Paypal

[netmaestro]

Thanks, this is no fun for sure. Paypal is giving the "seller" 7 days to respond, which for a claim like this doesn't seem fair to me. All they have to do is look at the IP address of the person who made the payment and they can see immediately it's an IP I've never used before, thousands of miles away from me if it's even in my own country, which is doubtful. They could have set it right within hours. Once this is settled I'm done with Paypal. I'm closing it.

[luis]

All they have to do is look at the IP address of the person who made the payment and they can see immediately it's an IP I've never used before, thousands of miles away from me if it's even in my own country, which is doubtful.

An IP by itself does not prove anything, you can connect from everywhere in the world easily without leaving your home. If your account hasn't be hacked, and if someone just used your login/password because got access to it, there is not much paypal could do beside freezing everything and do some checks with the two parts involved. Since (as I understand it) there was not a commercial transaction involved here (you didn't buy something, nothing has been shipped) the other part could simply state you owed money to him, you ordered the paypal transfer and now you changed your mind, you dirty traitor.
In reality he will probably simply vanish and in a while paypal will close the incident in your favor.

[IdeasVacuum]

Luis is right netmaestro - the problem for PayPal is the same for all money merchants. Since you are the complainant, PayPal will already be suspicious of the other party. However, they handle so many transactions per minute, not one of them can be handled individually by a human applying common sense -that is simply unrealistic when there are thousands of similar problem cases to process. What they do, when human intervention is necessary, is simply invoke a pre-designed mechanism which will, eventually, reach the correct conclusion 99% of the time.

If you do leave PayPal (and I wouldn't blame you after this debacle), it could be a case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire...... I say that because PayPal is now very well established and experienced, so it mostly all works. The others, most recent of which is Amazon, have a lot to learn - and that learning tends to be at the inadvertent expense of the customer.

[IdeasVacuum]

look at the IP address of the person who made the payment and they can see immediately it's an IP I've never used before, thousands of miles away from me if it's even in my own country, which is doubtful

I'm sure they do that, but it wouldn't do any harm to your case to point that out anyway.

[Nituvious]

This makes me not want to tie my bank account to my PayPal so I transfer what I have in PayPal..

Speaking of passwords, I enjoy using full sentences for my password. Specially a whimsical sentence that makes no sense and uses a lot of punctuation. It makes remembering passwords easier and I can use unique passwords for absolutely everything.

[Zach]

How do you get past the character limit? Seems like you'd have to think of some pretty short sentences..


Anyway. I loathe Paypal. They can drop off the face of the earth and die for all I care. And it really pisses me off that EVERYONE uses them these days. Especially advertising agencies and shit companies like that, who contact web sites to run ads and such. The last time I put an ad on my site I got paid around $400 - $450 or something like that, and it was for a simple 6 month run-time of a sentence or two which linked to another site. I ended up using my sisters paypal to receive the money.

Apparently it is too expensive to print a company check, when you're dealing with a business /advertising deal, but Paypal is A-OK.

I can't use Paypal. I am practically banned from the service, as a result of the way they have treated me and handled my case over the years. When I was a teenager, my parents let us empty our Pentagon savings accounts and open up our own bank accounts with USAA. So at some point I wanted to use Paypal for online buying/selling or whatever situations, and had to verify my identity by reporting the correct amount of a deposit paypal had made to the bank account.

I was young and inexperienced with both the banking system, and how to use it to reliably get information. I waited several days, checking my ATM balance and such, and the balance never increased for some reason. I didn't know I could call the bank and use an automated system to get my balance, or failing that, speak to a representative. I was young and impatient and didn't want to wait for my bank statement, so I just tried guessing. Which put my account into lockdown.

So ever since I was 16 or 17 or so, my Paypal account has been locked. They have had the personal information I provided them at that time, plus any new addresses or other info from moving to Wisconsin, etc. I have called them various times over the years trying to resolve the matter. I've even "harrassed" them via e-mail until getting responses. They ALWAYS want me to FAX personal information over the phone line. Shit like Drivers License and stuff. I said (paraphrasing) "fuck you I'm not sending that shit over unsecured transmissions" etc.

I told them give me a company address I can mail them to, and the name of a carrier who guarantees secure shipping, and I will pay to have the shit mailed to them. They never directly answered this request.. Always deflected to another resolution attempt, etc.

At one point I had my account opened up to the point where I could, allegedly, submit scanned documents to prove my identity. Which I tried to do, but it always gave me an error during the process (I forget what) about my account not being allowed to do it or something similar. I sent them no less than 4 e-mails explaining that I could not upload the information, jumping between representatives as they all answered the same case file. It's like, HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO FUCKING TELL YOU PEOPLE?

Again I demand either a business address and/or the name of a secure Courier service I can use to mail them my information, or provide me with an e-mail address to a secure account I can mail my scanned documents to.

Their final response on the issue was, "after reviewing your case we have decided that your account will remain closed indefinitely. There is no appeal".

Seriously? They shouldn't even be allowed to conduct business like that.

[netmaestro]

Huh. I guess they have their sop's and they aren't going to vary from them for anyone. They'd probably get fired if they did. Really, think how much a dishonest Paypal employee with full access could steal before they caught him. Anyway, I'm sorry to hear about your case. In my own case I was able to pinch the theft off at the bud by stopping the payment at the bank. After seven days Paypal reversed the bad transaction and my account is alright now. But I want to remove my credit card from the Paypal account and my bank account too and then close the account because I really don't need Paypal and I sure don't need people trying to steal 999 euros ($1500cdn) from me through it. But - since all this happened there's a thread hanging and I can't remove anything. When I try I get a messagebox that says, "Cannot remove credit card while instant transfer is pending", but there isn't one. It's left over from the attempted theft. I'm just hoping it will cycle off normally after some number of days and then I can get away.

[Kuron]

"Cannot remove credit card while instant transfer is pending", but there isn't one. It's left over from the attempted theft. I'm just hoping it will cycle off normally after some number of days and then I can get away.

You can call the credit card company and have them cancel that card number and issue you a new card with a new number. I do this routinely 2-3 times per year just for security purposes.

Things like that can happen outside of PayPal, too. Last month, I went to Subway and the total was $17.39 and I paid with my credit card like I normally do. When they posted the charge to the credit card company, the charge was $173.99. Obvious mistake and I had my receipt. I simply called my bank and let them take care of the issue.

Back to PayPal, they used to be horrible before ebay bought them, but I like them since ebay bought them and have never had an issue. I routinely open and close PayPal accounts (each time I get a new card issued) and I have never given paypal access to my bank account, they only have the credit card info. What is nice too, is most places you can pay with PayPal and do not actually have to have a PayPal account. I trust PayPal than most of the payment services that many online retailers use. I have always got my money back from PayPal, when there has been a dispute or other issue with an order.

[electrochrisso]

I have been using PayPal for 10 years, hundreds of transactions, no problems so far, I must be lucky.

[jack]

same here, no problems, but I never gave paypal my bank account, the way to stop them from bugging me to get certified was to get a paypal credit card.