Update #2 — After a few hundred people had their penny payments to me bounce, PayPal mysteriously freed my account yesterday. Since then dollars and dollars have poured-in, all to be refunded next week, I promise. So please stop sending me money now, okay? Mission accomplished.
My favorite transfer by far was this one for a $0.01 eCheck (below), which I will make every effort to refund before I receive it, thanks:
Have you ever canceled a PayPal account? I tried to cancel mine today and the company wouldn’t let me.
In one sense it’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to cancel their PayPal account since they don’t really cost anything just sitting there, but I’m a cranky old man and PayPal has been rubbing me all the wrong ways lately, so I decided to bail after, I think, 15 years of using the service. That they won’t let me out is bad enough, but it also violates their own support site, which in certain instances actually recommends canceling, except of course you can’t do it.
PayPal recently limited my account. I’m not even sure what that means, but according to the messages I started receiving I had to supply some additional information to get those restrictions lifted. That additional information included a Social Security or Taxpayer ID number, which they’d never required before.
It felt like phishing to me, so I contacted PayPal Security which didn’t respond to my e-mail question. So I tried phone support (it exists, apparently) though I was never able to actually get through. The information requests keep coming (they say I was randomly selected, were you?) and they include my first and last names so it might be legit. I just wish someone would tell me for sure.
On one of PayPal’s support pages they recommend canceling an account where you don’t want to give this information and simply opening a new one. More modern accounts probably require that SSN to do anything, so this may well be PayPal’s way of getting the same satisfaction through another door, but when I tried to take it they wouldn’t let me!
It seems that restricted accounts can’t be closed until the restriction is lifted, even though canceling is one of the recommended options.
I don’t know what the hell is going on here and hope someone will tell me. What I think is happening is PayPal is being leaned on by government agencies that feel the need to monitor my $8 per month Netflix payment. Stepping a little closer to the dark side this might also mean that PayPal has been hacked with notable success and this is part of their response. You tell me.
Well I’ll have none of it. PayPal, if you are reading this, I think your customer service stinks. I think you could answer my e-mail or the phone. I think your support pages should recommend procedures that actually work. As it is, bob@cringely.com has become useless to me as a PayPal address. I suppose I can sign up using a different address, but I prefer to be reached at a single location and now that location is hobbled, which sucks. That address is my property, not yours.
PayPal is getting more Google-like every day.
Can you help me retaliate, just to get PayPal’s attention? If you have a PayPal account please send $0.01 (a penny) to bob@cringely.com. Maybe they’ll notice when a few thousand transfers come in over the next days. When and if PayPal releases my account, I promise to send everyone back their money.
I’m good for it.
Paypal says it can’t transfer money to your account. 🙁
Sorry Bob, your account is unable to accept my 0.02 (CDN) = 0.01 USD.
“This recipient is currently unable to receive money.”
John, You’re a little outdated with your conversion rate!
Bob:
I got an email from Paypal saying the same thing… but the email was to a different email than I had used to register my Paypal account – it was a scam email. It looks like yours was legitimate though.
The conversion was provided by PayPal, a known authority on exchange rates.
😉
Gee Bob, I think you’ve got them mad.
I couldn’t even send you a dime, either as a gift or for goods and services.
😉
Bob, In the EU, you have to give them proof of identity once you reach a certain level of transactions, due to the money laundering regulations. It’s no big deal, and then you carry on until another ceiling is reached, and then they want a bit more hard evidence, and then you are able to transact as much as you want. So long as you provide the info through their own resolution centre, there is no worry about it.
Matthew
I tried to send you $1, but PayPal tells me your account isn’t able to accept transactions.
PayPal amazes me. There are many millions of $$ going through PayPal every day. It’s essentially a completely private and unregulated bank, subject to absolutely no oversight at all. There are thousands of stories similar to yours, Bob… and worse. Yet, nobody from Big Brother seems to care so much as a single pensive fart in PayPal’s direction.
You ARE being phished.
In addition to whatever problems you may be having with the real PayPal.
unitron says “You ARE being phished”
But how do you know? That ‘s Cringely’s point. He can’t tell and I don’t think you can tell unless you’re a PayPal insider (or the phisher :-).
Several times I got a emails from my bank that looked like phishing attempts but turned out to be legitimate but incompetent emails. I’ve gotten calls from my credit card issuer that started off by the CALLER asking me to identify myself and answer security questions; turns out they wanted to verify a credit card transaction I made.
Totally incompetent from a security perspective, but it happens.
They’re not accepting Aussie dollars either… You have upset someone! Well done.
Yeah, paypal customer “service” stinks. I have a paypal account for work that is stuck in perpetual limbo. It was created when I used my work credit card to buy something through paypal, and I checked the box to remember this name & address info and create a paypal account. For reasons I can’t recall that account creation could never by fully validated, something to do with restrictions on corporate credit cards or some such.
“Fair enough,” I said, “just delete it and forget it then”. Only, they can’t or won’t (something I came to realize after weeks of emails and, if memory serves, a conversation with an honest-to-goodness person).
So now every time I buy something online with a merchant who uses paypal they recognize me and pester me with “hey, you already have an account! login to complete your purchase more easily”, only I can’t, so I have to swat that pest aside and go around the long way, and then after completing the purchase the pest pops back up like some whack-a-mole “”hey, you already have an account! login to…”
Bah humbug.
I’m just waiting for the likes of Dwolla to upset the apple cart. Too bad they’re not available outside the US.
Hi Bob,
Great idea but I couldn’t send you an English penny either I’m afraid!
Cheers,
Andrew
Bob, you’re being unfair to Google. Paypal has always had horrible customer service. Which makes me a little concerned about Whitman taking charge of HP.
Remember interviewing Levchin? His aim was always to create fun for himself and his friends. Customers were secondary.
Nope, tried sending you 0.01 GBP
This recipient is unable to receive money.
I have had similar issues with PayPal, about 18 months ago. They should at least have the decency to allow blocked account holders to cancel, either by phone, or through their website.
All in all it’s a very distressing situation having your card or bank details on their system, but you can’t remove them.
AFAIK they do it to allow investigations into money laundering. An EU thing.
Just tried it in euros – no luck either.
Sorry – hope it’s sorted soon.
Wait…you’re saying that PayPal shut off your account’s ability to accept money, but didn’t cancel your account?
Bob, did you try the Report Form?
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-submit&login_cmd=_contact&continue=Continue&dwf=neg_infolimit
When fraud engines misfire, people get cross. Paypal should be able to do better than this.
same here for the last year….
can’t go forward as the account is restricted
can’t go backward and delete as the account is restricted
I have jumped through every hoop they have put in front of me, only to find a new hurdle
15 years on paypal
Ditto – no pennies for you!
Ballsy of you too publish your email on your blog like that on the open.
No wonder you get phishing attempts.
Bob’s email has been published since long before “this” site came to be.
Ce destinataire n’est pas en mesure actuellement de recevoir de l’argent.
The same in french…
Yah the government agency in question wants to double tax everyone on goods that have already been taxed once. That’s what you get with liberals. Oh yea privacy to abort fetus but what about my financial privacy? Does not exist to big government liberal types.
I’m not fond of this approach. It’s coercion pure and simple. It’s why I am a libertarian. This sort of thing is shot through our society where the only growth industry is fudging in other peoples business.
Your method to get your subscribers to send you a penny sure appealed to me. I tried, but you are on paypal’s sh*tlist. It’s good that you are exposing this kind of stuff. We are giving over our digital lives to google, paypal, amazon, facebook and others. For the most part, they are usually ok, but not always. And there is no oversight or laws/rules/regulations concerning what they can or cannot do. It’s a brave new world we are entering…
A couple of years ago I was faced with the Paypal phone system — and discovered that if you shout “HELP” it transfers you to a real person!
now that is a truly helpful feature. i wonder if it works everywhere and what the other folks in the office will think when i try it out. hmmmmm
PayPal or just the norm? Hindrances, roadblocks, delays, hangups, passing calls in full circle – navigating through any corporate “Contact Us” is a maze mine field. Bigger voices Cringely do rally the attention. Start recordings on phone contacts to corporations and then share them online “Acme Customer Service”. The dirty laundry is well known yet they don’t want it seen.
I discovered (through experience) that you can only attach one PayPal account to any given bank account. I found this when I wanted to create a PayPal account for my wife that was attached to our joint account – PayPal wouldn’t allow it. So until Bob disconnects his current PayPal account from his bank, he’s screwed.
I don’t use PayPal unless I have to. But I use it all the time to buy stuff on eBay. So if I had this problem I would quickly set up a new account, with another credit card. If it were necessary to have a “verified” account, then I’d have to set up another bank account just for PayPal/eBay. I doubt I’d wait until the problem was resolved, although I’d probably work on that as a side project.
I don’t use PayPal unless I have to. But I use it all the time to buy stuff on eBay. So if I had this problem I would quickly set up a new account, with another credit card. If it were necessary to have a “verified” account, then I’d have to set up another bank account just for PayPal/eBay. I doubt I’d wait until the problem was resolved, although I’d probably work on that as a side project.
eBay/PayPal is important enough to me to quickly set up another email/credit card combo. If it had to be verified also, I guess I’d have to create a new bank account as well. Then I’d work on getting the problem resolved.
“More Googlelike every day”: Dealing with Google customer service is a painful experience, I agree, but every time I have had to do it, it has ended with a satisfactory resolution. Unlike yours with PayPal, it seems. If you find a satisfactory alternative, please let us know. Much as I might want to switch though, unfortunately, I don’t want to have to change my web hosting provider to do it, and though I don’t buy much on eBay, I sometimes do, and there’s not gonna be any PayPal workaround for that, I don’t expect.
I don’t quite understand why I find PayPal so annoying. It’s visceral. But PayPal is the easiest way to replenish my Starbucks card app and I can’t give that up…
“You can check-out anytime you like… but you can never leave” … The Eagles
Bob, I tried to send you my 2 cents… seemed more appropriate. I too could not do it. But I tried… twice… just to see if PayPal is paying attention. Hopefully if enough people TRY… it will help. Good Luck!
Bob –
I case you don’t know why you can’t close a PayPal account, here’s why:
Several years ago I had a “friend of a friend” who was a significant drug dealer. He had a beatiful method of dealing – here goes:
1. Once he got a shipment of whatever he was turning, he would buy ceramic dolls, objects, etc. & load the contraband inside them.
2. He would post these items for sale on Ebay (previously notifying his customers).
3. They would purchase the item and pay through PayPal.
4. Once he got the money in his PayPal acct, he would ship the contraband.
It worked like a charm until the Patriot Act. Here’s a little snipet from Wikipadia about it:
“In the United States, PayPal is licensed as a money transmitter on a state-by-state basis.[58] PayPal is not classified as a bank in the United States, though the company is subject to some of the rules and regulations governing the financial industry including Regulation E consumer protections and the USA PATRIOT Act.[59]”
There are tons of ilicit money transfers that go through PayPal. With the Patroit Act, the government can track you and anybody else through PayPal. You can’t close your account because PayPal can’t.
But you can close your account at any other bank, broker, or financial institution.
I’d already seen the update that it would work, but figured I’d try to send you 10 yen anyway. Perhaps all the failures will get their attention?
I tried to send you money Bob, but alas Paypal has suspended your account:
Welcome back.
Bob,
I was able to send you a penny. Should be in your account now.
Dave
Bob,
If you give us a USPS mail address, I will send you a nickel through my BOFA bill pay. You will not get it overnight but you will in a few days. Then, of course, you will have to spend a couple of bucks on gasoline to take it to your friendly brick and mortar bank to deposit it, unless you have a deposit scanner/terminal at the Cringely abode with which you can deposit it directly. Just remember to stamp it “Processed” after the first run through.
Cheers,
Jacob
Deposits can also be mailed. Anything is better than waiting for a teller to do accept it, put a hold until it clears, etc., etc.
Bob,
Forget Paypal. Never used it. If you give us a USPS mail address, I will send you a nickel through my BofA bill pay. You will not get it overnight but you will in a few days. Then, of course, you will have to spend a couple of bucks on gasoline to take it to your friendly brick and mortar bank to deposit it, unless you have a deposit scanner/terminal at the Cringely abode with which you can deposit it directly. If you do, just remember to stamp it “Processed” after the first run through.
Cheers,
Jacob
Deposits can also be mailed. Anything is better than waiting for a teller to do accept it, put a hold until it clears, etc., etc.
That was probably the worst article that I have ever read of yours. I’m not a huge PayPal fan, but I still use it. They changed their rules for this year because of the govt and now they want more info. Just give them the info they want and be done with it. It’s not like your personal data is all that personal. There are all kinds of large companies that have your data.
Bob, you sneaky old dog! If 400,000 of your readers each tries to send you $ 0.02 USD, that’s $8,000. That will be a nice addition to Mary Alyce’s shoe budget. Hint, the next time show an example of a $0.25 USD transfer !
Your old friend John.
He could claim it was an experiment crowd-funding his kid’s further education.
Bob,
A couple of weeks ago I came across this article concerning eCommerce sites which (tried to) close their Amazon storefronts. Apparently, they could remove all their products but the storefront remains, helpfully informing any stray visitors (and there are lots of them because Amazon bids up so many keywords on Google) that the item they seek is “out of stock”. (And since Amazon absolutely forbids you to include a link to your own web site in your listing, the prospective customer is left with the impression that there’s no other way to acquire the item).
The common thread here is that, you can try to quit them, but the big guys are going to keep your data (and do with it as they please) forever.
They did this to me. I just ignored it, because frankly I don’t give a damn. Eventually the restriction was lifted even though I did nothing. (shrug)
Not sure if that bodes well or ill for me. But since I pretty much use it never I don’t think I really care.
Another Paypal wrinkle: I moved from Canada to the UK and tried to change my address, apparently it is not possible. I tried first online and when that failed I called them. They advised that I had to start a new account in the UK and if I wanted to transfer my balance I would have to pay myself from the Canadian balance.
Another Paypal wrinkle: I moved from Canada to the UK and tried to change my address. It is not possible. I first tried online and when that failed I called them. They confirmed that a country change was not possible and that I would have to start a new account in the UK. They could not transfer my balance and I would have to pay myself from the Canadian account. Apparently this is “because of money laundering issues”- can anyone explain this?
When money crosses borders and there is fraud there are limits on what firms like PayPal can do to get your money back. There are a lot of people in countries with weak law enforcement who are constantly trying to get access to your bank and credit card accounts. (Seriously take a look at the mountains of SPAM messages one gets in a day.) When they start taking money someone ends up covering the loss. Its usually you, your bank, or the money transfer agent.
There are also people in the world who make huge amounts of money through illegal activities. They need to get that money out of the sight of law enforcement, which often means moving it to a country with favorable laws. If PayPal assisted in this effort they’d be breaking laws too.
Let’s not forget the reason PayPal exists. When the Internet began to take off many in the business world thought it was not important to them and/or a fad that would pass in time. If the banking and/or the credit card industry had stepped up and provided a secure payment system for business on the Internet, PayPal would not have been needed. They didn’t. PayPal had an opportunity. They ran with it.
At the time my bank had a lame idea for a paperless payment system. They were going to charge me something like $3-5 per transaction. I argued they should base their charges on the actual bank to bank money transfer rates and/or no more than $0.32 USD per transaction. The $0.32 was the cost of first class postage in the 1990’s. I tried to explain to them if I’m willing to pay $0.32 to mail a check, I’d be okay with paying them $0.32 to transfer the money.
So Bob I wondered if PayPal would let you PAY money, even if it won’t let you receive it. I just sent you a bill for 1¢. Pay up deadbeat! Actually if you pay it, then it costs me 30¢. So, uh, nevermind.
PP and eBay were a great match because they both had and have the same incredibly lousy customer service.
PP and eBay were a great match because they both had and have the same lousy customer service.
It’s possible to use multiple email addresses and have them end up in the same inbox. For instance, if you host your email with Gmail, you can set up Pop3 transfers from your secondary email. You could open a Fastmail.fm account and bounce all your emails to your current email account. It might be nice to have in case you ever want to send an email anonymously too.
Don’t even get me started on PayPal. Oops, too late. I had a similar “let go of me!” experience two years ago. I’ve never liked them and grew to detest them when they were on their “we’re the most loved” propaganda blitz. At least they’re over that.
How to say this…thanks for the inspiration Bob!!! I have two PP accounts (don’t ask why – it’s too painful to explain) and have been trying to cancel them for almost a year. Each time I gave up utterly frustrated. Today though, after reading your piece, I sat down with new resolve and saw it through – both accounts cancelled. I don’t know if there is a more difficult company in America to work with. And in the end, there was a surprise.
One account had a $1.95 balance owing to me. The phone rep insisted I wasn’t owned money – several times – so I sent them a screenshot and low and behold, the rep found the money. Then I was told there was a $1.50 fee to process the refund and I said fine. The rep said it didn’t seem to make sense to cut a check for the .45 cents so would I waive the refund. Silly them. I now wait for my .45 cent from PP. I don’t know whether to go into the bank and cash it or frame it.
Same thing here, Bob but I got refused at an “orange big box home improvement” store that accepts the paypal card for purchases. Spent 45 minutes on the site trying to figure out why it stopped working (no notice or email from them explaining it) and so emailed them and after a few days they said I don’t have a paypal credit or debit card. they are right and couldn’t deal with their own swipe card. I stumbled upon the SSN field needing to be updated but nothing pointed me there.
Oh, and after all these years, I’d be glad to send you even a few bucks, it would retroactively be the best investment I ever made.
Whenever I get some email demanding personal info, I check the address of where the info is going. If the address is not legitimate, I ignore the email. Oh, sometimes I play around with them first. My favorite telephone number reply is 666-EatS**t.
I too had my PayPal account ‘restricted’ a year or so ago. I had purchased an piece of audio electronics, and the transfer was more then I had done before (>$1000).
After getting the cryptic PayPal email notification, and a dissatisfied seller email, I spent most of the day searching, emailing, and calling my bank, PayPal and seller.
I was finally able to get a PayPal person on the phone, and after asking to speak to her supervisor, got an explanation of the problem. It turned out that they usually ‘fronted’ the money for smaller amounts, till the bank transfer happened, but they wouldn’t do that for this larger amount. I just waited a couple of days until the overnight batch processing, or whatever, moved the money from my bank account to PayPal, and thus the sellers account.
All that was reasonable, understandable, and no big problem. BUT, the problem was in terrible communication, wasting my time and disturbing my (and others) mental state.
If the original email had stated the reason clearly, there would have been no problem, and many people would have been spared time dealing with the misunderstanding. Lots of money would have been saved too.
So, how hard is it to communicate clearly ??????
Keep the money that PayPal has of yours as low as possible.
I run a business accepting payments via PayPal. I do so because it’s far far cheaper than using a bank’s merchant services. Cheaper for me means cheaper for my customers too, and I hope secure for them as well.
But I don’t know what PayPal is exactly. It’s not a bank, but neither is it a credit card company. What happens if PayPal goes burst?
The sad thing is, though, there’s really no alternative for the small merchant.
I’ve never had to test them so I guess I can’t say authoritatively that they are “better” but there most certainly is an alternative to PayPal (except for buying on eBay of course) in Squareup.com.
Ebay and PayPal are like two peas in a pod as far as customer service….they’re perfect for each other, blending nicely with their fraudulent sellers. My favorite aspect is that they make their money no matter what happens with the transaction. Seller doesn’t send or respond to questions of why? They do nothing but tell you to wait and see until their advertised time limit for doing something about it has passed, ultimately wasting hours of mine on the phone only to tell me in the end to dispute the charge with my bank and to tell them “PayPal will help.” Hah..
Ebay is a (financially enormous) joke….PayPal is the punchline. Stay away from both to the full extent possible.
Anyone ever have a lawyer send PayBay a letter to see if they’re responsive from a legal perspective? Might be interesting for someone with the money/lawyer to try it.
I’ve been buying from eBay for the past decade. But the best way to find stuff is to google the product you want and look at the top non-sponsored hits which often are legit and high-positive-feedback sellesr on eBay. If you only search eBay you may find products direct shipped from China that are misrepresented, and although you can return them for a refund, the shipping charge and post office trip may make it seem not worth the trouble.
My payment just went through with no problems.
Enough about Paypal, if they’re providing poor service then surely that must mean there’s an opening in the market for a competitor? Who is it? Bitcoin?!?
“… if they’re providing poor service…” it may be because we’re holding it wrong. 🙂
To quote an excerpt from Accidental Empires.
*partial*
“Dollars and sense”
Was it the negative publicity do you think?
The problem I see is that most Paypal alternatives are built for customer-to-vendor transactions. They aren’t so good for things like auctions. That’s not to mention Paypal’s advantage as a division of eBay.
As much as I hate Paypal, I trust them to take care of my credit card better than I trust random merchants. In that way, they’re like Amazon Marketplace or Google Checkout, and Paypal is accepted by more vendors than either. I don’t like Paypal, but I actually look for the Pay with Paypal button, because I like giving my credit card to merchants even less.
A promising alternative is Dwolla, but Dwolla doesn’t take money via credit cards. I guess that’s a tradeoff of providing a service with such low fees. They can’t afford to lose lots of investor money like Paypal did during the dot-com boom.
Bitcoin is interesting, but it’s currently vulnerable to extreme price swings.
You should try using Paypal’s “Seller Protection” policy. My company delivers our software to customers over the web. We use Paypal to process purchases. We recently had a customer purchase it and then run into some installation problems. He even sent me screenshots of his desktop. Emails back and forth. We got it installed and he was happy. And then Paypal took the money back after telling me that the purchase had been fraudulent.
However, Paypal has Seller Protection! So I filed a claim and sent in all the emails, screenshots, etc… and finally had to call them.
On the phone they told me that the seller protection didn’t apply because we didn’t send a “tangible asset” to the customer. Would I receive a full reimbursement payment if I had simply burnt the software to a CD and mailed it to him? The Paypal agent told me that I would.
That’s interesting. So PayPal doesn’t allow for the purchase of nontangible goods like digital files. However, you can have a customer “send money” for “goods and services”. After the payment comes through, you provide a way for the customer to obtain the file. But if they want “buyer protection”, I guess something must be mailed, even if it’s an empty envelope, or an envelope containing a piece of paper saying “You Bought Buyer Protection”.
Service Unavailable.
Technical description:
504 Gateway Time-out – The web server is not responding
Bob, could you please try posting once a day in the afternoon to experience the new problems with the website that started this year. Just say “I’m not commenting on this post, just testing the website. Thanks.”
PayPal stinks, it is long time known story. They treat their people as slaves, never answer e-mails and lock accounts whenever they want, even with no real reasons. Addition to that they think they have right to hold your money. Unfortunately there are no alternatives online right now..
[…] We’re PayPal immortals whether we like it or not […]
I had the same problem at the beginning of this year, suddenly they asked for my ID card and a verification of my legal address. I searched a bit and found an article describing the same situation for a person with same initials than me (A.M.) in the same time frame, so maybe there are several accounts with the same name and they want to discriminate between them. Finally, I provided the data (here in Spain we are more used, sometimes even required, to provide the ID card in business operations).
After this they restored full access but not without a minor goof: when I opened my account I used my first name and last name, but in Spain we use first name, last name (father last’s name) and a third name (mother’s last name) for ID cards and other official documents. So my account’s holder was “Alberto Martinez” and my ID card says “Alberto Martinez Perez”, and they refused it because the names didn’t match! (even when the address of the ID card matched the address of the Paypal account).
The good news were that the rejection email was signed by a real person (maybe not very bright but at least it wasn’t a machine), so I replied explaining the situation and she said that she’ll change the holder of the Paypal account so it match the ID. And indeed she changed it, but to “Alberto Perez Martinez”, reversing last and third name. After a second reply she changed it to the correct name and restored the access to my account.
From PayPal’s point of view, no matter how many names you put together to create your full name, one on them is “first” and one of them is “last”. It’s up to you to be consistent about those two names.
I use only first and last name for international accounts (I opened my PayPal account before PayPal Spain existed), but by law my ID card include, first, last and a third name (or if you prefer it name, surname and second surname).
The woman that handled the issue was from PayPal Spain (and she had an Spanish name/last name, no foreign worker), so she must know it. Also, *she* reversed my last and third name when renaming the account holder, not me. (my account was locked so I couldn’t change the holder name).
You need to be consistent about which name is “first” and which is “last”. Many years ago I set up a few PayPal accounts back when they paid you to sign up. So to distinguish the names I added a letter to my first name. That way to a computer it just looked like another family member with a (different first name).
I had the exact same thing happen to me with Paypal….twice. Once was because I tried to use Paypal while on vacation in Maui back in December. Second time was out of the blue a couple months ago. The page to “cure” the problem asks you for the same things a phishing site would have. I was blown away when I finally got someone four layers into my phone call and found out that WAS their real page. Asking me for credit card numbers and my SS#. The guy ran me through a series of questions on my credit history to prove it was me (who told them they could pull my credit history? I guess I did….) and both times they reinstated me but what a pain. And so insulting. A Paypal user since practically their start too. In the beginning I lived in China too and had no problems. Made a mistake a couple years later when I visited China again and logged into my account. I left that account for dead (this was about 10 years ago) and started a new one. Left at least $50 behind in that one. Just could not get it reinstated or anyone to help me at all back then.
Welcome to Paypal Hell, Bob! As already outlined by your other readers, their support and policies are both awful. Part of that has to do with Paypal not being a bank, and not having to follow the tougher regulations imposed on banks. Their attempt to get your tax information is not a phishing scam, they do require this information, especially from accounts that receive a certain amount of money (this is being enforced more often, because as of 2011, all merchant accounts are required to disclose your activity to the IRS… so if you receive payments from Google Wallet, Paypal, a merchant account, Amazon, etc, they’ll submit a 1099K on your behalf to make sure uncle Sam can steal more of your money). But it looks like you had enough muscle to get them to lift the limit on your account. My company did a substantial amount of business through Paypal for over 10 years, only to have our account mysteriously limited. After years of trying to fix the problem, Paypal would only disclose that our account was linked to another company that had been previously limited and they refused to elaborate any further (this made no sense to us, since this was our one and only Paypal account). They also held our money for 6 months after limiting our account. The internet is full of similar stories like this. And if you are lucky to get one of their agents on the phone, they are typically very rude and not at all eager to help.
I Can’t tell you how many hours I spent trying to get my account ‘verified’ (I think that’s the right term)
Years ago I won an auction on ebay, but gave up after a few weeks of trying. Recently I tried again. And, ran into the same problem. They were asking for the authentication code from 3 years ago. I found it, but couldn’t get them to accept it.
Customer service’s bright idea was to delete, then re-enter my credit card. Fine, but they didn’t mention that I’d have to wait for another three days to complete the verification.
This happened, three times.
I was able to get customer support on the phone and spent a few hours on the phone trying. Finally, got someone to figure it out, but it reqiuired him to delete my account and have me recreate it. Funny thing though, they still wanted to the three year old authentication code.
In the end, I got it working, but what a nightmare.
[…] Allard suggests three steps to build a business budget that works. Robert X. Cringely struggles to cancel his PayPal account. A bunch of celebrity entrepreneurs auction off their time. Ivan Widjaya lays […]
I HATE paypal, and am so relieved to discover I am not alone! Their service is terrible, and the site itself is a total mess. I have struggled using them with my ebay account, and when I had an online store. I wish there was a better alternative. –Beth
[…] Allard suggests three steps to build a business budget that works. Robert X. Cringely struggles to cancel his PayPal account. A bunch of celebrity entrepreneurs auction off their time. Ivan Widjaya lays […]
[…] Allard suggests three steps to build a business budget that works. Robert X. Cringely struggles to cancel his PayPal account. A bunch of celebrity entrepreneurs auction off their time. Ivan Widjaya lays […]
[…] Allard suggests three steps to build a business budgetthat works. Robert X. Cringely struggles to cancel his PayPal account. A bunch of celebrity entrepreneurs auction off their time. Ivan Widjaya lays […]
[…] Allard suggests three steps to build a business budget that works. Robert X. Cringely struggles to cancel his PayPal account. A bunch of celebrity entrepreneurs auction off their time. Ivan Widjaya lays […]
[…] Allard suggests three steps to build a business budget that works. Robert X. Cringely struggles to cancel his PayPal account. A bunch of celebrity entrepreneurs auction off their time. Ivan Widjaya lays […]
bitcoin
Hi Robert,
I always thought I was strange for not wanting to create a Pay Pal account, but after reading your informative posts about Pay Pal, I’m happy I never created a personal account.
Great reporting, keep up the good work!
I opened a Pay Pal when it was relatively new and never used it because it never worked. Since then I’ve at least ten computers and a dozen operating system. Pay Pal has been a faithful friend. The first ten years I received daily spam. The messages finally dwindled to once a week and now not so often.
Shhh… we are aging together but don’t tell any one. WE need people like YOU. Creating 8000 words is twice the the grief of creating 4000 like I did weekly upon a time. .
I tried to send you a wooden nickel, but my local Pony Express wanted to know what the hell an “E” mail address is and just which mountain pass they would need to take to get there.