Posts about PayPal
(Regretsy)
(Clemson)
(kakissel)
(Ninja M.)
(brianc)
(catheroo)
(Photo: Blyzz)
—>PayPal has locked Jessica's account and won't release her funds until she pays off the negative balance in her other account. That's fine, except that she doesn't have another account. Whatever they linked her to, it's not hers. Of course, this being PayPal, they won't give her any information about the other account. She can't even access it to see what the balance is or who it belongs to. More »
—>In addition to tacking on some sneaky new fees, PayPal apparently has instituted another off-putting practice on some accounts. According to reader Melissa, the online money changer was taking 20 percent off of her monthly sales and keeping it in reserve in case a customer initiated a chargeback. More »
—>Starting in June, Paypal started assessing a fee of 2.9% on on purchases marked "goods" or services" to personal accounts. They can do whatever they want, but the problem is they were very quiet about it. Almost sneakily so. More »
—>If you were sitting there staring at your Xbox 360 thinking, "Ya know, I really wish there were a way I could start getting you to take money directly out of my checking account," your dreams are realized. Microsoft is now taking PayPal deposits to buy downloadable content. More »
—>What's going on with DealTree? They handle Nokia's "Trade-up" program, which reimburses you cash for your old phones. It says clearly on the "how it works" page as well as in their terms and conditions that they'll mail a paper check to you after confirming your phone's value. In Paul's case, they say dumped his money into a PayPal account—and Paul says there's nothing in his account and PayPal has no record of a transaction. More »
Over the last 1-2 years Skype has gone from being a great alternative to the greedy phone companies, to being worse than AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Comcast combined. Skype's shady business practices are unlike anything I have experienced with ANY phone or cable company before. And I am saying this as someone who spends $150/year on Skype subscriptions and at least another $50-$75/year on additional Skype out credits. More »
—>When some lowlife tried to scam Andy the other day through his friend's hijacked Gmail account, Andy tried to get him to use PayPal, and he came up with a great reason why. "It's the fastest way to send money," Andy told the scammer. "Once I deposit the funds, you can print it out of any color printer and it's real money!" Another reader was so amused by it that she decided to use it on her own Facebook scammer earlier today. More »
—>We've posted before about security keys—those little digital keyfobs that generate expiring security codes over and over and make it incredibly hard for someone to gain unauthorized access to your account. They're a great idea, and now if you own an iPhone you can install a Verisign app that will work with Paypal and eBay, as well as about two dozen lesser known sites. It's probably the easiest step you can take to vastly improve security on those accounts. More »
—>An internet auction giant, payment processor and ticket broker? Or the parent company of CNBC, retail store card giant, maker of light bulbs and appliances... No, we don't mean the Sheinhardt Wig Company... More »
—>Web brokers Google and PayPal don't believe in human-to-human communication, and one place where you really need that is when you're troubleshooting financial transactions. An interface designer/developer who used Google Checkout to sell an ebook has just been given a huge serving of suck by the "don't be evil" company—they closed her account on her without warning and refuse to tell her why the closed it. The $200 in earnings that hadn't been paid out yet are unretrievable, and she can't open a new one. More »
—>PC Mag has assembled a list of instructions on how to wipe your account from a long list of websites, including Classmates.com (you'll have to call), Windows Live ID (it's complicated), and Friendster (ha ha ha). In many cases, canceling is as straightforward as clicking a link and authorizing the cancellation, but it's nice to see all the phone numbers and tips collected in one spot. More »
—>David, who we noted earlier this week was out an extra $140 because eHarmony decided to open a second account in his name, has written back with an update. More »
—>Juan Zamora fed his 1994 Chevy Camaro $26 worth of gas, a transaction for which PayPal charged his debit card $81,400,836,908. Unsurprisingly, PayPal saw nothing wrong with the charge and demanded that Juan prove that he didn't actually buy $81.4 billion worth of gas. More »
—>By exploiting loopholes in their policies, scammers are using eBay, Paypal and UPS to rip unsuspecting sellers off, like reader Chad. The buyer reported the item as "destroyed" and demanded and got a refund from Paypal. When the buyer shipped it back to Chad and he opened it, he found there was nothing wrong with it - except that the scammer had removed the memory, processor and hard drive. Now Chad is out $500 and left with a shell of a computer, and since the item was "received" Paypal won't do anything. His sad tale, inside... More »
—>As the economy tanks, we keep seeing examples of companies cutting more corners on customer service, and especially becoming less cooperative when it comes to resolving a problem that involves billing. That's why it's nice to see a business not only respond quickly, but in favor of the customer. (It's probably no surprise to you that it's a small business and not a corporation.) More »
—>Inside, email addresses, phone numbers, and addresses for over 100 different companies to inject your customer service complaints into their corporate executive offices, and get it well on the way to success. More »
—>Herman's tale of eBay/Paypal buyer fraud is unusual because he not only met the scammer in person, he placed his item right in the guy's hands. Here's what happened: More »
—>Molly's laptop was stolen, and the thief didn't even break into her house, or snag it from her at a coffeeshop, or hold a knife to her neck in a darkened alley. No, her laptop was stolen via email. In fact, she mailed it to thief, in Africa. OMG, you're probably saying to yourself right now with your hands up by your face, how could this be? Discover the horrifying true story, inside... More »
Inquiring readers named Kurt want to know: If a buyer from Canada buys something from someone in America on eBay, pays for it, including shipping, and then it shows up with a $50 C.O.D. charge for imports and customs, is that kosher? Discuss... More »
—>Blockbuster debited Anthony's PayPal account two days in a row for the same monthly plan. PayPal won't help—they say it's between Blockbuster and Anthony, offering further proof that PayPal is a great service only as long as nothing goes wrong. More »
—>The word is that eBay is banning checks and money orders, and buyers will have to use PayPal or (if the seller has a credit card merchant account or an account with a service called ProPay), credit cards. More »
—>Last year, Gpotato.com fraudulently took $50 from reader Adam's Paypal account. He disputed the charge, Paypal agreed it was fraud and returned the funds, and Adam closed the account. Now all of a sudden Paypal's internal collections agency is calling up Adam and making rude and insistent demands that he pay this $50 immediately. More »
—>Someone hacked into super-famous blogger Chris Pirillo's PayPal account and bought $450 worth of iTunes cards. On his birthday, no less. After a review Paypal declared to him,"We have completed our investigation of your claim and have determined that this is not an instance of unauthorized account activity." More »
—>If your email account is with Google or Yahoo, your days of seeing phishing emails from fake eBay or PayPal addresses should be over. Google announced last week that it's now using DomainKeys to verify messages really do come from paypal.com or ebay.com—if they don't, they never even make it to your In Box. This is possible because eBay and PayPal are now making sure "that all their email is signed with DomainKeys and DKIM." Since Yahoo! also uses DomainKeys and DKIM (they developed it, in fact), phishing attacks for Yahoo! Mail accounts should also disappear. More »
—>Here are over 450 pieces of internal email addresses and phone numbers to reach a real live human at Paypal/eBay. Anyone who has ever experienced Paypal unfairly freezing their funds, Paypal siding with someone who scammed them and losing money because of it, Paypal seizing funds from their bank account or credit card without permission, or just the simple impenetrable, rude, and useless customer service can surely appreciate this list. There's contact info for executive relations, high executives, practically every department, and more, both US and international. The information comes courtesy of Screw-Paypal.com, a site started by a man who says Paypal wrongfully denied access to his funds for four years. I guess that's how long it takes to track down every single piece of Paypal contact info. He got his money back eventually, and you can too, with the email addresses and phone numbers inside... More »
This is Round 39 in our Worst Company in America contest, Sallie Mae vs eBay/Paypal! More »
—>Matt just got his first taste of Ebay, and it wasn't good—as soon as he mailed off the Best Buy gift card to the buyer, the buyer reversed payment on Matt's PayPal account and stopped communicating with him. We're pretty sure he's screwed on this one, but does anyone have any good advice for what he can do next? More »
—>Veteran Ebay buyer/seller Monty has just come off a triple play of misrepresented auctions, each from a different seller, and has had zero luck getting things straightened out with any of them. More »
—> EBay's highly criticized fee changes—lower listing prices but a 67% increase in seller fees—kicked in last week, and next month eBay's payment service PayPal will start holding certain deposits for up to 21 days if PayPal considers the transaction "high risk." PayPal earns interest on any money it holds—and it's perfectly legal because PayPal is a deposit broker and not a bank. If you do find your money stuck in "high risk" detention, there's only one way you can attempt to earn money from the delay, and that's by sticking it in PayPal's Money Market Fund. More »
Read the tragic tale of this screwed eBay seller over on Metafilter. He did everything Paypal told him to do to avoid being scammed when he sold a cellphone, including, when the buyer returned the item, opening it in front of a police officer. Problem was, the buyer/scammer sent back a smashed gold cellphone instead of nice $500+ cellphone that was sold. Seller protection policy should apply, right? Nope, it doesn't cover "items not as described." Failure. More »
—>Tired of repeatedly hearing that his One Laptop Per Child was on the way, PC World's Harry McCracken called OLPC and was surprised to discover that the charity didn't have his mailing address on file. Apparently, PayPal passed McCracken's payment to OLPC without providing his address. More »
—>
About six months ago I moved into my apartment in Chicago to learn that the only service available was with DirecTV. Not only that, but we were forced to use MDU communications, a DirecTV reseller. With no options for television, I reluctantly purchased my own HD receiver off eBay (The HR-20) to avoid entering into a contract with them for two years. When I received my unit, I called MDU to sign up and the CSR at MDU told me that since I had my own receiver, I could sign directly up with DirecTV. Awesome I thought, I can cut out the middle man. The CSR at MDU even transferred me to DirecTV account set up line himself.More »
Thanks for calling, please go away [Seth Godin's Blog] More »
—> If you have a PayPal or eBay account, or use OpenID to login to participating sites, then for $5 you can add a second layer of security that is virtually impossible to break unless the thief physically locates you and steals a little plastic device. The PayPal Security Key is a small, keychain-ready fob with a unique ID that's tied to your account. It generates a new six-digit code very 30 seconds, which you have to enter whenever you log in. The down side is you have to have your security key with you in order to read the code. But the benefits are huge: you basically have a 2nd password that changes 2,880 times every day—and that isn't available anywhere online. More »
—>Paypal is not known for being friendly or easy to reach, so we'll help you out with a whole bunch of unpublished internal phone numbers. Tons of people trying to scam them probably turned them off the whole friendly customer service bit , but why should us regular customers be subjected to the same treatment as a 419 scammer? More »
Check your credit card and debit card statement for unauthorized charges from STC SAWA RECHARGE RIYADH SA. The Saudi Arabian phone card company is fraudulently passing charges to consumer's cards, usually for sums of $80. If you find one of these unwanted charges, contact your card company to dispute the charges. This may not be enough, as consumers report being the charges hitting their cards multiple times, even after reporting them. In these cases, it may be better to cancel the account. More »
—>Northwest Airlines has announced that it will begin accepting Paypal as a payment method on its website. Why? Apparently, there is a demand for this. Stephanie Tilenius, vice president of merchant services for PayPal, said in a Northwest Airlines Press Release:
"We are excited to add Northwest Airlines, one of the world's largest airlines, as the first airline to accept PayPal. Many of our customers already book travel with Northwest Airlines and are eager to use their PayPal accounts to do so."More »
—>
I haven't sold very many things on Ebay. I run a DJ company and had a brand new Pioneer DJ CD player that sells for over $1000 that I wanted to sell on Ebay. I went through the process of selling it and the winning bidder (who had very low feedback) payed me very quickly via paypal. The address the person gave me was for her son in Nigeria. Yes, I know Nigeria I should have known, but I was naive and trusted this person. Plus, I had seen on the Paypal website that they have up to $1000 - $2000 of seller protection. So I figured if it was a scam, then I was covered. More »
The item is priced at $28.95, which TUAW said seemed a bit high. It seemed fair to me. I should have listened. When I went through the purchase process and clicked "buy," my Paypal order screen listed the price as $61,803,552,167.70 USD. More »
—>How is that Paypal gets away with having a customer service system completely unreachable by humans? More »
This could be you. More »
—>A minor annoyance of the Paypal security key is that it introduces a second login screen for your six-digit code. Did you know you can skip the secondary screening? More »
You can get yours from PayPal for $5 here. — BEN POPKEN More »
PayPal has instituted new restrictions on its $15 off $30 rebate introduced two weeks ago. At first we thought the offer, $5 less than the rebate offered last winter, meant PayPal hated spring. We were wrong. PayPal hates you. More »
—>The idea behind Cardavenue is interesting. If you get a gift card you don't like, you can trade it for another using their site. They charge a fee and ostensibly offer some protection against fraud. They don't, however, answer their emails or process their claims, and that makes us sad. More »
—>PayPal security keys are now available for purchase, offering consumers the option vastly enhanced protection against account breaches. More »
—>Paypal will sell SecurID tokens to its customers, starting early this year. The PayPal Security Key is a keychain size device that generates a new six-digit code every 30 seconds. Paypal will require signed up customers to enter in order to complete transactions. More »
- Ben and Meghann- More »
- Attention Seller: More »
—>Reader Homerjay's story bolsters our big prediction for 2007: Paypal is going down. More »
—>Google Checkout can be used for transactions as low as $.05, reader Mary Marsala With Fries confirms. More »
—>Paypal suspended Vincent Gallo's account after he put his sperm up for auction ($50,000). For an additional $500,000, Gallo said he would inseminate in-utero. More »
—>PayPal plans on giving $20 rebates to customers shopping at participating partner sites, November 23 through May 15, 2007. Online merchants include iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Dell, Petsmart, Starbucks, Art.com, HP, and many more. More »
—>Last night, an explosion rocked Paypal's network operations center, blasting windows and leaving a haze in its wake. More »
—>Unlike Paypal, Google Checkout promises to not suddenly freeze your bank account. More »
—> More »
—>Now you can determine whether that latest "Paypal Account Notification" you got was a Paypal phish and you don't even have to have a brain. Phil says: More »
—>As a person who conducts many thousands of dollars worth of transactions through PayPal every month, I've become rather adept at spotting a spoof. Not only is Thunderbird pretty excellent at picking up on scams, but a quick commonsense check when looking over an email from PayPal is all that it takes to thwart most spoofers. Does the 'Click Here to Resolve' actually link to PayPal? You can tell simply by hovering your mouse over the link and looking at the URL at the bottom. No? Ergo, not from PayPal. More »
—>Mark Perkel likes hookers. Hey, who doesn't? Other than Paypal, that is. More »
—>A thousand times a day, PayPal emails most of us and informs us that there's been a grave compromise in our accounts. Would we like to just click this big bright button and fix it, please? And just like that, your entire savings has been funneled into a phisher's pornography investment. More »
Last week we wrote about Max, who tried to send money to his friend through Paypal but found himself ensnarled in a technical and customer service nightmare. In the end, his road of good intentions lead to B"anned from Paypal and Ebay Land," a decidedly unhappy place excised from The Wizard of Oz as it frightened the focus group children terribly so. More »
—>Thanks to some zealous Paypal security, mixed with tech snafus and a little lack of information about how Paypal works, Max had to go through leaps and hurdles to retrieve his money after he committed the crime of lending money to his friend. More »
—>The IRS' recent order for full record disclosure to Paypal is part of a larger movement to tax purchases and monetary transactions over the Internet. More »
—>Would-be Count of Monte Cristo's beware, the IRS has won approval from a federal court to get Paypal to turn over records about people who may be dodging the taxman by stashing dough in foreign lands. More »
Julia's got an eBay protocol question for you: More »
—>Paypal has transformed your mobile phone into a magic money wand. More »
—>B.L. Ochman tips us off to a type of Paypal phishing scam to watch out for. She received a Pay Pal receipt lookalike for a watch from a company called Omegamove. The amount was for $395.85 and was to be shipped to one James Dickinson. Presumably, the scammers think you'll see that, say, omg, I didn't order a $400 watch and follow the link to dispute the order. After which, you enter in your Paypal info and they steal it. Paypal has confirmed the email to be a phish and is investigating. More »
While I think we can all agree that what happened to Chris Dotson—getting scammed out of over three grand on eBay and Paypal—sucks to high heaven, he raises a more interesting point at the end of his post: Is there a market for a third-party eBay scam collection service? More »
—>If you're going to run a successful Suck Site, you should aim for a big target. PayPal Sucks may have stumbled on powerful internet suck alchemy. Anyone who has used eBay (the owner of PayPal) more than casually will have run afoul of PayPal at least once. And thus, a hit is born. More »
