PayPal's No Pal

Last night, my wife asked me to search for something that she wanted to buy. I did, and found it at a site that say they accepted payment via PayPal. I've always had a good impression of PP, thinking it a nice, friendly operation.

For some reason, I couldn't get my ID to work, though -- it said, rather sternly, that the id was 'Permanently Locked'. Turns out it was because, as their responder to my querulous note said:

When PayPal updates the live site, we ask every customer read and accept the new policy updates to our User Agreement. At this time your account is locked for not accepting the new User Agreement. To review the User Agreement please follow the link on the bottom of any PayPal page named legal agreements. After reading the User Agreement and you wish to accept the User agreement please e-mail our Account Review team at resolution@paypal.com. In the e-mail simply state "I accept the new User Agreement.". Once we receive the e-mail your will have full access to your account.

Well, I thought, no big deal, I'll do that. Probably six or seven paragraphs that Aunt Bea penned on the kitchen table to handle those pesky folks who try to scam the PP system every so often. So I went and looked.

Their user agreement is twenty seven pages long!

My mortgage wasn't that long!