I won’t go into detail about how my PayPal account became overdrawn.* It was a mistake (not mine). The mistake-maker assured me the problem was resolved days ago. PayPal being PayPal, though, what’s “resolved” on one end may not be on the other. So there’s a $50 negative balance and nobody will fix it. That means I can’t use my account.
No problem. Hey, I’ll just add money. There’s a handy-dandy button for that. But suddenly, for me, the button yields only a variety of bizarre messages (“talk to the person responsible for setting permissions on your account”) that leave PayPal customer service reps as baffled as I am.
This became a four-hour customer service nightmare this lovely Sunday morning. I won’t go into detail about that, either.** Except to say that PayPal’s customer service makes the famously bad Comcast service look like a concierge operation at a fawncy hotel by comparison. And except to say that one rep told me (humiliatingly) that I’d have to deal with their collections department. Then he cheerfully transferred me to collections — without mentioning that they’re closed today.
And of course, PayPal being PayPal, they can’t be bothered with an automated “we’re closed today” message. So there went yet another half hour of my life, listening to endlessly repeated mini-lectures from a voice that sounded increasingly smug by the moment, until — for the second time today — I hung up without managing to speak to the human in some other department who was supposed to help.
Not only that, but the fifth PayPal rep I talked to — who I’d already told that story to — also tried to transfer me to collections.
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I know Peter Thiel hasn’t run PayPal in more than a decade. But its service was hair-tearingly deplorable a decade ago, too. Hard to believe that a man the media lauds as a great libertarian created something that operates so much like the freakin’ DMV. Or the IRS.
If you ever need a reminder of how little you really matter to institutions, corporate or governor, just call up PayPal and ask them something really, really simple.
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Oh, and the problem never did get resolved. You didn’t really think it would, didja? I get to call collections tomorrow and present myself as a deadbeat making amends.
Not only is it a place of some lively blogitude and comment. Not only have we had 4,000-some visitors in the 10 days since the Lovely Nicki put up a counter. Not only has social-media maven Nicki gotten us somewhere in the vicinity of 1,100 Twitter followers in a matter of days. But we’ve gotten our first interview request (which Sheila will handle), a couple of requests to join, our very first donation (a monthly commitment, yet!), and demands for logoed tee-shirts, fridge magnets, etc.
Whew! Workin’ on it, workin’ on it!
For a bunch of volunteers who are putting this thing together in their scarce spare time, this is awesome.
But then, so are the volunteers. And so are the hardcore rights advocates who won’t settle for compromise.
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* In case you’re wondering, all those wonderful donations got moved out of PayPal almost as soon as they came in, thanks to PayPal’s other notorious habit of arbitrarily freezing accounts just when they have nice sums of money in them. PayPal: can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em. Someday — soon — they’ll lose their de facto monopoly, and on that day they’ll rue the fact that they treated their customers like crap all these years.
**Yeah, you’ve had experiences exactly like this, right? You don’t need to be told anything.
After you’ve had a look at that post, be sure to go back to the main TZP page. There’s really a ton going on, with recent posts from Nicki, Sheila, and our newest scholarly rabble-rouser Y.B. ben Avraham. AND we’ve now been joined by — ta da! — Ilana Mercer, the very well-known paleolibertarian/classical liberal writer.
Ilana and I (and you) may disagree on a fair number of issues, but she’s a great addition to TZP, whose writers already have a variety of styles and perspectives.
“Faith and Firearms Revisited” by Nicki Kenyon, who also examines Jews, anti-gun attitudes, and the duty to protect life.
And one that’s near and dear to my heart, Sheila Stokes-Begley’s “Dreidels and Hedgerows,” which draws some similarities between Irish history and the history of the ancient Jews.
I’m one of five or six volunteer writers. Nicki Kenyon kicked things off last week with a slam against a Bloomberg “mom” who’s blindingly ignorant of history.
Sheila Stokes-Begley made a pair of posts about her visit to Yad Vashem.
Tam? Tam, where have you gone? Your blog was one of the stones on which the gunblogosphere was built.
Doctors getting fed up with their profession. No surprise. Not really news. But an interesting perspective from a physician.
“Who owns your children?” Bayou Renaissance Man asks after last week’s case of a family subjected to an international manhunt for disagreeing with their son’s doctors.
What do you know about MaidSafe? Is this the future of communications privacy? (H/T PB in comments)
Teacher arrested over school shootings — that he wrote about in novels. David Codrea notes that we don’t know the whole story, but it doesn’t sound good.
Joel asked me to let everybody know that he’s temporarily lost Internet service (he didn’t say why) and that The Ultimate Answer to Kings might not see any new posting for a couple of days. Drat! TUAK is always a favorite stop for the day.
Aw, da poo widdle coppie. Him aw hurt because him being shunned after him was a bad coppie and … somebody decided to howl loud, long, and amazingly effectively for justice.
Apple, too. I suspect this question goes deep, deep down a rabbit hole: Why would any tech company help cover up police thuggery? (Via Wendy — authentic Canadian intellectual. :-) )
Woman’s cancer apparently cured by one mega-strong dose of engineered measles virus.
Okay, okay, I know Facebook is totally eeeevil, just plain oooozing eeeeevil. But I tell you, Ragnar’s Freedom Outlaw Facebook Page is amazing.
In the few weeks it’s been alive, it’s received a whopping 2,000 likes (it’s within spittin’ distance of that this afternoon). It’s busy and lively and a great place to find some very funny freedomstuff. Better yet, you don’t have to join The Dreaded Facebook to view all that fun stuff. It’s got giveaways of pocket Constitutions and Freedom Outlaw wristbands, and other cool stuff (though you do have to join to compete for those).
And now it’s even got a verrrrry sexy freedomista mascot. (Hope that link works; among it’s other ills, FB doesn’t make it easy for non-participants to “share” content.)
But Ragnar’s Freedom Outlaw page has everything else. A huge thank you to Ragnar for giving such energy to the Freedom Outlaw meme and using the eeeevil FB to send beaucoup traffic to this blog!
On days you arrive here to find not enough blogitude to give you your Outlaw fix, or on days you just crave a little more Freedomista Power (with some laughs thrown in), there’s always something going on at Ragnar’s place.
Those prescription drugs in your emergency kit might last longer than you think. Maybe decades longer. (I’d be cautious, though, especially with antibiotics.)
Why is the Taliban so scared of little girls? And why are Muslim leaders always so quiet about monstrous acts like this?
I’ve been having trouble getting around to several things, including a review of Wendy McElroy’s new book, The Art of Living Free. So just let me say a big amen to Wally Conger’s review.
Since joining Twitter (which, seriously, does have some uses) I’ve been following a new-but-prolific blog The Tireless Agorist.
I’ve just added it to the Living Freedom blogroll under two categories. I’d have done this in any case because “Agorist Don” writes himself one good blog.
But it doesn’t hurt at all that today’s entry is about Hardyville.
