PayPal subtle discrimination?

[Hazumu]

I mentioned my experience with PayPal in this topic.  Others mentioned their experiences with trying to get their names changed and having to delete and re-register to effect the change.

I was recently sent a customer satisfaction survey to complete -- but it was addressed to my old name.  That was the tip-off something was wrong.  I checked my paypal account and found that after sending a scan of the certified court document (per their instructions) and having a week go by, the old name still exists.

I completed the survey, all right.

If you've had an experience - either good or bad - with PayPal, would you please take the time to document it here?

Below are text of the e-mails I got from PayPal and the essays I submitted to the survey.

Karen

Dear [OLD_NAME],

Thank you for contacting PayPal, my name is Vin and I am happy to assist you today.

You can change the name on your account only for a typographical error or a legal name change. We cannot change account ownership (your name to another person's name), for security reasons.

To submit a name change, please submit a request through our secure form.

   1.  Log in to your account at https://www.paypal.com/.

   2.  Click the "Contact Us" link.

   3.  Click "Contact Customer Service."

   4.  In the "Choose a Topic" box, select "My Account Profile." In the "Choose a Subtopic" box, select "Name Change."

   5.  Click "Continue."

   6.  Select the type of name change you would like to make and click "Continue."

   7.  Follow the online instructions.

You can upload the requested files or fax the cover sheet along with the requested documents. Since uploaded files are received almost instantly and electronically attached to the claim details, our agent can review your claim more quickly. Faxed documents are reviewed in the order they are received and generally require 3-5 business days for the review process to be completed. Occasionally a longer time period is required, for instance if the fax is illegible or pages are missing.

It is my pleasure to assist you. Thank you for choosing PayPal.

Sincerely,
Vin
PayPal Community Support
PayPal, an eBay Company

Dear [OLD_NAME],

On 07/09/2007, I spoke to you regarding your PayPal account.  As part of PayPal's commitment to excellence, I want to make sure I met your needs during our conversation.  Would you please take a minute to answer a few questions to let me know how I did?

{link to survey - deleted}

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!

Kervin
PayPal Customer Support

** An important note from the survey vendor **

PayPal, as the party who controls the data collected in this survey, may use your responses together with existing data it has about you to ensure its products and services meet your needs. PayPal will treat data collected from you in accordance with PayPal's privacy policy. To review this privacy policy, please contact PayPal or visit PayPal's web site.

If you want to be excluded from future surveys and survey correspondence, please click below:
{link - deleted}

Based on my experience and the experience I've heard that other transgendered have had with PayPal, PayPal is Transphobic.  For me, the one thing PayPal could do to improve its customer service is make it as easy here for a transgendered person to change their name as it is for a newlywed woman to change her name anywhere simply by providing a legal document.

I uploaded my court-ordered name change document on Sunday, 8 July 2007, as instructed by Message from PayPal Customer Support:  (KMM59251451V22422L0KM) :kd1
As of Sunday 15 Jul 2007, my old name is still on my account.  It should not take over a week to change my name after I complied with PayPal's instructions and provided a legal document.  Many others in my situation (transgendered), say the only way they could get resolution even after following PayPal's directions was to close their account and open a new one in their legal names.  I don't want to have to do this.  If I close my account, I will think long and hard about opening a new account with PayPal, as I suspect I may be 're-rated' somehow in that transaction.  I'm also writing of my experience with PayPal in several Transgender forums so that others are aware that PayPal is incapable or unwilling to show the transgender community simple, basic, deserved human respect by handling our requests for name change easily and in a timely manner.

The representative provided the information he had available to him to me to instruct me how to make the changes to the name on my account.  Also, after I corrected him at least twice, he did refer to me using 'ma'am' and female pronouns (which is the respectful way to treat a transgendered individual.)  But the e-mail he sent out came addressed to my old name.  Even if this is built into the customer service e-mail system (it's 'hard-wired' that the e-mail will bear the name on the account,) Vin could have addressed me by my legal name somewhere in the body of the e-mail.

[Cindi Jones]

I'd give it some more time and reminders Karen.  I'm not so sure that they are transphobic as they are inept at doing business.  This whole changing your name thang is a pain in the rear is it not?

Cindi

[tinkerbell]

Karen, I'm just wondering here...wouldn't it have been easier to open a new paypal account with a different email, a different card, etc, etc, etc? 

tink

[Ms Bev]

...wouldn't it have been easier to open a new paypal account with a different email, a different card, etc, etc, etc? 

tink

Karen.....this is exactly what I did.  I used my same address, same soc. sec, new name etc. with different credit card.  Bingo!  No problem at all.



Bev

[Hazumu]

In my mind, it shouldn't be that hard to change.  Someone, perhaps several someones, have 'the juice' to do it.

If newly-married women are getting their names messed up like I'm getting my name messed up, then it's ineptitude.  If they get their names changed in a week whilst I languish, it's discrimination.  And I don't like giving up and giving in, thou in the end I may have to...

Karen

[aaron]

i think you should try and change it. Personally i wouldn't give up my paypal account just to reopen again. I have a large history with my account right now and wouldn't want to start from the beaning.

i wonder if other accounts are as hard to change as your pay pal was. eek, at least pay pal has a phone number to call, what if this was eBay.. no phone number, not to mention the feedback section, AHH!  goodluck

[Rara]

Hi Karen,

Yes.... I can certainly understand your frustration. When I changed my details with paypal, per the same instructions, it took about three weeks I think... and that was after 'X' number of somewhat convoluted communications. It was a difficult task to make everything clear to them, a process which I feel should have been quite simple to achieve. (remembering the experience is giving me a headache) lol

[Tanya1]

their is a investigation going on about Paypal actually being criminals!- if you have a large amount of cash transfers they freeze your account EVEN if your prove that the money is legal- paypal says "we want to stop any criminal activities"- which is hock pockey because if they did want to stop criminal activities their would some arrests!- they basically use the susicpious activity excuse to steal your money right out of your wallet!

Do google search on it...many people hate paypal....

[Hypatia]

It never even occurred to me to keep the same Paypal account but change the name. I simply started a new one with a new credit card in my new name and canceled the old account. Nothing easier. I have no awareness of any significance to the history associated with my old account that would make it worth preserving. I mean--who cares?

[Mx Pippa]

I'm just getting a touch, like at the end of my tether with PayPal, like there is quite a knock on effect and quite an escalation with their discriminatory practices, having a secondary discriminary effect on other companies. Being as we are such a minority, these companies are prepared to lose the trade rather than face up to the problem and provide an alternative payment solution.  I find I'm now virtually unable to do business with companies associated with Wordpress as most of them seem to favour PayPal as their only method of payment. I've been prompted to post this as I have just had to email WP Eden a company who sell WP plugins, please find a copy of my email.
I'm pretty desperate to purchase your WordPress Frontend Post and Media Manager Plugin, this appears to be the only way to contact you, and so I'm hoping the message gets through. Can you please advise on an alternative payment method other than PayPal.

I'm sorry to have to put things this way, but PayPal have restricted my account along with most others in my field of work and life style, which means we are virtually banded from using Paypal and it seems a lot of web sites that sell WP related products, not only as a member but also for Debit card transactions. I only ever used PayPal to make payments on Ebay and other purchases, never to collect payments yet my account has been restricted just because I happen to own an adult web site and possibly because I am a Transgender and I used my official title MX to register with them. ( you need to Google "Decimation Transgender PayPay"  to get an impression of PayPals policy's on this). I am in a dilemma with this as I need your plugin, and can't afford to wait for the official bodies to take action to resolve PayPals quest to morally cleanse the internet. If you can provide an alternative payment solution, I would very much appreciate and value your response.

Yours sincerely,   Pippa Jones

[Jake25]

When I got married and my name changed paypal told me I'd have to make copies of proof and have it faxed to them. This was several years ago.

[jessical]

This is a super old thread, with a couple of recent comments.  I just want to add that I changed my name with Paypal in April, and things went smooth for me.  I have done purchases since the change and I just logged in to double check and things appear to be correct.  I don't know if it makes a difference, but I did update my name with my bank that is linked to my paypal account first.  I think I waited a week or two for the change at my bank to be complete, before I updated paypal.  I don't know if that made a difference or not.

[Amadeoamante]

I updated mine last month and after sending them all my documentation was told that I "couldn't transfer the account to someone else".  Uh... I told you what was up, sent you before/after licenses as well as the name/gender court order... anyway following a tip from another forum I messaged them on Facebook and the next day I had a reply from one of their lead customer service people who took care of it for me immediately.  She told me she was next door to the office that handled the name changes so that worked out lol.  From what I hear they're dickish about name changes for anyone, trans or not.  But the Facebook thing worked wonders, apparently the people we actually need to talk to work their FB customer service and not the Contact Us emails.

[lisarenee]

This isn't discrimination. A lot of companies seem to be run by idiots. I apologize if that was offensive to idiots.

1) Capital One rejected my name change. I sent them the court order and a copy of my new license and 2 weeks later I get a letter saying I need to send proof (I DID!) along with my full social security number (never going to happen), full credit card number (ditto), and date of birth. I called them up and some person in India acknowledged they had received the documents, but indicated they still needed more proof. I also made a point of mentioning how ridiculous (unsafe) it was to ask people to snail mail everything someone needs to steal their identity. If I didn't know who this was from, I would've sworn a request like that had to have come from a "Nigerian Prince". Thankfully, this was a recent account (0% introductory rate), so I will simply be paying it off and closing it when the 0% expires.

2) PayPal changed the name on my PayPal account, but for some inexplicable reason never changed my BillMeLater (PayPal Credit) account. They are run by the same company, share a website (used to be separate sites, but you could just click a button on PayPal to access BML) and login credentials, and there is no way I can find to individually change anything for PayPal Credit/BillMeLater.

3) Humana (Life Insurance) sent me a response to my name change request, saying they couldn't speak to me, because I wasn't on the account. They relented once I got it through their thick heads that Lisa was the same person as Old Name and I was just trying to change the name on my policy. Then, they made me resend the same documents I had sent with the initial request.

...and the list goes on.

[BubblegumSquish]

I wish I could just fake my death and start fresh.. Is that a thing? This all seems very daunting..

[lisarenee]

I wish I could just fake my death and start fresh.. Is that a thing? This all seems very daunting..

Not so much your death, but you could cancel everything and start fresh. The downside to that is you would lose your credit history. Despite using the same SSN, all 3 major credit bureaus created new reports for my new name (with the same SSN) causing me to temporarily have no credit history. One of the credit bureaus caught it after I started changing my name with creditors and merged my reports. The other 2 still hadn't caught it last I checked and only show my new name and current accounts.

That said, rebuilding your credit up from nothing would take a while (length of credit history as well as available credit) and in the mean time you would have trouble obtaining credit and possibly renting apartments/homes as some landlords will check your credit. My condo association even has a minimum credit score to live here.

[Serenation]

I had a business account with paypal very early on, long time ago. I remember being annoyed at the process they wanted for name change, so I deleted my account and made another one. Seemed the path of least resistance.

[Kylo]

I've had a Paypal account since they were founded and yes they are very slow on the uptake with some things. Except when taking money off you.

Supposedly Paypal recently endorsed the Equality Act in support of LGBT rights so I doubt it's direct discrimination. Just foot dragging because they probably want to discourage things like name changes for admin and security reasons, and make the process as convoluted as possible.

[BrandyHanley]

I was asked by PayPal to upload a copy of my ID, and a utility bill. They ended up canceling my account on me and they are now holding my money for 180 days. I called and they customer service rep told me I was not a woman(because my id states I am a female) and my mother would never name me Brandy. I told him I am transgender, and he chuckled. I asked to talk to a supervisor and he pretty much told me the same thing.

[ajtent]

BrandyHanley,
Thanks for letting us know about this.
That person and his supervisor are rude idiots and have no clue about how to properly treat a customer.
I study business and how they fail, PayPal is on their way out of business if this is how they train their employees.
PayPal will lose my business from now on.
AJ