I have not actually ever had reason to complain about PayPal itself in the twenty or so years I have had an account, but I have had to complain about other account-holders. All but one time, it went my way, and the time it didn’t was because the vendor had a no returns policy, which PayPal upheld despite the fact that the software he sold me never worked and hundreds of people were complaining about the well-known Cypriot company on the Web.
That was an unjust decision, so be warned.
My latest problem with them also arose because of another of their clients. I have been doing some writing for a company that assumed that the email address they had of mine was my PayPal address as well, so they sent five payments to it.
After thirty days, PayPal returned the money to my employer, but my employer refused to pay me ‘twice’. Whether the man was a crook or just plain stupid, I do not know.
Anyway, I contacted PayPal and went through the usual torture of having to explain myself several times to support staff who struggled to communicate in English, until eventually a supervisor phoned me up.
She didn’t get the problem the first time around either, but eventually agreed to phone my stupid employer.
Nothing ever came of it though. Maybe she didn’t believe me, but surely she could see that he had paid money into a non-existent account, had the money repatriated and never paid it back out to my real PayPal account?
This is unjust too. PayPal should have stuck up for me and put pressure on the thief, but no, it is too much to ask that big companies look out for the small man.
‘Big has might, and might has right!’ – is their motto.
Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail from Barry to Gibraltar a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
“I am a Celt, and we are romantic”, he said when asked about his writing style, “and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around' are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really”. He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of fifteen years.
His first novel, Daddy's Hobby is from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya', but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov's Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the 'supernatural', try his books
He sums his life up thus: “Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles”.
