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PayPal Angling for Mobile Payment Partnership with Apple
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You and me both. I have been using Paypal since 1999 (back when they were independent and competing with ebay before eventually ebay buying them out) and I have been using ebay since that year too. As a seller, buyer, consumer, never had a problem. Oh well
That said they won't add much to Apple brand, so I don't see Apple pursuing this. I am sure many companies want to partner with Apple.
The same way historians explain how historical figures would look upon an event that occurred after his or her demise... they go to their writings, their speeches, interviews, etc. Jobs was quite vocal on the failed iTunes phone & working w/ Motorola, especially because it tarnished the Apple brand because it wasn't up to Apple standards. He said it taught him a lesson about marketing partnerships. It's the reason he insisted Cellcos adhere to Apple's terms, not the other way around, when he was looking for a carrier for the original iPhone. He wanted to preserve the Apple Experience.
Now in PayPal we already have a heavily damaged brand. Consumers hate it more than any cellco. Customer Support is abysmal. Apple doesn't need them & it wouldn't enhance the brand one iota. So, yes, I can confidently say Jobs would not be interested in partnering with Paypal. The evidence to suggest the is out there -- it's not me saying it after a seance.
Mine is worse, downright hilarious in a sense - but very similar instance. I bought a grand total of 3 items off eBay 10 years ago. A CD, and 2 NES games I wanted after discovering my old system in my parents basement. After about a month of inactivity, I log in after winning a 4th auction. I stare at a balance larger than -35,000. Negative 35 grand, yes. I notice 2 bank accts linked to my acct that aren't mine. I report fraud. They freeze me, they go thru the list of purchased items with me - plane tickets, jewelry, season tickets to the Portland Trail Blazers... I point out what is probably obvious to anyone reading. I live in Buffalo. I have no need for airline tickets to LA from Portland. I won't be attending any Blazers games. In fact, at the time I hadn't been west of the eastern time zone. I get an "ok, we'll investigate and be in touch within a week".
A few days later, my phone starts blowing up with collection calls. So in order to defend myself I had to go file a police report. The officers were clueless. What's eBay, the guy writing it up asked. Anyway, when it was finally filed and I got to talk to an investigator, he basically said PayPal was being uncooperative with the investigation, and this would likely never be solved. To this day, I get collection calls and letters. Hilariously, if I try to log in I can guarantee myself a phone call from one within an hour. Which I enjoy, since I love paying 10 dollars to have an official copy of the report sent to them direct from the police department.
This site is a good collection of horror stories :
http://complaints.paypalsucks.com/
I'll admit some of the points raised in some of the stories are semi-"duh" but for the most part the core issue is right.
Paypal is the worst, they are supposed to exist only to be paid to transfer money from one person to another and instead they act like an escrow, holding funds that aren't theirs to hold and generally bully their customers.
I don't care if Apple list them as one of the payment options as long as they keep other options available.
They're a nightmare.
I lost £500 when i bought something i never received and paypal refused to refund me. When i did a chargeback, they banned me for life from paypal. Not that i ever intend to use that **** service again. If i ever need to sell on a large scale, they're alternatives out there now anyway.
Apart from that, they have a extremely poor customer service department, overcharge large seller, treat small sellers like **** and freeze their accounts/ban them and they're just all-round nightmare to deal with if ANYTHING goes wrong as it's a dated website with complex navigation and a retarded customer support that can't help if you have issues.
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Apple already offer paypal as a payment method in iTunes and probably the apple store too. So i take this to mean that they are attempting to get Apple to ingrain their systems into Apple's payment system.
If they do that, I'd have to stop using Apple's services.
However, I can't see Apple being stupid enough to pay for any of Paypal's services. Given other large tech firms like google and Amazon have gone the route of making their own payment processor, i can't see Apple not doing the same given we already know they are working on a new payment system.
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