Paypal: Your Usability Stinks.

One thing to note about usability that is key is not how fancy the interactive elements are or how glamorous it looks, but you also need to know how things are spelled out. Read what your links say. Look at how your site is laid out. If you find out that you have complaints, then listen to your customers and make changes to the site.

I recently began a process with PayPal and when I tried to submit a claim, everything seemed to go well. However, I received an e-mail about an hour again saying that some action was required, but no specific item was listed – no “Click here to confirm” or “Click here to do A,B, and C”. The only responses were to return to the homepage or to cancel claim. Now where on the site does it say for you to continue with your claim? If you’re smart enough, you’ll need to figure out that you just wait two days or you should call PayPal to move forward.

Now, say you decide to add more information to your claim…you obviously don’t have that area to fill in, so what could you do. I accidentally clicked on “cancel claim”, but luckily it pulled up a confirmation page, but here’s the kicker: there were two buttons and the button on the left was labeled “cancel”. Now if you see the word cancel, it could have two meanings and this is why I suggest you look at the text on your buttons. Two meanings? (1) cancel – click and go back to the previous page, or (2) cancel claim and delete evidence. Unfortunately when I clicked “cancel”, it resulted in meaning #2.

So pretty much disheartened, I contacted PayPal and they reported back and said they were aware of the issue – that people have been having this problem, but the whole customer service experience could have been better. Their e-mailed response was to “avoid canceling the claim next time.” What does that mean? Why are you telling me to remember this next time. I’m trying resolve an issue THIS time…

Listen to your customers and fix the issues. Don’t just provide excuses…provide improvements.

Leave a Reply

Discover more from Ken Yeung

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading