This is getting a little annoying. I haven’t used PayPal much in the past, but I’ve found myself having to take web payments more now and PayPal is the natural choice. I initially signed up for a Premier account, which allows an unlimited number of credit and debit card transactions as well as the regular PayPal transactions, but for a fee charged as a flat rate plus a percentage of each payment.

After receiving a payment and seeing the chunk they took out of it, I decided to downgrade my account to a personal account, which only allows PayPal transactions, but is free for up to $500 per month. I followed the simple instructions on their web site and submitted a web form requesting the downgrade. This sounds pretty straightforward, right? That what I thought.

Here’s the text of the original request:

Form Message
customer subject: Can I downgrade my premier account to personal?
customer message: Additional Information: ‘I would like to downgrade my
account type from premier to personal. Thanks,
Ray’

And here’s the reply:

Dear Ray Dotson,
Thank you for contacting PayPal my name is Mary.
Thank you for contacting PayPal. I appreciate the opportunity to assist
you with your downgrade. In your email request, you did not state if you
wanted to downgrade to a Premier account or a Personal account. I have
downgraded your account one level to a Premier account. If you wish to downgrade
further to a Personal account, please email us back with your request and
we will be happy to do that for you. To submit a request to downgrade your
account, please contact us through secure webform by following these steps:

(…snip…)

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.
It would be a pleasure to assist you.
Sincerely,
Mary
PayPal Community Support
PayPal, an eBay Company

Okay, what’s up with this? Does this Mary really exist? How could I have been more clear in my request?

Some of you already know that I’m normally very polite in my dealings with others, but this kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I was also suspicious of this not being a person, but some kind of evil automated customer service algorhithm that parses the text of requests, guesses intentions and responds (hopefully) appropriately.

Here was my reply to that:

Hi Mary,
I believe I was very explicit about wanting to downgrade my account from
Premier to Personal. Please let me know that a human has seen and processed
this request. Thanks very much,
Ray

This reply came next:

Dear Ray Dotson,
Thank you for contacting PayPal. I appreciate the opportunity to assist you
with your downgrade. In your email request it was explicitly stated that
you wish to downgrade further to a Personal account. We will be happy to do
that for you. To submit a request to downgrade your account, please contact
us through secure webform by following these steps:

(…snip…)

We appreciate that you have tried our PayPal Business/Premier account. Per
your request, your PayPal account has been downgraded from a
Business/Premier to a Personal account. Please note that with a Personal
account, you will no longer be able to receive unlimited credit card funded
payments and all payments…

(…snip…)

I wish you the best with your future transactions.

Sincerely,
Jeanette
PayPal Community Support
PayPal, an eBay Company

Am I corresponding with a human? Are they going to downgrade my account? I can’t be sure. Here’s the reply I’m sending back this morning:

Hi Jeanette,
I’m a little confused by this message. I’ve only requested the one downgrade from Premier to Personal and the message seems to be telling me first that I have to go through the web form again and then that my account has already been downgraded. When I logged into my account this morning, it still says ‘Premier’ though. Do I have to fill out another web form to get it downgraded or should I wait for it to be downgraded? Thanks,
Ray

I’m trying to be a little nicer this time, but I have to say I’m a puzzled by the responses. They appear to be echoing back some of my statements, but at the same time they contain clearly cut-and-paste responses straight from the PayPal customer service manual. I’m still not sure if either Mary or Jeanette is real. I’m thinking about doing a Turing test. Has anybody ever had a similar experience? Any suggestions?

P.S. I real human probably would have called me Roy…