PayPal is not my friend
By Sarah Dobbs in Editorial
Posted in e-commerce on
I spotted an advert on the Tube this morning for PayPal. It was actually really clever - something about “are you sharing too much when you shop online?” with a mocked-up payment form asking for an e-mail address, credit card number, number of lovers, and ‘last time I cried.’ Supposedly, using PayPal is infinitely easier and safer than using a credit card online.
While the safer part of that claim may well be true, it can’t just be me that finds using PayPal a right pain in the arse, can it?
When I set up my PayPal account, I wanted to link it to my bank. In order to do so, I had to give PayPal my details and then wait for two small deposits to be made into my account. Once the deposits had cleared, I had to log back in and tell PayPal how much they were for - quite an interesting method of checking you are who you say you are (or at least that you have access to the bank account you claim to own) plus it meant I was up about 30p, but it took a hell of a long time. Then there was some hassle with making sure that I really lived where I said I did, involving automated phone calls to a landline and then entering a pin code. But after a couple of weeks and a lot of faff, I figured I’d never have to worry about it again: I could use PayPal to shop online and the money would come out of my bank and everything would be hunkydory.
Except now apparently my bank has started declining PayPal payments. I got an e-mail today that read as follows:
Dear Sarah Dobbs,
The mandate from your bank account was returned by your bank on 30 Oct. 2007 for the reason below:
The bank is disputing the Direct Debit Instruction (DDI).
Yours sincerely,
PayPal
Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link located in the top right corner of any PayPal page.
Ummmm. Okay. I logged in and found that apparently PayPal has used my credit card number to access my money and the transaction appears to have been carried out anyway … except now I’m kind of not sure … and I’m dreading having to play the phone tag game again.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this is the last I’ll hear of this and that it’ll all work out after all. But I doubt it, somehow.
Not yet rated
Loading ...Comment by Maurice Stafford - November 2, 2007 on 11:34 am
So what did your bank say?
Comment by Sarah Dobbs - November 2, 2007 on 12:41 pm
I’ve not heard anything else, yet, and am contemplating sticking my fingers in my ears and ignoring it. Till the next time I need to use PayPal.
Comment by Mark Tennent - November 4, 2007 on 4:36 pm
HSBC per chance?
Comment by Sarah Dobbs - November 5, 2007 on 1:01 pm
Nope!
Comment by Paul Akehurst de Visme - November 9, 2007 on 1:42 pm
“it can’t just be me that finds using PayPal a right pain in the arse, can it?” You are not alone!! I have used PayPal for more than 5 years - only for small Ebay, and phone topping up etc, but about 2 months ago I received a mail from them saying that my account had possibly been compromised, and they had ‘limited access’ to the account which prevented any payments going out. At the time this was great, and I was thankful. What happened was that someone had gained access to my account and within the space of a few minutes had ordered 10 payments of around US$5 to be made to the same company, ostensibly for a subscription. After 6 payments the security measures clicked in and the next four payments were refused. I went through a long and convoluted claim procedure, and recovered most of the money, just losing out a little because they somehow contrived to change the return exchange rate from US$ to sterling four some of the payments. Fair enough I thought, I now had upgraded my password and reinstated the account, which involved faxing utility bills to them among other things, twice, because another part of PayPal limited my account again during the investigation after I had reinstated it. Last week, I got another email saying they had again limited my account ‘for security reasons’, despite there being no transactions since the false ones. I wrote asking for an explanation, and they told me that for ’security reasons’ they couldn’t tell me the reason for limiting the account again. So for ’security reasons’ I will not be using the account again, and it can stay limited!!
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