PayPal rant

[Jim O'Dell]

I have used PayPal and E-Bay about 7 times over the course of about 5 years. Never had a problem until this past month. How many of you give PayPal your bacnk account numbers? I refuse to as a purchaser. If I was selling, then I'd set up a specific account just for that, and only keep X number of dollars in it so I couldn't get ripped off.
Anyway, I purchased a pump for my sprinkler system, went to pay for it, wouldn't take the PayPal payment. Wouldn't accept my credit card number to add it in. Hmmm. E-mail them and it takes 2 days to get a response. Answer, multiple accounts, close the accounts and open a new one, can't have multiple personal accounts. I do so, and it still won't accept. Have to authorize a 1.95 charge that will show up as a credit on PayPal after 24 hours, to verify account. Do that reluctantly, because I feel like part of it is my fault for not remembering the account was under an e-mail account I haven't used in 2 years. That goes through, I enter the confirmation number from the credit card account to verify, takes it, still won't let me pay the company for the pump! I'm getting livid now. Starts taking more that 2 days for answers on e-mail, and the last one has been 6 days now. Says I need to give them my bank account number for verification. Nope, sorry, no will do. I asked them why they didn't say this to begin with, and I would close my PayPal account out, vow to never use them again, and send a cashier's check for my purchase. That's the one I haven't heard from yet. Then after some digging around, I see I could have changed the e-mail address for the old account to begin with, and kept going. They didn't suggest that as the best avenue. Wonder why???
So be careful. I think PayPal has gotten too big for their own pants. I don't think this was a phishing scheme, because I was dealing with the E-bay site and had e-mailed the vendor.
Has anyone else seen this or something similar? I spouted off and told them I was going to spread the news of this on the forums I was on, so I'm living up to my word. And I'm serious about not using PayPal ever again. If a vendor won't do payment some other way, they won't get my business. Probably won't do much with E-bay again for that matter, since they are one in the same company. I might email the vendor to see if they have similar items off Ebay that can be purchased, like maybe through Google checkout.
Thanks for listening to me vent. I don't do this often. Jim.

[Clint Jones]

I have had a paypal account for a while now. I am a verified premier member and have over 1000 transactions. I buy and sell with paypal and have never had one problem. The best thing to do is call them. If you are willing to give a company your credit card number why would you care to give your bank account number. By the way I have a seperate bank account for paypal and withdraw frequently.

[Mike Cutler]

I have had a paypal account for a while now. I am a verified premier member and have over 1000 transactions. I buy and sell with paypal and have never had one problem. The best thing to do is call them. If you are willing to give a company your credit card number why would you care to give your bank account number. By the way I have a seperate bank account for paypal and withdraw frequently.

If you have a seperate bank account specifically for Paypal, that's different. No one gets access to my primary accounts. It's bad enough that I have access to them at times. The Credit card has built in buyer protection,Paypal doesn't.
I've never liked the concept of Paypal. I've never used it, and probably never will. I'm just not that type of consumer. I don't do internet banking either. Maybe, I'm becoming a dinosaur.

[Roger Bell]

I agree that they are getting big for their britches, as is ebay, for that matter.

For the regular seller, it is probably worth putting up with it, considering the benefits they probably derive. For the occasional buyer, they have both become far more trouble than they are worth.

I am getting something similar. Paypal no longer recognizes the CC I have been using for the past several years, for some reason. Ironically, the rest of the world still does. My intuition tells me that I know where this is going to end up. All I want is fair, reasonable and equitable treatment.

I make my own decisions about to whom I wish to release my personal and financial info....and I don't need justify my refusal and I don't need to "verify" squat. I refuse to be their willing victim. Fair treatment starts out with their willingness to demonstrate to me by their actions that they want my business more than I want their BS. If they can't or they won't, well then that's their loss. I never beg anyone to please take my money.

[Jim O'Dell]

Roger, I'm with you there. Evidently they have a "sending limit" for credit card numbers. From what I can tell, 500.00 per year per card, 2000.00 max total. I think they want to get us to take their credit card. That appears to be another way around the bank account numbers. I don't need another card, I'm happy with the one I have. I'll find another firm to purchase items from if need be.
Clint, if I was going to sell on E-bay, I'd have that separate account. But for a once in a while buyer, my credit card is all PayPal should need. That was the original deal with them, the purchaser had the safety of the credit card purchase, plus the vendor didn't have their cc number. If the vendor didn't try to take advantage of the customer, they were guaranteed their payment. Now PayPal wants to change all that. I'm just not happy with it. Jim.

[Clint Jones]

To tell you the truth I really dont like it when people pay me with a credit card on paypal. They charge the seller an outrageous rate to accept it. If anything paypal has too much buyer protection and not enough seller protection. If I only made a couple of purhcases a year I would stay away from paypal because if you arent a frequent user it gives scammers a time to buy a bunch of stuff on your dormant account. I would stick to postal money orders for buying.

[Jim O'Dell]

Clint, I'm sure that's true. Have you looked into Google checkout? not sure they would be any better, but might be worth a look. And what would it cost to be set up with MC/Visa? I know that there is still a percentage you have to pay for the transaction, but is there something your local bank could set up so you gould get paid without having the full flown credit card set up? I see a lot of the vendors at the dog shows have their little cell based swipe machines to do CC purchases. Pretty slick, and they seem to be little mom and pop type shops. Jim.

[Clint Jones]

Jim,
I own an antique store and take credit cards there through a merchant account. They are no better on rates. With the amount of credit card sales I make a month it is worth paying the high rates. What can you do??? Big buisness is always tough on the little guy. If I didnt make so much money on ebay I wouldnt deal with it. Alot of the people you deal with on ebay are great but every once in a while you get some nuts. Ebay knows that they control the online auction market so they stick it to sellers more and more. They (ebay) know there is nothing we can do about it because no one can compete with them. And wouldnt you know ebay owns paypal too so there business practice is the same"Squeeze every penny you can out of the seller". They are both getting too big and scams are happening more and more. There are even scammers starting to send fake emails to tool buyers and such as it used to be only high dollar electronics. I have been a member of ebay since 1998 "the good ole days when it cost a dime to sell".

[David G Baker]

Jim,
I set up a separate account for my Ebay/PayPal dealings just like you did. I had a lot of money in my PayPal account so I was using that money to pay for things I purchased on Ebay and didn't use my special bank account for a while. I tried to transfer some money from my special account into my PayPal account because they were paying a great interest. I didn't realize that I had to make a deposit into the special account at least once a year or it became inactive. The bank wouldn't transfer the money until I re activated the special account by making a deposit. PayPal did the same thing to me that they did to you, the only thing different was they demanded a letter from my bank stating that the account was actually active and I did this. That was not good enough, they demanded that I send them a photo id. That is when I hit the breaking point. There was no way they were going to get any more personal information from me let alone a photo id. I cut back selling on Ebay by 99% and any Ebay transactions I do now are via credit card.
If I have something I really want to sell I will use Craig's List.
I was doing over $2000 a year in selling on Ebay, not much but each seller they loose is a dent in their earnings.

[Jim Becker]

To tell you the truth I really dont like it when people pay me with a credit card on paypal. They charge the seller an outrageous rate to accept it.

Once your PayPal account accepts credit cards, even cash transactions have the fee on it. But it's the only "easy" way that someone like myself, who is not a commercial business, can accept payment from someone who is making a private purchase...so I pay the fee.

[Doug Cloud]

I have a PayPal account which is linked up to my eBay account. I often sell items on eBay so I have a seller's account as well. I have been a member of PayPal for almost six years now and I can't say anything bad about them. This is why....

A year and a half ago someone hacked my username and password and stole $300 from my bank account through PayPal. I was frantic about this, to say the least, and I contacted both my bank and PayPal. Because my checking account was only at $50 at the time I procured some hefty overdraft fees (as well as the missing money). PayPal contacted my bank immediately and explained what had happened. They not only paid the overdraft fees they also returned my $300 into my bank account. They did all of this within two days.

They have since alleviated my fears on having my account hacked again by explaining how every user is covered against such an incident. They even reported the incident to the authorities and not long after it happened the FBI caught the guy who hacked my account - some foreigner overseas (I don't remember where exactly).

I was quite impressed with how they handled the situation and that is why I have remained a Paypal user ever since.

[Jim O'Dell]

Doug, I'm glad to hear that they take this seriously and correct the problems that arise, but would this have happened at all if they hadn't had your account number? Yes, there are other ways theives can get that information and do the same or similar damage, but that one particular instance wouldn't have. I allowed PayPal to charge my credit card the $1.95 for verification, but now they want more. They should have spelled out everything they needed at the first. Otherwise, it's like they think they've found someone they can scam. For all we know, the thief overseas has a link to a PayPal employee(s). For those selling things, yes, I'd have a separate account that I could keep deleted of excess money so that there would only be so much that I could loose. Hard to do that with the regular house account, although some days looking at it I'd think that's what we were doing. I guess I don't need PayPal that badly for my circumstances. On this particular instance, I could have gone to HD and got the same item for $37.00 more, including the taxes on the item. I've had more than triple that amount of money in aggrevation over this. And it is not the vendors fault. They have been very understanding and have allowed me the time to try to get it taken care of. And I would not walk away from the sale because of that. Doing so would not be fair the the vendor.
But I'm needing the sprinkler system up and running! Hopefully it will get here by Friday. Jim.

[Joe Pelonio]

I may have a rant for you on PayPal too, have been on hold now for 20 minutes so far.

OK, time to rant. My problem was that people trying to put in payments were doing so accurately and getting an error message that invalid data was entered. I had one stop by and enter it in front of me, and it was correct. So I finally talked to a tech. He e-mailed me the solution. Apparently they have a bug that messes it up when their screen opens in the same window, so I had to add something to my html to have it open in a new window. The customer owed me $1,600. When he updated it there was a new message requiring him to open a paypal account and become verified. The whole idea is for people to pay by credit card without being a member!

So we thought maybe it was the amount so he put in $800 and it took. Tomorow he'll try again to do the other half.

So meanwhile I e-mailed back to the tech to ask about that, because I was told the transaction limit is $10,000.

[RICK BOWMAN]

We have been an Ebay seller for three years. As long as everyone is happy with the transaction then all is well. Unfortunately, the PayPal myrmidons ultimately lack the intelligence to make a qualified decision based on facts, instead the $10 hourly idiots opt for the path of least resistance. And, their decision is gospil with no recourse. After we were taken to the cleaners by a PayPal moron (we advertised used rusty rifle barrels and the buyer then complained that they did not meet factory specs)???) we closed the account and will never use PayPal again for any transaction. we accept all major credit cards, checks and money orders, but Paypal can take a trip to Iran and sit with their buddy Ahmadinejad.

[Joe Pelonio]

I may be switching too, any other credit card processors offer anything close to the deal that PayPal does?