Spencer Fry

I opened up a new business account with PayPal for nterface a few weeks ago. To verify the account, PayPal asked me to input my Social Security # (SSN) instead of my Tax ID # (TIN). I thought this was really strange, because it was a business account and not a personal account. Therefore, why should I have to enter my SSN? I shrugged it off and proceeded to input my SSN. An error occurred that my SSN was already tied to another account. Of course, I have a personal account that I’ve been using for 6 years with PayPal.

“Sorry, there’s nothing we can do for you,” said the PayPal representative that I talked to on the phone. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “There’s no way to verify my business account, because my SSN is already tied up with my personal account? Are you kidding me? I can’t use my TIN?” “No,” the lady said. Her supervisor wasn’t any help either. I then asked them if I could downgrade my personal account to the level that doesn’t require a SSN. “Yes, that would work,” the supervisor said. But, no, that didn’t work. PayPal’s downgrade system was broken. This was two weeks ago and they said it shouldn’t take more than a few days to fix the system and that they’d process my downgrade request at that time without a problem.

Fast forward two weeks to Sunday. Figuring that I’d have no problem with adding my SSN to my business account two weeks later, I logged in and proceed to enter my details. I get the saying that my SSN is already associated with an account, again. Ugh. I call up PayPal and ask them what the problem is. “Our downgrade system isn’t working right now, sir.” Out of luck again, I try to figure out a workaround to be able to verify our business account. PayPal tells me there isn’t one.

Finally it dawns on me that I can close out my personal account to free up my SSN to be able to verify my business account. This works. Now everything is dandy except for the fact that I’ve lost 6 years of history with PayPal on my personal account and had to go through all of this hassle. This raises two questions: (1) Why does PayPal not allow me to verify my business account with my TIN? and (2) Why does it take a large organization like PayPal over two weeks to fix their downgrade system?

Two of the three of us at nterface work out of Chicago (I’ll post pictures of our Chicago office sometime soon), but for the time-being I work out of my apartment in New York City. We’re in daily communication with each other using Campfire and I visit Chicago every now and again. Dave is coming to NYC in the middle of April for five days to work on nterface things with me, which I’m very excited about too. But without further ado, here are two photographs of my workspace:

Nothing fancy, but far better than the space I was using before. I was working out of my bedroom for a good year and a half, which was a huge productivity mistake. If you can at all avoid it, get your workspace out of your bedroom as quickly as possible. More on that in another post.