PayPal sending cheques to Indians – Did I wake up fifteen years ago?

By this time, every Indian with a PayPal account will be staring in disbelief at the following email:

We would like to notify you about a change in our withdrawal functionality in India starting on August 1, 2010.

From July 29, 2010 onwards, you will only be able to request for a cheque withdrawal of funds from your PayPal account.

What do you mean by sending "Cheques?"
What do you mean by sending "Cheques?"

For a moment I thought I was back in the 1990s where we had to wait for little paper slips to come in the mail, and then physically go to a bank and fill out a deposit slip (by hand!) and then wait for the money to hit our accounts. Then I was reminded of where I was.

Seriously Papal. What the hell are you doing? Cheques. Are. Not. Acceptable. Anymore!

Lots of us who use your services – where you have a monopoly – are freelances. We work over the Internet. I haven’t visited my ICICI bank branch since 2004! I don’t even know where the hell it is. I work on the Internet. I pay my bills online. I pay my tax online. I buy my stuff online.

And now you suddenly cough up a word that I’ve almost forgotten how to type – “Cheque?” (I don’t even know if it’s “Cheque” or “Check”. Damn American spelling!)

The point is, this will not do. You can’t say “You can withdraw by cheque” and expect us to respond with a  “Oh, well thank god!” It’s not a solution dammit. It’s a pain in the ass, inconvenience, problem, terrible way to do things. This is the 21st century, and somehow or the other we’re going to get our money – fast. The way it’s supposed to be.

I don’t care if it’s the RBI, or you who’s causing this issue. I don’t want to listen to you passing the buck. Just solve the damn problem. It’s not the first time this has happened, and since then, I’ve found other solutions that work. You can’t get away with treating your customers so shabbily. We pay you every time money hits our account and we deserve better.

Much better.

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14 thoughts on “PayPal sending cheques to Indians – Did I wake up fifteen years ago?”

  1. What a crock of crap! Hope they fix this soon.

    Personally, I prefer the damned English word forms over their Americanized (Americanised ?) corruptions.

    Reply

  2. Welcome to India buddy, here u cant rant on system, in the foreigner tone :D i know it still feels cool to rant in that way. payment by check thing isnt bad as well, just thank god that its even possible, coz anything and everything worse possible with india/rbi things, nobody gives a shit to what affects us people.

    Reply

  3. A new fact about Pay Pal :

    I applied for a charity account with Pay pal because its free and supported by vbulletin software for payment subscription, I have all the documents like NGO Registration certificate, Memorandum of Society, Society PAN card, and the Bank details , bank details were verified by the Pay Pal by depositing amount of Rs. 2 and 40 paisa, after submitting all the document as per said in their website and in their emails, they denied me for the account, just because they have no tie-up with India regarding charity account, what the hell is this, why the pay pal people should not mention at the time sign up process. I have wasted around 1000/- rs in doing fax to pay pal and after 4-5 days they denied.
    Don’t apply for a charity account with pay pal if you are living in India. Just wastage of time and money.

    Reply

  4. PayPal is earning a big amount from Indian customers, and not paying Tax to indian govt., I think RBI is doing just to collect tax and customer data from PayPal, this is good for our country.

    We should support RBI.

    Reply

  5. Had the same NGO experience – except my NGO got approved, collected funds, did some online transfers and THEN our account was put on some kind of verification needed status. So they will collect the funds, just not allow us to withdraw them! Imagine explaining that to the donors. This has been going on for some time now….now we will allow, now we won’t! And what the heck was the RBI doing giving them the permission to link up to banks in the first place?!

    No one in India can collect money online without the banks approving the websites first – found out when we went ahead with getting a website set up with CC Avenues.

    AHHH!

    Reply

    • In reply to Sangitha

      It seems that PayPal has been playing with the RBI regulations for some time now. One can only hope that they get their act together.

      The problem is that they have a monopoly. As long as our clients use PayPal we’re forced to use it too…

      Reply

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