Help me get past L1 support at Paypal. Please?

• Can anyone help me with escalating past first-level support on Paypal? It's an old old story with Paypal, apparently, but I'm almost at the end of my rope. Here's a (long, sorry) synopsis: I've been using the form on the site for support, as that appears to be the only option other than phone, and I'm not keen about sitting on hold from Korea waiting for phone support. The problem is a technical one on their end, very clear-cut, and I want to suggest the solution to someone who can actually do something about it rather than deal with more cut and paste stock answers that do not address the issue, from people pretending to be named 'Jason' or 'Michelle' rather than Sandeep or whatever. Here's the problem: Paypal (no doubt at the behest of the Korean government) recently started requiring a Korean national ID number to make withdrawals to a Korean bank. This is a recent change. Problem is (and is the same with many sites in Korea, which often require the ID# to register) that the verification algorithm they use (which was no doubt also supplied by the Korean gov't) does not recognize the format of the ID# of non-Korean residents' (like me), which is a little different. Yay. So my first support request was about that. The suggested solution from support: use my wife's ID number. I entered her ID#, which verified OK, but when I got to the final withdrawal confirmation step, Paypal warned in BIG LETTERS that the transaction would fail if the account identifiers at the bank and at Paypal did not match exactly. Right. I stopped the transaction before confirmation. Next support request outlined the problem. Their next response made no sense whatsoever and didn't address the issue. Par for the course, apparently. So I figured OK, why not make a new Paypal account for my wife, transfer funds to that one, then she could withdraw to one of her accounts, yay all done and no problems because all the names and IDs would match up fine with the bank. Problem: once a Korean national ID number is in Paypal's database, anywhere, for any user, even if you delete an account and make a new one, you can never use it again. Even if, as I say, it's not being used by a live account. Other problem: there's no way to edit, delete or otherwise see or alter a Korean National ID# that is registered against an account once it's been used (even without final confirmation being clicked) against a withdrawal transaction. So now I've got my wife's ID number against my account (and there is no interface to change or delete it) and can't use it. I can't add my own ID, even if it worked (which it doesn't, which started all this), because there's no interface to do so. I can't add my wife's correct ID to her account either, because the system says it's being used by someone else (me), even if I delete my account and register another brand new one (that is, it's perpetually in the database). So: I can't get any kind of acknowledgement or comprehension of the issue out of first line support, it seems, and the solution is dead simple. Some UI is needed for editing of Korean National ID numbers, or failing that, I just want the IDs they've irrevocably registered (without anywhere saying that's how it works) against my and my wife's accounts deleted, so I can enter the correct ones. TL/DR version: Anybody got any ideas how I can get past the L1 support to someone who can help? I just want to explain all this, and it's gotten to the point where I can't in their 1000-character-limit textbox, and their frontline support doesn't seem to be able to understand the issue or provide any kind of solution anyway. (And yes, I know PAYPAL SCUKS!!1! and all that, but it was my only option in this situation, and I just want to get my funds out of there until they improve the situation for users (and particularly non-Korean users) in Korea.)

• Answer:

  When dealing with credit card and payment companies in today's world situation, for obvious reasons there are topics which seem to get escalated more readily than others. Security breach is one which appears more heavily weighted than problems withdrawing monies from an account. I do not suggest you lie, but are you certain that the reason your wife's ID number is failing is because you used it elsewhere? You can't really know that. It may be that a security fault has locked you out of proper control your rightful funds and, just maybe, another party potentially has illegal access to or control over your account. This is a concern that you can raise in less than 1000 characters and, given the complexities of PayPal, international finance, and professional hacking teams, a completely legitimate worry. At a minimum, it cannot be disputed that there is a security fault somewhere in the system, even if it does not put your money at risk. Failing that, there are other strategies. A second one is brutal honesty. You might try an e-mail response along the lines of "I'm sorry, but your last 'n' technical communications didn't help me out and the problem becomes more severe with passing of time. Can you have your supervisor contact me about [pithy and slightly vague description of horrible problem]?". Stay polite regardless of provocation, including extreme cluelessness. Rudeness is an automatic excuse for harried tech support to blow you off or bury you deep in the queue. Both of these approaches have gotten me past first-line technical support with companies in the past. Of course, in the first case I did have a security issue, and in the second the front-line support was not answering my questions correctly. I don't think either interpretation is too much of a stretch here. A third strategy which can work is to simply post back to support once a day briefly restating the issues, acknowledging past commmunications, and saying the problems remain unresolved. Do not post too often to be harrassment, but by staying polite and persistent you may yet break through. I once got an ISP to notify a virus-spammer to knock off their e-mails to me by politely following up once a day to their postmaster box until they paid attention. Then too, simply by posting here on a moderately high-profile blog, there is a longshot bet that someone affiliated with PayPal that is further up the food chain than a phone support monkey is sufficiently motived by friends, relatives, or web-surfing Higher PayPal Power to look into the matter.