypocritical, so I just ignored this email.

After PayPal thought it got all the documents it wanted, it sent an email on 07 June 2007:

Your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this time. We have contacted your buyers to confirm they have received the items they have purchased from you.

Once we have received confirmation from the buyers they have received their items from you, we will be able to review your account further.

Because some of our customers chose to ship by sea, which would need more time for the packages to get the destination. We were waiting for the final result.

On June 22, 2007, after log-in our account, we sent a message to PayPal as follows, but no reply:

Quote from PayPal email sent on 07 June 2007:

Your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this time. We have contacted your buyers to confirm they have received the items they have

purchased from you.

Once we have received confirmation from the buyers they have received their items from you, we will be able to review your account further.

Sincerely,

PayPal Account Review Department

INQUIRY: now it’s June 22, 2007, what about your review?

On June 26, 2007, we sent a fax to PayPal as follows:

Quote from PayPal email sent on 07 June 2007:

Your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this time. We have contacted your buyers to confirm they have received the items they have

purchased from you.

Once we have received confirmation from the buyers they have received their items from you, we will be able to review your account further.

Sincerely,

PayPal Account Review Department

INQUIRY: now it’s June 26, 2007, what about your review?

On 26 June 2007, PayPal answered:

We have received your faxed documents. But we're sorry, but your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this time. We need more information about your account before we can restore full access to your account. Please complete the steps below so that we may review your account further:

-Some of the tracking info are still on transmit, please contact us later when all of the items shows delivered.

On 27 June 2007, we faxed:

Quote from PayPal email sent on 26 June 2007:

-Some of the tracking info are still on transmit, please contact us later when all of the items shows delivered.

INQUIRY: as far as we know, our customer who chose the slowest shipping method by sea mail has received his package, because he initiatively sent a compliment email to say “thank you” to us. I wonder if you have ALREADY contacted our customers or you’re still waiting and have not contacted them yet?

[elina]

On 01 July 2007, PayPal emailed:

We have received your message and known your concern. But we're sorry, but your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this time. We need more information about your account before we can restore full access to your account. Please complete the steps below so that we may review your account further:

- Please contact your customer and let them provide the confirmation letter of receiving items from you to us.

Because we trusted what PayPal said in their email sent on June 07, 2007, in which they said they would contact our customers to see if they receive their packages or not, so we ourselves had not initiatively emailed our customers yet at that time. After getting this letter from PayPal, we began to write letters to our customers. Then we found one of the customers did not answer our emails, although we sent inquiry emails several times to him. So we were waiting for his reply.

On 08 July 2007, PayPal emailed:

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system. We recently contacted you after noticing an issue on your account. We requested information from you for the following reason:

We have observed activity in this account that is unusual or potentially high risk.

Case ID Number: XXXXXXXXXX

This is a reminder to log in to PayPal as soon as possible.

Be sure to log in securely by opening a new browser window and typing the PayPal URL. Once you log in, you will be provided with steps to restore your account access. We appreciate your understanding as we work to ensure account safety.

In accordance with PayPal's User Agreement, your account access will remain limited until the issue has been resolved. Unfortunately, if access to your account remains limited for an extended period of time, it may result in further limitations or eventual account closure. We encourage you to log in to your PayPal account as soon as possible to help avoid this.

To review your account and some or all of the information that PayPal used to make its decision to limit your account access, please visit the Resolution Center. If, after reviewing your account information, you seek further clarification regarding your account access, please contact PayPal by visiting the Help Center and clicking "Contact Us".

We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect your account. We apologize for any inconvenience.

After log-in to our account, there isn’t any further instruction. So on 09 July 2007, we faxed PayPal with all the feedback from our customers who wrote us to inform that they have received their packages already for some time, we also faxed the explanation for the one who did not reply:

Transaction No. XXXXXXXX

According to PayPal request, we have respectively sent emails four times to the customer to ask if he has received his package or not, but no reply so far. I think maybe he is out for holiday or even he does not use that email again. We have experienced this kind of things before, once a time, one of our customers in Australia asked us to inform him when the revised edition of a book comes out, but when we wrote to him, no respond. After some time, he initiatively wrote a letter to us to ask about the information on the revised edition of the book, and told us he has not used the former email address any more.

If PayPal worries about this transaction No. XXXXXXXX, you could freeze the relevant money for this transaction for a reasonable long time, in case later it’s possible that this customer cannot receive his package and complains with PayPal, then he would be refunded. But because other customers have received their packages, so I think it’s reasonable for PayPal to unfreeze the other money, right?

In the morning on 10 July 2007, we faxed PayPal again:

Yesterday on July 9, 2007 in Beijing time, we sent a fax with 6 pages to PayPal, on the sixth page, we wrote:

Transaction No. XXXXXXXX

According to PayPal request, we have respectively sent emails four times to the customer to ask if he has received his package or not, but no reply so far. I think maybe he is out for holiday or even he does not use that email again. We have experienced this kind of things before, once a time, one of our customers in Australia asked us to inform him when the revised edition of a book comes out, but when we wrote to him, no respond. After some time, he initiatively wrote a letter to us to ask about the information on the revised edition of the book, and told us he has not used the former email address any more.

If PayPal worries about this transaction No. 9DE97060EG788791V, you could freeze the relevant money for this transaction for a reasonable long time, in case later it’s possible that this customer cannot receive his package and complains with PayPal, then he would be refunded. But because other customers have received their packages, so I think it’s reasonable for PayPal to unfreeze the other money, right?

But today on July 10, 2007 in Beijing time, we got his reply as follows:

My package was sent on 21/05/2007 and got here in Brazil on 06/06/2007. Pretty quick! Despite the distance.

At noon on 10 July 2007 in Beijing time, PayPal emailed:

Our review is complete and we have restored your account.

We appreciate your patience and thank you for your help in making PayPal the safest and most trusted online payment solution.

11 July 2007, PayPal emailed:

We understand that your PayPal account may have been temporarily limited due to questions or concerns by our Account Review team. Thank you very much for your cooperation during this process. We are pleased that your account has now been reinstated.

As part of PayPal's Commitment to excellence, we would like to ask you to take just a few minutes to answer questions about PayPal's account limitation process.

To respond to our survey, please click on the web address below. If that does not work, please cut and paste the entire web address into the address field of your browser.

http://surveys.echosurvey.com/paypal/yyyyyyyyyy

NOTE: Please respond within five days. After 5 days, this invitation will expire.

Thank you for your feedback and continued business with PayPal!

I was busy, and did not want to take the time to do the survey.

[elina]

Some advices for the seller who uses PayPal or whose account is frozen:

Keep all the documents/emails/receipts/invoices/evidences on file, at least for the latest 2 months. We ourselves keep these for years.

Make a quick feedback to PayPal, better in 1-2 days (we always do so, except once that we need to wait for our customers’ confirmation emails), don’t exceed one week. We have seen on the internet that if the feedback speed is too slow, which may make PayPal think that you may be producing some fake documents during the time.

Don’t trust PayPal’s saying that they will contact your customers. You should initiative contact your customers immediately, once you estimate they have already received their packages, in order to support you in time in the PayPal investigation.

In some of PayPal’s emails, they wrote:

If you are faxing information, you must use the cover page provided by

PayPal. The cover page contains information specific to you and using it ensures that your documents are routed and handled in a timely manner. To print the cover page, log into your account and click on the fax documents link on the "Limited Account Access Details" page.

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link located in the top right corner of any page. If your inquiry is regarding a claim, log in to your PayPal account and go to the Resolution Center.

Personally I think using fax is the fastest way to communicate with PayPal Account Review Department, see my No. 41 post in this thread:

we always fax documents to them, using the fax cover provided by PayPal with a 条码 on it, which is specially prepared for every PayPal customer.

I don’t know many things about PayPal company. At a GUESS, due to its long-term running and abundant experiences, I think PayPal’s system is good, which means if something can be done automatically when using PayPal, it’s convenient and maybe safe. But this advantage can be weakened, if there’s manpower service involved. I think:

PayPal内部管理混乱，人浮于事，人员做事漫不经心，作为一个团队，对某一个客户的审查会需要若干个员工轮流来完成，而员工之间对工作的交接有问题。PayPal在全世界有上亿客户，也许大公司都这样？/ The management is a chaos inside PayPal, some of the staff work with an inadvertence/unconcern attitude. And as a team, the investigation towards a certain customer needs several different PayPal clerks to achieve, but there’s some problem on the cooperation and communication regarding the case. PayPal has over 100 million customers in the world, maybe more or less, every large company is the same as PayPal?

[elina]

We have fully studied on PayEase, which is also a “第三方支付/ Third Party Payment”, then we found it has several disadvantages, and we don’t want to use it.

Today in the afternoon, we have safely received the money withdrawn from our PayPal account to our Chinese bank. PayPal has added wire transfer withdrawal method for Chinese people, which is fast and convenient, but with higher handling charge. And today, we have added PayPal payment method to our site again.

According to the information from other Chinese people on the internet and my feeling, personally I think even if PayPal does not discriminate against Chinese people, it is 警觉的/ alert towards Chinese people (maybe it’s the same between “discriminate” and “alert”?). We will be alert towards PayPal:

1. keep a reasonable low balance in our PayPal account.

2. if the money that we need to collect from our customers reaches a “relative large” amount, we will request our customers to pay through other payment methods on our site, instead of using PayPal.

3. Don’t ship a package to an unverified address that is different from the address originally input in the buyer’s PayPal account, even if the buyer asks to do so. See the case:

http://www.aboutpaypal.org/paypal_sucks

Several times we have ever done so according to our customers’ request, luckily no problem arising, but in the future, we won’t do that. Since PayPal is not reasonable in this respect.

I kinda remember to see this sentence in some business books, something like: 没有永远的敌人，只有永远的利益/ there’s no enemies for ever, just benefit involved for ever. PayPal needs Chinese people to earn the handling charge in this large market (maybe, I SEEM to remember that the remittance into China through Western Union is steadily increased by 40% every year), although it is still “alert” towards Chinese people. And we need PayPal to give convenience to our overseas customers when shopping. Furthermore, we will continue to pay attention to checkout.google.com and 2checkout, in order to see if they will be used by Chinese people in the future.

[gougou]

Elina, glad to see your problems have finally been resolved!

Thanks for writing this up and letting everybody know!

[elina]

Thank you, Gougou, I’m glad too, almost believed PayPal would not return the money. I think it can be used, but must with great caution.

[gato]

We have fully studied on PayEase, which is also a “第三方支付/ Third Party Payment”, then we found it has several disadvantages, and we don’t want to use it.

What kind of disadvantages?

[elina]

One of the disadvantages is due to the 外汇管制，we can only receive RMB from them, instead of USD.

[gato]

Is that bad?