It all started innocently enough. I was placing an online order. When I went to check out, I noted, dimly, that the shopping cart was powered by PayPal.

Filled out a page of info, hit submit and was told that I already had a PayPal account, and to log in. Now, I think about 2 years ago when PayPal was new, I did create an account, and never used it.

So I can’t log in. And my email address from back then is long gone. They do have a way to deal with this: give them the old email address and complete the credit card number that you signed up with.

I no longer have that credit card. So now what?

I go to the help page and fill out a form explaining the situation. What do I get in reply? An email saying I should log into my account in order to update my credit card info.

Irritated, I go through the whole order again, this time using a different telephone number. They STILL flag me as having an account. They must be using my address. Now, my name is Peter Smith. If you go to any moderately large high rise apartment building in America, you’ll probably find that over the past few years 4 different “Peter Smiths” have lived there.

OK, back to square two. The email they sent me telling my to log in and change my credit card number has the URL of a help page. I click on that, and I’m told I must be logged in to get help. In the event I can’t log in, it gives me an email address to write to.

I explain my experience in an email and send it to the specified email address. And what happens? I get an auto-response saying that they don’t accept email at that address and that all correspondence should go to through the web site, and they include 2 links, one to the page I can’t go to because I’m not logged in, and one to the page that I started out on.

No where can I find a phone number or a person to talk to. All the choices on the help form are going to get me autoresponses. I’m totally fucked. My only resort is to contact the vendor and ask them if I can phone in an order….

PayPal… you totally SUCK.