No longer getting email notifications

[daddio]

Okay, so I haven't been getting email payment notifications for a number of months (like maybe 10-12 months).  Nothing urgent as I don't get a lot of payments anyway.  But definitely irritating because when I do have a "sale", I have to log in every day until I find out if it has even been paid for.  So I had a payment from someone today (no notification) and I decided to call PayPal to see what was up.

I spoke to John at first level customer service.  Really nice guy.  Very helpful, too, at least to the point that he could be.  We of course went through all of the things you might expect (checked Junk Folder, Trash Folder, Spam folder, Message filters, server filters, adding to whitelists, etc.).  None of these was the problem.  He sent me a message using the support[at]paypal.com address.  No problem; it came through.  He sent me a message using his own paypal email address.  No problem; it came through as well.  But when he tried sending through the automated system (I guess there's some way he could force a message through that way), it didn't work.  We made some changes and tried again.  Same thing; no message.  I even went so far as to add a wildcard for paypal to a whiltelist in a server spam filter system that wasn't even active. 🙂  Which of course didn't do anything.

In this sense, he said he was sending as "service[at]paypal.com".

He of course was unable to see what kind of return error message MIGHT have come back because it wouldn't come back to him.  So, he was going to escalatate this and have someone at a higher level call me back tomorrow.  No problem.  He'd been as helpful as he could, and it was clear that he was an articulate, likeable kind of guy.  And this wasn't exactly an urgent issue for me.

But before doing that he decided he would go ahead and try to bump me up to someone right away that had more technical access.  Which he did.  I got connected to "Tracy".  Now maybe Tracy had had a bad day, or maybe this is just standard fare.  But from the get-go, while she was sugary-sweet in language and tone, she was a) patronizing as could be, b) presumptious about everything from her knowledge to my attitude (I kept trying to reassure her that I was not angry . . . at all . . . I really wasn't), and c) a blithering idiot.

She of course ran through all of the things that John and I had already tried, which of course had nothing to do with the issue.  Then, after about 15 minutes of utter foolishness, she puts me on hold, and comes back to inform me that "they" are aware of delays in notifications, that they're working on the issue, that they don't have a timeframe, and that I've been added to the list of people experiencing it.

When I informed her that my issue wasn't about delays, but rather that I wasn't getting notifications at all, and that it shouldn't therefore be assumed that my issue was THAT issue, she basically just repeated that "they're looking into it".  I then tried to get her to call the person back who she had spoken with and find out WHEN the issue (the one they were working on) started.  When she got back to me that it began "a couple of weeks ago", I reminded her that MY issue (which struck me as entirely different) had been going on for many months.  Completely missing my point, she responded with something like, "Well, if you're wanting us to guarantee that we'll fix this issue tonight . . . ". 

Unbelievable.

I reassured her -- again -- that I wasn't upset and that this wasn't urgent, but that I simply didn't want this to get lost in the shuffle due to being in the wrong queue (I'm speaking figuratively here).  Specifically, in trying to clarify the situation for her, I asked her, "If the issue they're working on isn't the issue I'm having, how will anyone know".  (because I was fully confident that a two week old issue regarding delays would not be addressing my 10-month old situation regarding non-existent notifications).  Seriously, folks, I was not angry at all and I had to continually reassure her of this and that this wasn't an urgent thing with me.  She came back with "Well, if you want to play the 'What if game' . . . "

I couldn't believe it.  I finally just thanked her for her time and moved on to the web to do a search on this isse where, of course, I've discovered all manner of varieties related to this issue, dating back as far as 2004 and most notably last September and October (2010).

What I've gleaned from all of this is:

a)  There is a serious problem with PayPal's automated email sending system AND/OR a very simple problem with the service [AT] paypal.com address

and

b)  Paypal is clueless about the problem and therefore will never find a solution.

After all, if "they're aware of the problem", and yet they're still having their first and second level "technical" support staff instructing people to try all of the ridiculous things that imply it's a problem on the users end, what hope can there be?  And if they can't tell the difference between 2 weeks and 10 months, what hope can there be?  And if they can't tell the difference between delays of several hours and messages not getting through at all, well . . . you get the picture.

All I can say is, if you fall into the group of people who have this same issue, you'll just have to keep checking your account every day to see if anyone has sent you any money.

Good luck.

PS - Paypal, consider having John and Tracy switch jobs.

[FUSStech]

Thanks for the very patient approach to the problem and for the additional patience to share the results!