About 3 or 4 years ago PayPal added the option to buy cryptocurrency, which I thought I’d try. (Dumb idea 🙄)
Part of the sign up process was glitched. I retried and clicked submit one too many times, I guess. Now I’ve been unable to use PayPal for years. They blocked me because THEIR SITE was broken, but the web page essentially accuses me of being a criminal and asks for my bank records. No way in hell.
This was just for me to pay others. I can only imagine how awful PayPal is if you are a vendor.
Fuck PayPal.
Someone in Norway has the same name as me, and they made a PayPal account. They accidentally used my email during signup and I got some weird emails in Norwegian. So I called PayPal. I asked them to change the email. “You can’t, because it’s not your account, you just admitted”. Uh, ok. Can you close the account? “It’s not your account”. Can you contact the account owner and tell them to fix it? “We don’t have their email”. Can I use account recovery and close it? “Then you would be breaking into someone else’s account”.
So what should I do? PayPal put a notice on the account in case they log in, and told me to just ignore the emails. I was baffled. Just ignore the emails? Stop sending them then! But there really isn’t anything I can do. I tried account recovery anyway, but it didn’t work.
They never logged in I think. They probably made another account with the correct details and never thought about this one. So I’ve been getting the “our terms and conditions have changed” email once or twice a year and ignoring them. They’re still in Norwegian.
I just looked it up, this has been going on since 2015. Maybe I should contact PayPal again and tell them how ridiculous they’ve been.
Report them to the CFPB. They’re forced to have an actual human review and respond.
I just wanted to share the story.
Oh, gotcha. Yeah they are shitheads. It honestly should be illegal to make an account for someone using an unverified email.
It may not be your account, but it is your email.
Dumb of them that they didn’t just remove the email address.
Same thing happened to me. Someone created an account with an email alias i never use. After calling Paypal and getting the same answer you received. I was finally able to use the forgot password feature to log in and close the account.
What is the use case for PayPal in the US? Here in Brazil we pay everything with credit card or bank transfer with a QR code. People can transfer money to you from any bank 24/7 instantaneously with just your email or phone number without any fees. Is that different in the US?
The banking system in the US is a legacy mess. Transfers still take business days to go through and making your bank account # and routing information available is actually a security concern, honestly I don’t even know why that’s still a thing.
Products like PayPal and Plaid try to provide something that is slightly more usable, but with this underlying obsolescence their functionality is very limited.
When paying for services, credit cards are still the way to do it. For P2P payments, people use PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, and others. Nothing even close to a unified system like Pix in Brazil.
There is Zelle, which is instant bank to bank. It’s fairly widely available from one’s financial institution, and it doesn’t cost anything, but it’s not terribly well known yet for some reason
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It is until you end up having to blacklist zelle because your banking information was used to defraud someone. I actually had my account broken into, funds deposited from zelle and then all available funds removed from my account in the space of about an hour. Went to pay for something the day after and had to call my bank’s fraud department. They tried the same thing with a second account of mine but it was flagged immediately when they tried to use the same login credentials (they weren’t remotely the same). So no zelle for me. It’s permanently disabled by both my banks for security reasons.
Aussie here. One reason I use PayPal is for subscriptions (streaming services etc) to avoid the headache of updating credit card details in multiple places when I change bank, credit card renews, etc. just change it in PayPal once and every subscription keeps working.
Why’d I never think of this?!
Why would any one use bank details that can’t be cancelled for online services? Pay pal is worse. Will hold your money ransom. Being able to cancel payment method is very important, best is unique payment method for each service.
Except that you can …
Edit: I get you. You mean multiple cards within PayPal itself per vendor. Yeah, that seems like similar effort but at least you can see everything in one portal. I have a single card linked with just enough limit to cover subscriptions and the odd internet purchase.
Good luck with that. Its got no guarantee of working and can be ignored and it does.
Paypal is cancerous middleman. You do not need and on those rare occasions where you want to risk the transaction, never link it to your bank account. Use disposable prepaid services.
Agree, where I live for recurring subscriptions most people use “digital credit cards” that you generate on your banking app and they have short expiration dates or you can cancel them and generate a new one anytime you want. That’s good because there are so many services that make it a pain in the ass to cancel a subscription so you just delete the card from existence.
Exactly!
I’m looking squarely at Adobe and other companys who fraudulently represent services, because nothing is a product any more and extorting money by charging rent or stealing IP is the new white collar crime.
It’s used for Internet purchases, so you don’t have to give your billing information some random site that might get hacked.
PayPal passes most billing information to the store where you purchased from. Card info is excluded, but in most cases PCI compliance checks ensure that card info is stored securely (or not at all).
In my experience, their consumer protection is great.
PayPal has been absolutely instrumental for me in issuing refunds with obstinate vendors. Once or twice they’ve issued me a refund after being refused a return/refund when an Aliexpress vendor either sent the wrong item or nothing at all.
I even got them to secure me a refund against the Australian government after they refused to issue a refund after directing me to apply for a tourist visa with the wrong visa process.
🤣🤣🤣
Here in the US our banks are draconian. We just struggle through it I guess 🤷♂️
What is the use case for PayPal in the US?
It gives businesses a very easy to way to set up monthly payments, one-time donations, accept forms of payments other than e-transfer (which many people don’t want to use), allows for international purchases without being penalized, and more.
Other options are available, but they are neither easy/cheap/convenient for the business or any better for the customer.
I see. From that list the international purchases is a good reason to use PayPal in Brazil. I only have an account there because like 6 years ago I needed to pay for a TOEFL certification and without an international card the only way was PayPal so it worked pretty nicely. Never had to use it after that tho. Hope you guys get a better alternative so PayPal can die a horrible death.
Yes its different. Sending money electronically is a mess of apps and limits and fees.
Brazil is younger
I haven’t used PayPal in over 10 years. Why don’t you just leave the service?
Because it’s convenient for paying online (one login instead of having to search my debit card and also, if I got scammed, there’d be another layer of protection for me) and it’s convenient for sending money to friends when we order pizza together or sth like that. What’s the alternative?
Bitcoin? Ether?
Really? Crypto? For one, I know almost no online shop that takes crypto, almost no person I’d send money to has crypto and I don’t want to own crypto either since it’s rather unstable…
Sounds like an addoption problem for you. The question asked what other alternative there is and cryptocurrencies solve the problem you stated there is no alternative to. Simple as that
They don’t. They could maybe. But I want an easy solution to transfer money to people and pay online. Crypto is not that solution because I cannot pay with it in most online shops and I cannot send money directly to other people. The money has to be exchanged to some arbitrary other currency.
Unless everybody used crypto as their main currency and everybody used the same cryptocurrency at that, it’ll always be an extra step, subject to fluctuations in exchange rate and possibly fees/taxes. As long as that’s not the case, it’s not an alternative. So yes, it’s an adoption problem but one that isn’t realistically solvable any time soon
This doesn’t solve the adoption issue, but you can use “stable coins” like DAI that are pegged to the dollar.
Ever heard about chargeback? Credit card is supreme in terms of protection against scams.
the web page essentially accuses me of being a criminal and asks for my bank records. No way in hell.
Yeah don’t bother doing that. All that will accomplish is them gathering even more information on you, they rarely/never actually unlock your account & let you use it again. You’ve been permanently blacklisted on their service, just move on. And honestly you don’t need Paypal anyway.
Similar stupid thing happened to me too I think about 10-15 years ago, I was using virtual credit card numbers that my credit card company was generating for me & Paypal thought that was suspicious enough to close my account & permanently blacklist me LOL.
Fun fact: I did learn over the years that I can temporarily create new Paypal account(s) as long as I don’t use the same mailing/billing addresses or credit cards/bank accounts. But then it’s just a waiting game, they usually figure it out eventually and close the Paypal account yet again.
Got locked out of my PayPal account but I apparently can’t close it.
A couple of years ago I was running a growing loans business on r/loans and the other one. One day, I got scammed. Loaned someone money and when it came to pay day, they reported me to welch out of the deal.
It took 180 days to get the money I had on my account. I tried closing the account and PayPal would not let me. It’s been years and all I get are notices of terms and marketing stuff. I try to unsubscribe and it keeps coming so I mark it as spam but Gmail does not care.
Lesson number 1: Never, ever, never, ever, use PayPal. Lesson number 2: Don’t use PayPal.
Does anyone know of an alternative to paypal other than stripe ( same shenanigans) , for getting paid for freelance work that is available in Europe or Asia ??
getting paid for freelance work that is available in Europe
Banktransfers are free…
Oh, I wasn’t very specific what I was referring to is selling stuff online, like private store selling pdfs or royalty free music and stuff, cause the only two platforms that I know of are paypal and stripe
iDeal that we have in NL should become a European standard. I believe they’re working on it but it’s slow.
You can use banktransfers to sell stuff. Otherwise I think there are only country specific platforms.
Not really. They have a minuscule fee of around 40cents if I remember right
Depends on the country and the context. For private people in the Netherlands, it’s free. On my business account I pay something like 12 cents, plus 2 bucks per batch (which is why most companies only do payments every so often)…
In the US it very much isn’t free. I realize the original commenter was asking about Europe and Asia, but something to be aware of if you want to visit this country. Here at least, you’re much better off using traveler’s cheques, rather than trying to rely on cash from ATMs and bank transfers.
I have no idea why, but I swear to god that we have the most bass-ackwards banking system in the world. They still use COBOL for fuck’s sake.
Zelle is free. It sucks, but it’s there.
I’ve heard of Revolut.
Maybe Wise? I suppose it depends on your needs as not a whole lot of people use Wise.
No problem, just buy crypto with PayPal.
Amazon blocked my account while trying to purchase a gift card and are now demanding proof of ownership of the gift card they just refused to sell to me???
PayPal sent me an email telling me I couldn’t use their service because I had a VPN. No big deal, I’ll just start using my credit card. A few weeks later PayPal emails me to say we’re all good and I can use them again
Paypal locked my account after years of use for absolutely no reason. I never had a invalid charge, dispute, or any other kind of problem with it, just one day they decided to shut it down. They flatly refused to explain what was going on. With all the decent alternatives out there now there is no longer a reason to use their crappy service.
Love that they believe they’re the only game in town and can demand your bank statement.
Same thing happened to me when I tried to update my phone number and address at the same time.
Same, cant use half of online services because I can’t have PayPal (and don’t want a credit card for security concerns)
What about virtual prepaid debit cards for online purchases?
Yeah, maybe a good idea to look into stuff like this. Do you know privacy friendly ones (who don’t sell or record your purchase history)?
I don’t really know any. I have a prepaid VISA with my bank. Had some fuckery happen to some of my accounts where I had my regular visa debit saved as payment method and I lost about 20€. I got them back but disabled the option for online payment for the card.
So now I only use that prepaid with the exact amount of money needed to pay for what I am buying.
I cannot really suggest any such cards that are separate services because I do not know any. Maybe look into if your bank has the option to get one.
Yeah, this sounds reasonaboe, guess I habe to check if my Bank offers something like that. Credit cards are quite uncommon where I live, most people just use normal girocards for paying in shops and stuff (or physical money)
Are girocards like debit cards or something completely different?
I just checked and I assume you are Austrian. Worst case scenario hop over the southern border and open an account here. ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
But almost sure you have something similar there as well. We are in Europe after all and banking is jot stuck in the 19th century like in the US.
Well girocards will give the shop the permission to make a one time withdrawal of the amount displayed on the screen, if that money is in your account. If the money isn’t in your account, the payment will not go through. Also if the shop wants to make a second withdrawal, you need to insert your card again and enter your (secret) pin again, they can’t choose what’s charged an when (only before you insert your card an pin, and only THIS transaction will be authorized).
Its a pretty secure system, as (as long as the card terminal isn’t hacked) you can’t spend more than you have, you don’t need to trust shops to only withdraw the agreed amount, and they can’t charge you a second time. Also the spending shows up on your account balance normally within 1 or 2 days.
From what I understand credit cards just let anyone make withdrawals of any amount, as soon as you know the numbers written on the card. So not only you need to trust the shop to withdraw only the correct amount, you need to keep track over you spendings really good, because they could just charge you an arbitrary amount of money on an arbitrary company name months after you gave them your details. Also from what I understand (normal) credit cards just will always work, and if you pay more than you have you just automatically accept a credit contract you need to pay back to your bank. Also (years ago, don’t know if still true) payments get charged to your bank account on bulk at the end of the month, which makes security and not spending to much even harder.
Ah okay so it is basically just a debit card. You see the terminal say for example 30€ and once you authorise that the 30€ are transferred from your account to theirs.
Unless there is some big difference between giro and debit cards.
It appears giro cards are just debit cards that basically only work on POS terminals and ATMs.
I used PayPal for a little while in the mid 2000’s to pay for stuff online until I found out they could freeze my bank account.
I immediately removed my bank account from PayPal and over time I got a credit card and it was easier to use. I kept it with only my credit card in my account to sometimes but stuff on eBay and that’s the only time I use it
I remember during the GPU shortage I managed to get a new graphics card from waiting outside a best buy for it to open. So I tried to sell my old one on eBay. Gave good pictures and followed all the rules as far as I could tell but because I had never sold anything on their platform before I was instantly banned with no way to appeal. I get they were probably having to deal with lots of scammers but if I could appeal or talk to support I could literally prove I had the GPU I was selling but as far as I could tell there was no option for that. So now I can’t sell anything on eBay unless I get someone else to sell it for me.
Same happened to me when I tried to sell my old powerline network adapters. Sign up, put them up for sale, 2 minutes later I get a mail that I’m banned without a reason given.
I still have those adapters lying around somewhere…
I got banned from the Kraken crypto exchange after waiting a year for them to approve me and after providing all my IRL credentials.
Told me I was banned, never to come back, and that they were going to report my fraud attempt to the authorities. Of course they refused to tell me what they thought I did, which didn’t make any sense because all I had been able to do was make an account and make a verification request.
Never really even looked at crypto again beyond mining dogecoin for fun.
