Paypal really are a joke

and they’ve pissed me off.

Recently I applied for a Payments Pro* upgrade to my account. They sent an email declining my application (after some time and requesting id, confirming amounts and giving the impression all was ok) to my personal email address. That would be the email address registered to a Paypal account in no way associated with the business account I made the application from.

I then received a second email confirming my application and outlining the further steps. This email was sent to the right email address. Understandably I was a little confused. I replied to this email asking for clarification as I’d had an email to my personal account. Instead of an apology and an explanation I just got the standard decline email back with this extra line bunged at the top:

Please disregard the previous email sent in error. Please excuse us for any misunderstanding.

I don’t take this as an apology or an explanation of why my account was declined, accepted, declined or why they emailed the wrong email address (technically breaching the Data Protection Act).

I asked for an explanation again and have had no response. I have chased up asking why I was being ignored. I’m still being ignored.

I had a bit of a moan on twitter linking to the Paypal UK twitter account. Most companies would pick up on that. Paypal UK have got as far as following me but haven’t bothered to send me one of their “I can help with this, DM details” type tweet. I don’t follow Paypal UK but they could still @ me.

Brian from the Paypal Merchant Team and Brenda O’Leary ignoring people is not the way to deal with customers who are unhappy. You are a prime example of poor customer service and why people complain. You’ve lost Paypal a customer. That will mean nothing to Paypal I know but I like to make a stand no matter how small.

To clarify I’m not unhappy about the decision. I did email Brenda separately in response to the decline email asking for a reason why but she hasn’t replied to that email either. Paypal are odd like that and, truth be told, after this experience I’m pleased because I’m left with no faith in them whatsoever.

Will I still use paypal? As a buyer only where there is no alternative (and that will mean there is a sole supplier and it is the only payment method they will accept). As a business, only when I really have to (I expect I’ll have to for affiliate payments on an upcoming project for non UK affiliates). Apart form that I’ll avoid them like I’d avoid the plague. Will that have an impact on business? Will people abandon shopping carts? Possibly. It’s a risk I think is worth taking.

Ironically another member of the Merchant Team replied to the original email seeking clarification without giving any.

It’s now been four days with no communication. Do I expect any? No?.

*The only reason I opted for Paypal Pro was the for the ease of multi currency as they either let you have currency accounts or they’ll do the conversion and settle in the currency of your main account.

David Ferguson: Twitter for Alfred Update

This definitely deserves a reblog. I can’t wait to to try this out on Alfred. I suspect I’ll mainly use it for firing off a tweet or DM without getting distracted by my timeline and also for following a user.

jdfwarrior:

I just thought I would throw up a quick update in case you guys didn’t see it on Twitter, but, I was able to get direct messages, mentions, follow, unfollow, block, and unblock all added to the Twitter for Alfred extension today. Things are coming along nicely.

I’ve had several people ask if the…

I woke up to the news of Steve this morning. More accurately I was asleep and my partner (who was up) woke me to tell me. It’s not often I feel overly saddened by the death of someone in the limelight. It is sad whenever someone dies but at the back of my mind I always remember something Eddie Izzard said in a gig after Diana died. It was along the lines of “My mum died when I was young and no one gave a shit”. It wasn’t a slur on Diana but making the point that people die all the time. I am deeply sad today and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t shed some tears in bed as I was looking at other peoples tweets, posts and comments about Steve. My tweet, before I read anything else, was simply “RIP Steve Jobs. Whatever your views on Apple, the man was a visionary genius.” This, however, moved me most. The picture says it all but the words are spot on. cultm.ac/pmasYA I do remain fully confident that good ship Apple will continue to innovate and improve without Steve at the helm.
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I woke up to the news of Steve this morning. More accurately I was asleep and my partner (who was up) woke me to tell me.

It’s not often I feel overly saddened by the death of someone in the limelight. It is sad whenever someone dies but at the back of my mind I always remember something Eddie Izzard said in a gig after Diana died. It was along the lines of “My mum died when I was young and no one gave a shit”. It wasn’t a slur on Diana but making the point that people die all the time.

I am deeply sad today and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t shed some tears in bed as I was looking at other peoples tweets, posts and comments about Steve.

My tweet, before I read anything else, was simply “RIP Steve Jobs. Whatever your views on Apple, the man was a visionary genius.”

This, however, moved me most. The picture says it all but the words are spot on. cultm.ac/pmasYA

I do remain fully confident that good ship Apple will continue to innovate and improve without Steve at the helm.

sparrowmail: The lonesome death of attachments Sparrow 1.4 is a special release for us. We took the time to improve our little bird both in terms of UI and performance. You should notice right away that Sparrow is now faster than ever. It’s also been a while we wanted to integrate CloudApp. We use it daily at Sparrow and we thought it would make a lot of sense to get it into Sparrow. A video is worth a thousand words so have a look below to see how it can make you more efficient and introduce a little magic in your mail experience: All you have to do is activate the option in Sparrow Preferences and attachments should never be a problem again. Of course, that’s not all. We also added: A reversed thread ordering like in Gmail (older messages on top) Pull-to-refresh and we have made some improvement on the UI: Default image in conversation view when no message or multiple message are selected Window resize issue Default compose window size Message list default size is kept when modifying the sidebar state Sidebar animations when showing / hiding Default minimal size of windows Important changes were also made under the hood, with a brand new draft management system which makes Sparrow: Send mail faster Behave better with bad network/ offline behavior Synchronize faster Bug fixes: Zoho compatibility Lotus Domino compatibility Free compatibility Dovecot server  Crash on Send & Archive and various crashes Animation bug when unminimizing Sparrow from the Menu bar icon Hanging issue on Lion Erased space in signature ‘Not Spam’ option in the Spam folder Open the Mac App Store to update your Sparrow and make the most of this new features or simply check for update. If you haven’t Sparrow already, you can get it here.
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sparrowmail:

The lonesome death of attachments

Sparrow 1.4 is a special release for us. We took the time to improve our little bird both in terms of UI and performance. You should notice right away that Sparrow is now faster than ever.

It’s also been a while we wanted to integrate CloudApp. We use it daily at Sparrow and we thought it would make a lot of sense to get it into Sparrow.

A video is worth a thousand words so have a look below to see how it can make you more efficient and introduce a little magic in your mail experience:

All you have to do is activate the option in Sparrow Preferences and attachments should never be a problem again.

Of course, that’s not all. We also added:

  • A reversed thread ordering like in Gmail (older messages on top)

  • Pull-to-refresh

Pull to refresh


and we have made some improvement on the UI:

  • Default image in conversation view when no message or multiple message are selected
  • Window resize issue
  • Default compose window size
  • Message list default size is kept when modifying the sidebar state
  • Sidebar animations when showing / hiding
  • Default minimal size of windows



Important changes were also made under the hood, with a brand new draft management system which makes Sparrow:

  • Send mail faster
  • Behave better with bad network/ offline behavior
  • Synchronize faster



Bug fixes:

  • Zoho compatibility
  • Lotus Domino compatibility
  • Free compatibility
  • Dovecot server 
  • Crash on Send & Archive and various crashes
  • Animation bug when unminimizing Sparrow from the Menu bar icon
  • Hanging issue on Lion
  • Erased space in signature
  • ‘Not Spam’ option in the Spam folder



Open the Mac App Store to update your Sparrow and make the most of this new features or simply check for update.

If you haven’t Sparrow already, you can get it here.

Ooooh the Alfred master teaching. Could he cope with me?! :p preppeller: Over the past 3 days, I have run a one-on-one training course with John Abel @IscariotJ - a competent programmer who wanted to learn Cocoa / Interface Builder and the process of creating a Mac App from scratch. The wonderful thing about one-on-one training is that the course can be specifically tailored to the requirements of the trainee. In this case, John had a good idea based around a music player (shhh for now) and wanted the UI for it. We have created a fully functioning music player *from scratch* which covers almost every good quality and useful UI and Cocoa paradigm I could dig up. You can [hopefully] expect John to submit this to the App Store in the coming months. If you are interested in learning, pop me a tweet @preppeller :)
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Ooooh the Alfred master teaching. Could he cope with me?! :p

preppeller:

Over the past 3 days, I have run a one-on-one training course with John Abel @IscariotJ - a competent programmer who wanted to learn Cocoa / Interface Builder and the process of creating a Mac App from scratch.

The wonderful thing about one-on-one training is that the course can be specifically tailored to the requirements of the trainee. In this case, John had a good idea based around a music player (shhh for now) and wanted the UI for it.

We have created a fully functioning music player *from scratch* which covers almost every good quality and useful UI and Cocoa paradigm I could dig up. You can [hopefully] expect John to submit this to the App Store in the coming months.

If you are interested in learning, pop me a tweet @preppeller :)

preppeller: Just under a week since 0.9.9 dev 1, I bring you the second dev release. Quite a few bits changed for this again, notably: General bug fixes and improvements Add back the Lion Compatibility button Improved more attractive branded Powerpack tab Match ‘action’ extensions by title, not name Contact’s Note field now shown in Contact Card Viewer (switchable in prefs) Prevent Alfred from crashing with two {query} strings in an extension title Only show growl eject notification if there isn’t an eject error Allow for relative workflows in specific extensions folder (for easier exporting) Show nice visible growl icon on Script Extensions which use Growl (links to growl.info) Correctly output UTF8 from scripts to Growl More {query} escaping options for shell scripts Ctrl N/P bindings in Address Book contact card Offer some default options for the file filter extension metadata fields when clicking [+] Small fixes for future iTunes compatibility My plan is to freeze development now for around 10 days to pick up any problems (as this is a huge release), then out on to auto-updating pre-release and hopefully general release within about 3 weeks from today :) Without further ado, download the 0.9.9 dev 2 build if you would like to help me validate: 0.9.9 Dev 2 Build Read the full change log for the 0.9.9 release :) Enjoy,Andrew :)@preppeller Picture is Bumblebee from Transformers the Movie because of the new Extensions!
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preppeller:

Just under a week since 0.9.9 dev 1, I bring you the second dev release. Quite a few bits changed for this again, notably:

  • General bug fixes and improvements
  • Add back the Lion Compatibility button
  • Improved more attractive branded Powerpack tab
  • Match ‘action’ extensions by title, not name
  • Contact’s Note field now shown in Contact Card Viewer (switchable in prefs)
  • Prevent Alfred from crashing with two {query} strings in an extension title
  • Only show growl eject notification if there isn’t an eject error
  • Allow for relative workflows in specific extensions folder (for easier exporting)
  • Show nice visible growl icon on Script Extensions which use Growl (links to growl.info)
  • Correctly output UTF8 from scripts to Growl
  • More {query} escaping options for shell scripts
  • Ctrl N/P bindings in Address Book contact card
  • Offer some default options for the file filter extension metadata fields when clicking [+]
  • Small fixes for future iTunes compatibility

My plan is to freeze development now for around 10 days to pick up any problems (as this is a huge release), then out on to auto-updating pre-release and hopefully general release within about 3 weeks from today :)

Without further ado, download the 0.9.9 dev 2 build if you would like to help me validate:

0.9.9 Dev 2 Build

Read the full change log for the 0.9.9 release :)

Enjoy,
Andrew :)
@preppeller

Picture is Bumblebee from Transformers the Movie because of the new Extensions!