I know that on Paypal's contact us page, it states that their office hours are:
6am to 10pm AEST Monday to Friday
8am to 7pm AEST Saturday and Sunday
BUT I just called (about 5 times at ~5:30pm AEST) and after entering the passcode and pressing "5" for "everything else", I get told by the bot that their office is closed and to call back during office hours…same thing happened last night when I tried calling around 9:30pm wtf
Many companies have their call centres overseas. It is possible that the centres could be close even though our timing here states X hours to X hours. I recently had some issues with my Ubisoft account and tried to contact them. I have called them before and know that the call will connect to the UK office. On the website it states 6.30pm AEST to late. I called at 7.30pm and the bot says the office is close, please call back during office hours…so wtf?
Maybe you should try to call Paypal at 6am just to be sure?
I've called them before in the past few weeks, all around same time in the arvo and I was able to get to a real person, so Im just a bit confused. Since you're forced to identify yourself/your account first, I'm curious to whether they have a special 'ignore/office closed' button for annoying users. /takes conspiracy theory hat off.
Are they in Australia? I dont think call centres can control who the customer service people talks to. Everything will go through and gets distributed to the team. Offices can close (full day or half day) for any damn reason, eg team celebration, anniversary, EOFY, boss birthday, boss's grandma birthday, etc etc. So maybe just try again at a totally different time of the day. If you are really desperate (like your account is compromised or something), I would just use skype call to contact a Paypal branch from another country.
I called using someone elses phone, entering their CC details for verification and guess what, I was transferred to an agent! Tried it on my phone and details again "sorry, office is closed". Tried calling again, this time without entering any sort of information, and guess that, I got to an agent!
They couldn't explain why. To be frank I'm not sure if they even understood what I said. They kept telling me to call the 1800 number and I should be transferred to an agent, the same number I've been calling for half an hour!
Not sure if it's because of a neg balance, though they said my accounts not limited.
That is so strange. Could be an issue with phone system. But seems like you got through so good on ya.
Paypal has offices in Sydney (seen the building).
They could use an overseas call centre, but they'd still have them available during the AEST hours they list on their website. More likely a glitch in their call software or something…
Appropriate username