Paypal Horror Stories

[fredster]

Does anybody have any paypal horror stories like are on this site http://www.paypalwarning.com/ ?

I found this link on Bob Robert's webpage.  I wondered why Bob didn't take paypal, now I see.

Any horror stories we should know about?  I've never had a problem.

[Chemixtry]

My wife and I have recently gotten into using paypal for ebaying. I think it is a handy tool and I have never had a problem. I think some people get upset becase they think paypal is an escrow service which they are not. I have never used it on anything over $100 though.

[NoBonus]

I've had someone lift my account number and go on a shopping spree... unfortunately for them, I never keep more than $20 in the account and all of their transactions were denied.

NoBonus

[Zathras]

I've used it on a LOT of transaction including several $500+ and never had any problems whatsoever.

[Zapper]

Does anybody have any paypal horror stories like are on this site http://www.paypalwarning.com/ ?

Well, I don't know if any of that info is real but I've never had any problems with PayPal in the several years I've been using them. I don't have a verified account because I don't like them having access to my bank. It's also anoying everytime you try to pay through them when you're verified, they try to trick you into using your bank account. As far as PayPal is concerned, I don't want to "improve my reputation".

[bigmoe]

A good compromise:

My bank, Washington Mutual, has what they call a "firewall account", which is free.  You can probaby do this with any account if you just talk to your bank people.

Have a dedicated account (mine is a checking account) with, say $1 in it.  Then just move money into it exactly as you need it.  The trick is to get the bank people to put the overdraft limit down to $0 so that any over-funds requests are simply denied.  That saves you the way NoBonus was saved.

I had to do this, since I was running up against the unverified credit card limit, and connecting a bank account lifts the limit.  So I still mostly use my credit card, since it's just one more layer of protection.  (And I agree w/ Zapper, it's annoying to have to go through a couple extra screens every time I make a purchase in order to force them to use my credit card.)

I've never had a problem, and I've used PayPay pretty much since it first started.  It never hurts to be as careful as possible.

Also, I've only ever used it as a buyer.  Selling might be a whole different story...

b

[TheTick]

I've never had a problem, either, in the past three years.... until about 2 months ago.

As a buyer, it can't be that bad... you can always go thru your credit card company and do a charge-back. Hence the problem for sellers. Their seller protection policy is useless. The sadest part is, they try to profit from chargebacks. Not the $10 settlement fee, but the credit card processing fee they expect you to pay a second time. 2.9% + .30 cents.

"Seller beware"  

[ErikRuud]

I've been using PayPal for years with no problems.  My only gripe is when you transfer funds from your bank to your PayPal account.  They claim it takes 3 or four business days to do the wire transfer and the funds are not available until then.  The problem is that more often than not, the funds come out of my bank account the day I request the transfer. I'm sure that all that money in 'limbo' passes through an interest bearing account that they profit from.

Most of the PayPal problems that I have heard about have come down to people not reading and/or understanding the policies and rules that PayPal has in place.

[fredster]

I think there are some problems.  There is more than one of those sites. There are links to all kinds of newspaper articles.

Reading over it, it looks like most of these people were doing kinda wierd things.  It also looks like they weren't all using Paypal for ebay, but for some other business purposes.  I bet ebay didn't like that.

I have the opposite problem with paypal.  They always want to go to my credit card that I have first.  I don't like that, I want them to go to the cash account.  I checked the prefered account to the bank, but I have to select the source of funds to the bank account every time.

I'll ask about this firewall account at my bank.  My credit card is due to expire soon, and I'm not renewing it with them.

[ErikRuud]

The site that Bob Robert's references has been up since before PayPal was bought by EBay.

I know people that had trouble using PayPal exclusively for EBay, they just didn't read or understand all the rules and got upset when things didn't work they way expected them to.

[fredster]

You guys didn't read all the info there. Some of those account holders were pretty savy.  It was more than just one disgruntled guy.  There are lots of those sites.

[ErikRuud]

I did read the site.

I was only addressing the cases that I know about personally.

[paigeoliver]

I used to be a big time ebay seller years ago. I used Paypal a bunch, especially since I didn't have a bank account, it basically was my bank account.

Then one day they decided to change the rules and freeze every account without an attached bank account. I didn't have an attached bank account (and I still don't have one, danged CHEXSYSTEMS), so they just got to keep the balance of my account which was $101 and some change.
 
Oh, and nicely enough they only froze the accounts from OUTGOING transactions, but not from incoming ones, so people could still send money to these addresses.

Paypal stole millions of dollars that day. Millions. Millions.

You know what is even scarier? A few weeks earlier my account was sitting at over a grand. They could have taken me for a grand. Heck I am sure they took plenty of people for way more than that.

[SirPeale]

I've heard similar things, Paige.

My wife opened a new PayPal account for some items she wanted to sell on eBay.  All she wanted to do was collect the money, and send it to me.

So there's $500+ in the account after selling everything.  She goes to send it to me, and they state they can't do it unless she adds a credit card to the account!  Now, why is that?  If someone is sending/recieving existing balances, why do they need a card?

I wouldn't take PayPal myself, except some people whined about me *not* taking it, and sales were a tenth of what they are now.  Started taking non-credit card PayPal, and viola.

Paige, perhaps you could open one of those no-fee checking accounts just for PayPal.  That's what I did, and I rarely keep any money in there, just in case.