Operation Get PayPal In Ghana–Investigations reopened
Then in the first week of November 2013 I read a blog by a good friend of mine Ato Ulzen-Appiah in which Ato and a couple of friends in Ghana have launched a campaign to get PayPal to allow people in Ghana to be able to create user accounts in the country.
Just a year ago and prior to reading Ato’s blog, I tried reaching out to PayPal to resolve an issue involving Rexford Nkansah, another good friend of mine who is a Wikimedian in Ghana. Rexford requested that I make a payment on his behalf via PayPal as he could not create an account to effect such payment. I quietly launched an investigation dubbed ‘Operation Get PayPal In Ghana’ (#OGPPIGH) by calling customer service. My call yielded no positive results and after doing some research life happened, I got busy and let go of the matter. I eventually made the payment for Rexford though.
That was just around the time that my curiosity on why people in Ghana can not create their own PayPal accounts in the country got stirred. All my investigations did not give me a good reason why this can not be a possibility even though Rexford had some choice words for the issue. After getting tired of it, I decided to seek out a different number to call this time and bingo–I found one which was highly recommended by friends online.
Well on Wednesday November 6, 2013 I took it upon myself as a member of Blogging Ghana to reopen my investigations on #OGPPIGH having received more vim from Ato Ulzen-Appiah’s blog on the subject #PayPal4Ghana, Rexford Nkansah’s strong opinions and other folks in Ghana who have been gingered or ticked by it. I did that by calling the new number I found for the PayPal Resolution Center (PRC).
Lucky for me I somehow managed to piss off the computerized answering system for PRC and it eventually decided to put me through to a real person–a human customer service agent who received my call after just 5 minutes of talking back and forth with the system, so that was when, as a journalist I decided to start recording the call as part of evidence for #OGPPIGH.
Aaron (he wouldn’t say his last name) is the name of the PRC agent who tried to help me and I must say he sure handled the customer service end of his job very well but… he couldn’t provide a satisfactory answer so in the end he took my email, promised to talk to his Supervisor and get back to me on the issue in a couple of days (and yes I will call again if I don’t get word from them).
From the look of things, it appears this issue will have to end up on the desk of the Global Operations department so friends around the world who want to see PayPal allow creation of user accounts in Ghana, get ready to help here by clicking this link to sign the petition.
Written by Oral Ofori
