PayPal provides a service that promises easier handling of your money. We all like easy. We all love convenience. That is the staple of our current “immediate satisfaction” culture. We want everything at the tip of our fingers for easy access and ease of use. When a service promises quick and easy transfers of payments and allowing you to get paid quicker, we all jump at this opportunity to make our likes just a little bit easier. With our busy lives, this is something we look towards to make things go smoothly in a world where things often are difficult.

As a freelancer and someone who makes money from doing surveys and getting rebates from Ibotta (fantastic app, by the way. I get a guaranteed $0.25 every time I buy milk, which is a lot.) This means often getting payments through PayPal. I’ve never had a problem transferring money before until a few months ago. I tried to transfer $5 into my bank, and ended up accidentally removing $5 from it. While I swear up and down I didn’t do that, it was late at night and that mistake could have easily been made. I tried for a while after that to retrieve the $10 with no luck, doing the same steps I had previously. I gave up. Then, I get a payment of $50 in. Yes, now maybe I can get my money. Every 4 days for a month I tried to follow the same steps to get my money as I had in previous times when I had money transferred into my account. Still no luck. Finally I got pissed, and sent a polite email to PayPal so I can get my money. After sending an email saying “you didn’t do it right, I took care of it”, I was promised my money in 3-4 business days. Here I sit, 6 business days later and I still do not have my money. I replied to the original email of “you didn’t do it right, but I did” to tell them that maybe it wasn’t my fault the money didn’t transfer and that I would really love my money. No response as of yet about that.

We all know they make interest off our money. We have even heard horror stories of them “forgetting to transfer money” so they can keep getting the interest from our money. Since they are not a bank, they do not have the same rules and regulations that banks have. Translation: they are legally allowed to not give us money so they can continue making money off of it.

It might seem silly to some of you to get pissed about $60. My family lives paycheck to paycheck. That $60 could pay for diapers and wipes for my toddler. That $60 could be gas money for our car. That $60 could be the difference in being able to pay a bill or not. We’re fine when they screw with people who can afford to get screwed, but what about those of us who can’t?

I just want my money. I have found ways around using PayPal, and I look forward to closing my account with them for being thieves with terrible customer service. Do I want to wait for a check to be mailed to me up to 10 weeks after I earned the money? Not really, but I’ve waited almost that long now so why not? At least this way no one is ripping me off and being so nonchalant about it. This makes me cringe more every time that I hear “business are people too”. If I met a person like this in real life, I would probably punch them in the face and take the jail time proudly. Maybe we can get politicians to stop getting paid off by companies like this so the everyman can stop getting shafted “just because they can”. So thank you PayPal for making me see the light in how we sell our souls for convenience. Let’s start a petition to get regulations on business like this so these sort of instances can stop occurring. I know just from people I talk to daily that this happens all the time, and that doesn’t make it right. Let’s stand up and put a stop to having our money stolen from us because of loopholes that we can’t fight because we need the service.