I sometimes find myself writing letters to customer service departments that I wish could serve as a warning to others. So here are some of the letters I've written.

To paypal on 2008-01-16

Subject: security questions have silly restrictions

I am highly annoyed by the limitations imposed on the security question answers. I, of course, do not answer the questions directly, as that would be very thin security (it's pretty easy to get someone's mother's maiden name.) However, in a fit of excessive restrictiveness, paypal does not allow me to place numbers into my mother's maiden name. What business of yours is it if my Mother was once refered to as Ms. haX0r ch1ck ? And what about being born in the city of NewNewParis4 ? The founders weren't very creative, but that's not my problem. Please, lift these silly restrictions, it only serves to annoy.

Thanks,

Manfred

To newegg on 2008-01-24

I tried to pay by paypal and was unable to get the shipping order to go to the correct address. The way newegg interfaces with paypal is braindead. It tries to verify too much stuff. Guess what, I'm using paypal because I DON'T want to send you my credit card information. It severely pisses me off when I am told I have to input my credit card information in order to get the order to go to the correct address using paypal. This is pointless. Does it really matter if the address is mine or not? As long as I pay the bill (which is pretty hard not to do using paypal) then it's none of newegg's business whether the address also has some credit card attached to in or not. Please fix this, I would like to be able to use paypal when buying things from newegg. Please just use the standard checkout screen that all other paypal using sites use.

Manfred