> Companies like Amazon, Google, Paypal, you name it.
While the point you're making is certainly valid and most of these big companies we've come to rely on have next to zero customer service, I just wanted to say that in the case of PayPal I recently had to resolve an issue with a purchase (with Musician's Friend, who I will never, EVER do business with again, but that's another story) and their customer service was actually pretty decent. Granted, I had to make a couple phone calls to them before I got a "good" agent that was able/willing to resolve my issue, but I'd take that experience over calling the likes of AT&T or Comcast any day.
My experience with Paypal has been great as a buyer, bad as a seller.
I personally know someone who had their account suspended because apparently Paypal doesn't like emulators -- something not stated in their terms of service. When this happens, they lock you out of your funds. No warning, no notice, hope you didn't need those funds to pay bills.
Your experience may have gone well, but even a cursory Google search for "Paypal sucks" returns 1.5 million results. That doesn't inspire confidence in me. If I instead search for "Stripe sucks", I get 970 results, and most aren't related to the credit card processing company.
I would never offer Paypal as a way to buy things from a small business I ran, unless it was large enough that I could afford to lose a month's revenue from them.
AT&T, at least in the non-essential personal utilities space ... yeah they are complete garbage as well. I paid for the three-month DirecTV Now plan. The service has yet to work on any of my PCs. They do not support the service by phone at all. Their online chat has been busy all 20 times I've checked it. They don't respond from their Twitter account. They direct you to a forum to post about your problems, and then don't respond to issues there. They refuse to issue refunds.
I don't know what I would do if I needed commercial internet service. Probably go for having open accounts with multiple service providers.
> When this happens, they lock you out of your funds. No warning, no notice, hope you didn't need those funds to pay bills.
Wait, how do they keep someone from accessing their own bank directly? Surely this friend of yours did not keep a balance in their PayPal account. If he actually did that, what was he expecting? A brief search online will tell you that's not a wise thing to do.
Software emulators. Programs to allow you to run software for one platform on another. Something that is perfectly legal, yet was apparently enough for Paypal to kill an account over.
That exact field doesn't matter so much as the fact that they can kill your account for absolutely any reason they feel like, even when what you're doing is perfectly legal and not against their stated terms of service.
You're coming at this from the perspective of a buyer. From a seller's perspective, Paypal can be incredibly infuriating and lock funds from you with little to no immediate recourse or options.
Few months ago, I couldn't login to my account after failing to answer some questions. Then, my entire Amazon account was suspended because i couldn't remember the mailing address in file in order to reactivate my account. At the end, they asked me to recreate a new account and all my digital purchases are gone forever. Their customer support staff were also very rude and unfriendly when i called them up.
Why can't just they send me a password reset thru email like most companies do?
While the point you're making is certainly valid and most of these big companies we've come to rely on have next to zero customer service, I just wanted to say that in the case of PayPal I recently had to resolve an issue with a purchase (with Musician's Friend, who I will never, EVER do business with again, but that's another story) and their customer service was actually pretty decent. Granted, I had to make a couple phone calls to them before I got a "good" agent that was able/willing to resolve my issue, but I'd take that experience over calling the likes of AT&T or Comcast any day.