Pay Pal Nightmare
I'm sending this link to 2000 people in my email groups, 1000 or more of my last buyers and inquirers of auction and other items that I had for sale, all my friends and family, every TV and Radio station I can find, every newspaper (national, international, large and small), every attorney I can find, and most importantly to the FICC, ACLU, NAACP, National Enquirer, Weekly World News, Globe and Star, and I'm submitting this link into at least 150,000 search engines with my own submitters. That's what I do ~ promotion is my business!
If any of you would like to attach this link for a while to your emails as a signature, I'd appreciate it. I send out almost 1,000 letters a day and this link will appear as my signature in large red letters. It doesn't have to be this link, but the link below explaining what and how Pay Pal restricted me and held my money for 30 days this coming Sunday.
I'm making a web page because I need help. I can promote a web page better than an email.
I have over 5,000 of my own web pages on the net and many of them advertise my auctions and my other items for sale. I'd say there are somewhere between 200 and 1000 Pay Pal buttons on my pages that I am having to use my valuable time to take off all those pages. That's a time-consuming job.
Pay Pal ruined me. I want the world to know what they did and how they did it and I want to help those other people on the net that this was done to which I didn't quite believe myself until it happened to me.
If there's a class action suit
going on against Pay Pal, I want to get in on it.
If there isn't, I'd like to start one.
Everyone can help. You with the submitters, how about a freebee here ~ each of you with submitters, send this link to 100,000 search engines, FFA and classified sites.
You who send mass mailings, put this link on the bottom of your email pages.
You with web pages, put my link on your page.
Business owners, print this story and hang it on your wall.
You who know lawyers, please help find me one who will work on consignment ~ he or she can take everything he can get from Pay Pal except compensation for what I have lost because of them. I might have lost only a couple thousand dollars in money, but I lost 10 times that in other ways and a good lawyer can 100 times that!
If you have Pay Pal and are doing fine, keep it going, but don't leave them one penny at the end of any day ~ send it to your bank on a daily basis.
They have restricted my account and used my money almost 30 days. If they do this to half of their $12 million custsomers from time to time, they make a lot of fast interest.
I will tell you step by step how they held up my money and exactly what they did. They have treated me like a criminal and they are the real criminals and should not be allowed to stay in business. What they did to me is unconstitutional. They have violated my civil rights. They have held my operating money and have nearly put me out of business. But they are the ones who are going to lose because I'm a fighter and I will fight them until I win. If they offered me $10,000 right now to keep the peace, I would not take it. It's not enough for what I have lost in the last 30 days. To date Pay Pal has not given me a reason for restricting my account.
I believe in fraud protection. I believe in checking on people from time to time, but the way Pay Pal made a new excuse every few days to hold my money is way out of line. They are the frauds and should be found out. They told one customer today that I was paid for his auction. He believed them over me. Yes, the customer paid into my Pay Pal account, but Pay Pal hasn't released any money to me since before May 16th.
First of all, one of the reasons I'm making a web page instead of an email is that this would overfill anyone's email box. Besides, I can promote a web page a million times farther than I can an email.
Because Pay Pal held my money ~ saying this is a "routine" check, but all the while allowing new money to pile into the account each day, not sending me the payments my customers made in good faith, which in turn filled my mailbox so that I had to get another box and another and another and the mailboxes are so full of mail I can't reply and send to anyone. I'm having to copy and paste my letters to another mailbox and then delete in the first box. No sooner do I answer and delete 50 that there are 50 more. Some people have written two and four and more times. After I click and open them, if I can't answer because the box is so full, I forget who I answered and who I didn't.
First I would like to say to all the people who bought from cowboy-george on eBay that if you paid with Pay Pal before May 16th, you should have received your item within a few days or no more than a week because I shipped everything within a day or two upon receipt of the money from Pay Pal. I requested the money to be sent to my bank every evening and it showed up in the bank within two days most times.
If you paid with BillPointe or Money Order by mail, your order was sent within a couple days after receipt of your payment. BillPointe automatically deposits into my bank and your payment shows up within a couple of days after you sent your payment. Then I shipped orders out within a day or two of that payment reaching my bank.
It's been this way as long as I've been selling. The secret to success is to be polite and answer everyone as soon as possble, package good, ship fast and leave good feedback. I know all this and I have complied by all the rules all my life.
If you paid for your items on the cowboy-george auctions with Pay Pal on May 16th or after, you might not have received your item. And it doesn't look like Pay Pal is going to give me the money you paid in good faith. I can only apologize for myself, I can't apologize for Pay Pal. They have made one excuse after another to hold up my money from you, the customers, and I can't send you your items without having that money I needed for shipping, payroll, eBay listing and sellng fees, and more. If it were one or two items, I could do that, but it's about 100 customers, and lots more items. I have the items. I have 100,000 items. I have never had a customer complain about an item. They have all loved what I sent, the packaging, the speed of shipment.
George and I decided since I'm 60 and he will be 62 soon, we're going to retire, and go big on eBay. So, we started up again with software and we sell the cowboy stuff and antiques on our sites. We also have the "Ghost Town Gazette" newspaper and we sell out of it and from that site. I have many other sites I sell from and all have Pay Pal buttons on them which I am removing as fast as I can. Please don't be calling George, as he doesn't understand much of what is going on. He just got out of the hospital recently and has his own problems. Then these calls started coming last week, with people screaming at him and threatening him. So I had to tell him about Pay Pal. He can't understand how Pay Pal can do this. Well, nobody I've talked with can understand but if I can find some of those sites again where people got together and were talking about it, I will listen better and join them.
When Pay Pal restricted my account and asked for ID, phone bill, bank account info, I sent it and I was answering letters saying we received your payment, and your order will be shipped within a couple of days, as the money usually got into our bank in a couple of days. Well, the shipping girl shipped on when it reached the bank. She didn't know it wasn't coming. I didn't know they didn't send it as requested. Days or a week later, a bank deposit from Pay Pal was REVERSED!!!!! Can You Imagine!!!!! Then they asked me to refax and give more bank info because the faxes weren't clear. Well, all this time I was still telling people their items would be shipped and thinking they were shipped. And I thought Pay Pal finally released the money to my bank. THEN they asked for more bank info, and I faxed it. These things were all days apart. Then we realized they're not sending any money to the bank, but still accepting money. I was on the phone 2 and 3 and more times per day asking for a supervisor ~ asking for someone to stop the payments from coming into Pay Pal. I was still shipping items anyway thinking the money would be released any day, I faxed so much info to Pay Pal. They have all my bank account info and more. THEN last week they said I passed all the faxed info tests, but they had to check with five people who paid me to make sure they received their items. I told them to check with people from before May 16th when they restricted my account. I called and called last week to find out if that was done, and they kept saying they hadn't heard back from anyone they tried to reach. That's a tall story. If I write to anyone who bought from me, they answer immediately or within a day, unless out of town. Over a week went by and they said they hadn't reached anyone yet, and then a letter came saying now they want proof that I own the items I sell ~ invoices on everything. I don't know who bought what and where all those invoices are. I was getting the feeling those people I talked with long ago were right ~ new excuses every few days or every week to hold up my money. Some of the people on the phone told me they're checking to make sure I'm not a fraud. One on the phone told me they got a complaint on me and that's why they were running this check on me. Another told me my account looks suspicious but didn't say why it looks suspicious. Maybe because 20 people a day started buying from me? With 1000 auctions on my site there were more than that, but some paid with BillPointe, some with Money Orders.
Well, now there are complaints on me with Pay Pal, that have run over to eBay, and Pay Pal still wants invoices for all the items I have sold and gotten paid for through my Pay Pal account which I have had for years. And, they haven't reached anyone to find out if they received their orders. It all sounds suspicious to me and they've turned it around to make me the target of suspicion.
So, this last week, I ran out of money and couldn't send any more of the items out that I didn't receive the money for. So, this past week I started telling people to please ask for a refund if they paid with Pay Pal after May 16th. You can't ask for payment from me for an auction ~ I'm blocked from using that money. But you can go to the SERVICE CENTER and file for a REFUND. And I will approve it when the form letter comes. You can get your money back in a day or less that way. List the Auction ID #, name of item, your same email address you sent the Pay Pal money with, and you will be refunded.
If you still want the item you won on auction, I still have the items. I even got billed for the listing fees and the selling fees on eBay. I lost all the way around. Be sure to list the auction # and the item, amount. Shipping & handling in USA and Canada is $7.50 (3 items for $12.00 ~ 10 for $20.00) ~ outside of USA $15.00. Large items like computers, laptops, LCD monitors are higher ~ but most are listed on the auction pages. Send a Money Order to:
Cowboy George
P.O. Box 14446
Las Vegas, NV 89114
I will list everything we have on the www.cowboygeorge.com site in our For Sale section.
We probably have 100,000 items from covered wagons to casino chips to indian artifacts, marriage carriage, paintings, books, historical items, war items, cowboy boots, antique jewelry, mountain property, 39 rooms full of stuff in the old hotel, computers, software, astrology readings and computer programs, cars, trucks, 73 horses, ponies, dogs, cats, chickens.
By the way, George doesn't get too close to the computer, it's me, Lorraine, who runs his auctions and sends out the letters. Sometimes he'll sit with me, but he'd rather be out with his horses and ponies than inside with a computer. And poor George got all these nasty phone calls from people who were calling him a thief and he didn't even know what they were talking about. It made him feel really bad. And now since they're starting to tell me Pay Pal told them I received their payments, they're calling me a liar because Pay Pal made me out to be one. Pay Pal is the liar and people need to know about it. Pay Pal went as far as to tell one girl there were other complaints on me. They didn't tell ME there were any complaints on me. That certainly didn't help my business. Now I'm sending people to Pay Pay to ask for a refund, and now that there are people asking for refunds, I don't suppose they will ever release the money even though I've complied and faxed their every request. Now with the mailboxes filling up from people asking where their items are, I can't get to the mail fast enough and it's also filling up a couple times a day and bouncing, so people are complaining about me to eBay. It is a nightmare and it all started with Pay Pal because of a "routine" check. If they didn't like what I was doing, they should have closed the account and not taken in any more money, but they kept on taking it and taking it and I called and kept calling. I was on the phone for hours a day some days, asking to speak to a supervisor or someone who could stop the payments going into Pay Pal. Last night I was told by a very snippy girl that "supervisors don't talk on the phone." Most of their people have been horrible. There were two nice ones in the last two weeks and that's all.
Now Pay Pal sent a letter a couple days ago and wants proof that I own the items I sell. If I didn't own them, I couldn't very well send them out so fast. Except for some land and two vehicles, we own everything we have, and we don't owe anybody! The old historic hotel has been paid of for many many years. George bought it in 1971.
Well, that was the last straw with Pay Pal's newest excuse to hold up my money longer ~ invoices for what I sell. There must be 500 invoices for just the software and computer equipment. It's all new and factory packaged. I was listing so much I kept over 1000 items on the cowboy-george eBay site at all times.
Since the mailboxes from the eBay site are filling up so fast, below are some of my other email boxes and sites. I don't want anyone to think I'm avoiding them. I just can't keep up with the mail so I'm sending this web link to everyone as fast as I can so you can all read the story when I finish it. Right now I have only these two pages done. I will continue tomorrow and write more. And I will list more items in my For Sale section as soon as I can.
I just want to stop the letters. I can't keep up with all of them. So, if you paid Pay Pal after May 16th, they have kept your money and not released it to me, therefore I can't send you the item you ordered, because it looks like Pay Pal will keep my money indefinitely, with new excuses every week to keep on keeping it, so you'd best ask for a REFUND, not a payment!
It was only this past week that I realized no money has come from Pay Pal and the shipping girl hasn't sent out much since the end of May because the bank account was empty. She wasn't aware that Pay Pal was holding up money. I wasn't aware that she wasn't shipping from the Pay Pal receipts, but from the bank receipts.
With all this uncalled for mess and extra work for me with mailings, removing Pay Pal logos, phone calls to Pay Pay and much more, now I've gotten behind with sending out other orders. And the letters are still pouring in. Most of the people have been very nice, but some are heartless, cruel and downright nasty. Pay Pal caused all this.
If you receive this link twice that means you are in more than one of my many mailboxes I've had to create to keep forwarding the mail to so I wouldn't have to delete it.
Friday, June 14, 2002: Today I requested in an email to Pay Pal, that they refund the money to all those people who paid in good faith, whose money was not sent to me, which in-turn means I cannot fulfill their orders. Pay Pal sent a form letter saying they might need up to 30 days to review my request!!!
BEST EMAIL:
cowboygeorge@cowboygeorge.com the eBay email
that I can forward
to a new clear box every now and then since Wintimes is my own site.
cowboygeorge2002@hotmail.com (keeps filling up)
not nearly finished....lots more to come....
I did find I'm not the only one this happened to ~ check out this one:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/02/23/pay_pal/
...and I will add others as I find them.
I will update our site:
Items For Sale
The song on this page is called "Unforgiven" ~ aggrevating, isn't it!