My Various Random Ramblings

Ok, about a month ago I purchased the iHost product on a recommendation from the owner of Krypton Logic. I was given a license key, but it was coming back as invalid. I also noticed that the paypal account the money had gone to had a different name from the iHost website owner, but appeared to be a similar email address. Thus, I filed a paypal dispute realizing that I did not want software that would break if the iHost server was down. I got no where with the seller on the paypal dispute, so I escalated it to PayPal themselves. After a whole month, paypal comes back saying they can’t help because it was an intangible product when they could have said that from the start. So I looked up the ihostdev.com website in the GoDaddy WHOIS, and got the phone number. I proceeded to call it and got a random person in Pennsylvania who did not know who Ryan Shaffer, the WHOIS contact, is. At this point, I want my money back and am greatly disappointed in PayPal for washing their hands of the ordeal. I have removed my bank account from my paypal account, and from now on will only be funding it with a credit card that I can perform a charge back on. I would recommend to everyone else to do the same and never store money in their paypal account.

UPDATE:
I called PayPal today and they were utterly useless. They admitted that they don’t have any more contact information for the iHost people than the emails I have. When I asked to close my account, they refused to do it over the phone stating that it is impossible to do in their system. I can’t manually close it due to a skype purchase that has not gone through the system completely yet. Morale of the story: If you are forced to use PayPal, use a credit card so that you can put a charge back on them. I will be forwarding a copy of this post to Clark Howard, Greg Dawson, The Consumerist, and PayPal support.