When Germans do customer service: BillSafe

Remember the old days of shopping?

Select item, hand over money, done?

These days, much of shopping has gone the way of the internet, and so has the payment. There are many payment options, one of them is BillSafe, a provider service owned by PayPal.

We are now in round three or four of a messy payment using BillSafe and will share the experience.

Round 1:
Buy something on the internet and get an order confirmation. Here is the order confirmation. It is in two parts because we took screenshots. Part 1 is fine, is has the order number, sales tax, and price.

Part 2 is the interesting section. Note the absence of payment information, specifically, there is no bank account to send money to, the routing number is "0", and there is no due date.

So, we wait for an invoice.

Round 2:
After around four weeks without an invoice, we start to wonder and think, well, give them another couple of weeks and we'll ask where the invoice is.
As week 5 ends, a letter arrives from BillSafe. It is labeled "past due notice" and tells us to pay the original amount plus a 7.65 Euro late fee.

They give a new format SEPA account to send the money to (note we changed the numbers a bit for privacy)

Empfänger: PayPal
IBAN: DE88025427
BIC: DEUTDEDBPAL
Bank: Deutsche Bank
Verwendungszweck: BT26009


The small problem: my bank does not do SEPA yet, but there is help from BillSafe. They do have the rare toll free number!

I call and explain that I have not received any invoice, and that the only email (the screenshots above) had no payment information. The helpful agent gives me a standard account number and routing number, so I can pay. What to do about the  "past due notice"?

The answer is contact the seller to tell them I did not get an invoice. The seller can then get BillSafe to cancel the late fee.

Round 3:
I contact the seller and explain the past due letter, telling them that nothing like an invoice ever came and that the only correspondence had no payment information and no due date.
By the time I contacted the seller, I had transferred the original amount. I had not sent the late fee and told them so.
The seller gave the impression that the matter was now settled. My last Email saying "I hope there won't be any further issues" received a friendly "I hope so, too" response.

Round 4:
An Email nastygram from a PayPal rep in Luxembourg tells me they have received the original amount but not the late fee. It says they cannot undo the late fee without confirmation by the seller. And it says that I must expect more fees if there is no confirmation that I did not get an invoice in the first place.

An Email response goes to PayPal and to the seller asking to please take care of the matter.

[Update] Round 5:
It is Sunday, so imagine my surprise when - a minute after hitting Publish on Blogger - an Email arrives saying that BillSafe is removing the late fee. They remind me to please make sure future payments are done on time.

Lessons learned: if no valid invoice from an internet retailer shows up after a couple of weeks, send a one-liner to customer service.