They’ve basically found a way to steal what’s left in the account. That’s all this is. There’s probably tens of thousands of accounts that people got locked out of or abandoned with money in and this lets them steal it.
Oh there's more than that. I've done some work in the past in some video games, and used to get paid through a Paypal registered under a pseudonym.
But since now Paypal requires your name, DOB, SSN, banking info, to simply transfer money out, the money is stuck.
I can't use the money to pay for things, because they require you to link banking info DESPITE the fact that I have cash balance. So basically, I had cash that I couldn't take out or use.
Now finally, they are figuring out how to steal that money.
You're right about that, AND PayPal has some sort of aversion to debt obligations.
I remember reading something about how PayPal can't loan out or use the money it is holding for users like a normal bank would- it's a sacrifice to their strategy to avoid being a bank in the USA.
I think that would make having all this money on their books annoying from a business perspective, along with the 'it's not mine' problem
I haven't used my Paypal account in years, and a few months ago they gave $10 USD, not enough to buy something, but enough for me to consider using it again. At the end I didn't, and I guess they'll slowly take it back.
Edit: read the article, it seems they'll take it back in one fell swoop.
Moneybookers (Skrill) introduced a similar dormant account fee a few years ago. I hadn't used my account for a while, and then I needed to use it, so I first logged in to check if my account balance was negative, before I deposited money to it. It was $0, great, I can safely deposit. And what do ya know, as soon as my deposit hit that account, Moneybookers retroactively applied a dormant account fee to my account. They even forged the timestamp for the fee event in my account history to pretend like it was applied several months earlier, when in fact it was applied only after I deposited.
Fairly unethical, though their rationale is probably something like 'hey everyone else is doing it!'
My state has a law where it account goes dormant for a long time, the balance is turned over to the state. The state sees this as revenue, but an individual can submit a claim online and recieve it for no fee, up to 10 years I think.
Yeah I got a letter from the State Comptroller about an old account that paypal locked me out of and wouldn't re-activate (I jumped through all their hoops but they never replied) saying "call this (paypal) number to get your money or they'll give it to us (the state.)"
So I call the number and the person says "check or paypal balance?" and I choose check because of course I've been locked out of the account for years. So she says "Okay, we'll mail you a check."
And that's the last I ever heard about it. I figure they kept it. I could follow up with the comptroller's office, but it's already more than my time is worth, so I just complain about it in public, like this, from time to time.
Or: Jump through the hoops to get it, and then over the next year use that $200 to pay people on fiverr to complain about it online periodically FOR you.
> for anyone whose account has been dormant for at least a year, but still has some money left in it.
Isn’t it considered a bad idea to ever keep a non-zero balance in a PayPal account? When money comes in, transfer it to a real bank account straightaway.
Well, I'm glad I don't have money left there, because I had two factor authentication turned on, and for some unforseen circumstances, I lost my phone number. PayPal customer service is actually quite hard to contact, because every possibility they give you requires you to log in. I found an email address somewhere, but when I wrote them telling them about my situation, I got an email that if I log in I can check their answer in the internal ticketing system. Then a few days later there was another email asking me about my experience with their support.
I'll never use PayPal again. No way in hell I'll trust a company with handling my money when they make it impossible to contact them.
Similar here. I've been using PayPal to receive our Patreon balance each month and pay various project (sqlitebrowser.org) related experiences.
Just over a week ago, when I tried logging in to PayPal (2FA is not enabled) a new screen appeared saying they'd sent an SMS with code to my phone number, and I need to type it in.
Problem being, the phone number they displayed is not mine. I've never given them my mobile number, as they've always had a little blurb about that saying people have to also give them permission to receive marketing messages. Hell No.
So now I'm locked out of my account. With sufficient screwing around in their help system, there is a phone number you can call:
+44 203 901 7000
Trying to get through to a human being there however has proved an impossible task (after many attempts). From just being hung up on by their system, through to being told they're out of business hours (nope, double checked that), etc.
Looks like in about 51 weeks, they'll start stealing the remaining balance until the account is empty.
Fucking scammers.
PayPal is the main reason I'm not positive on Elon Musk's history... they've been "known bad" for many years, including when he was there. He started his fortune from building a company that knowingly scams people. :(
>PayPal is the main reason I'm not positive on Elon Musk's history... they've been "known bad" for many years, including when he was there. He started his fortune from building a company that knowingly scams people. :(
There's plenty of possible things to criticize him for, but this seems like a weird one. PayPal was started by Confinity. He founded X.com in 99ish and they merged like a year after, but then he got the boot as CEO in a matter of, months? Weeks? Don't remember why, but while he still owned a ton of stock he was out in management. Then Ebay bought it all in like 2002. 20 years after his departure, itself before he had any real chance to make a mark, and 18 years after being bought, seems like a bit of a stretch to hold that of all things against him?
Edit: also man what a crazy time, I mean it was obviously crazy even at the moment but still thinking back on the timelines it's still wild.
Ahhh, I haven't really had a close interest in Elon's stuff. Only really know of him as PayPal -> Tesla -> SpaceX.
Re: PayPal, just knew he used to run it, and they've been scammy pretty much from the start. Thus the poor impression from that.
Also Re: PayPal: I used to know a guy that worked there from the very early days, and he told wild stories about employees freezing people's accounts and withdrawing the money for their own use. Apparently it was widespread, and pretty common.
It's kind of funny you say that too, as people have been saying that forever. eg "If they were so bad, stuff would have been done" (sic).
Look at PayPal's reputation going back a decade or two, and you'll see there are tremendous amounts of stories about it. People used to set up dedicated websites collecting the copious horror stories. Not kidding about that, in any way.
At the same time, there were multitudes of other people going "Oh, I've never had a problem with them, you must have done something wrong". (etc)
They've cleaned up their image _a bit_, so things don't seem as obviously bad now (latest development aside). Back then though... sheesh...
No idea if that's still the case (hopefully not), but it was widely known when they were a young company. It shouldn't take much effort to look into, if you actually care enough to investigate. :)
Hack: As soon as you start speaking to their robot and he asks "why you're calling", say something like "speak to a human". After robot tries to evade it with further programmed bullshit, say: "GET LOST!". He will quickly respond "It seems I am having problems here" and connect you to a human.
Worked perfect for me several times I had to contact their customer support with the identical problem of being locked out due to outdated phone number.
PS: I read somewhere that customers who swear on the line will be connected to agents quicker ;-) or generally receive better experience. Sigh. What a world.
> Just over a week ago, when I tried logging in to PayPal (2FA is not enabled) a new screen appeared saying they'd sent an SMS with code to my phone number, and I need to type it in.
Is this a European or UK account? That's them implementing the PSD2 regulation [1], and they should have emailed you quite a few times about it.
But yes, PayPal customer support is hilariously bad.
[insert usual rant about their customer support] They've asked me to provide charity information for my personal account some months ago, and subsequently limited my receiving/sending privileges.
Phone calls to them trying to sort this out have always ended up at some call centre in the Philippines, where the agents can only tell their users that the account limitation is "for their safety".
That account of mine is still limited.
They've also limited the personal account of a friend of mine (who was interestingly enough ex-PayPal) before, also asking for charity information.
They did email me a few times saying they wanted my mobile number, but each time I went to the page it had the little text blurb about needing to accept marketing texts.
Again, not going to happen.
That being said, they shouldn't get to invent a phone number when one isn't provided. ;)
---
On a related note -> I remember trying to change the address in my PayPal account a few times after they emailed, as I moved from the UK back to Australia. (thanks to fucking Brexit for forcibly removing my EU citizenship, which I very much wanted to keep. Grrr :< )
Anyway, PayPal didn't allow changing account country through the UI, and there didn't seem to any other way of doing it either.
Not sure what people who move country are supposed to do... o_O
> Anyway, PayPal didn't allow changing account country through the UI, and there didn't seem to any other way of doing it either.
I believe the "proper" way is to close your old account, and reopen a new one from that country's site. Most people I know just have multiple accounts. I don't know if PayPal warns or shuts people down for doing so.
It makes sense legally, since a user would have to agree to a different set of terms in a different jurisdiction.
> It makes sense legally, since a user would have to agree to a different set of terms in a different jurisdiction.
While it's true that different terms - or at least different provisions within a single terms document - might need to apply when someone travels or (especially) moves to another location, plenty of other companies implement various versions of this without needing an account to be closed and reopened.
Last time I checked their terms (it was a few years ago), you weren't allowed to have multiple accounts. As you said when one moves to another country, they just have to close the previous account, and create a new one in the new country.
Yeah, I came from Australia, moved to the UK, then have moved back to Australia. And I'll probably be back in the UK for a bit, once the Coronavirus problem is solved.
So, not being able to change country in PayPal is pretty bad. It doesn't match up with the actual reality of how people live. :(
Peter Thiel the “libertarian” went on to found Palantir, for example, which helps governments do precrime and encourages mass surveillance of their citizens.
He also opined that “competition is for losers and you should build a monopoly” which as the first check in Facebook helped influence Mark Zuckerberg, and the results we see today. Back then Mark Z wanted to make peer to peer encrypted networks like Wirehog.
Peter thiel also wrote op eds saying stuff like giving women the vote ruined the USA by making it more social-democratic instead of capitalist.
Musk I think has long moved on from the PayPal days.
It's interesting to see that exactly what you wrote (except for the 2FA part) was happening to paypal users 18 years ago. Things haven't changed. Their entire business model is built on nearly complete automation and no human in the loop customer service interaction.
I have the same exact problem! I wanted to delete my account, just in case, but I cannot login.
I haven't used Paypal in over 10 years.
Their "service" is really not needed anymore.
eBay is in the midst of migrating all seller accounts away from paypal to their own integrated solution. While buyers can still use paypal to pay, as a seller, you no longer have to touch paypal if you don't want to.
On the other hand, you now have to give them your SSN #.
I have recently purchased a number of things on ebay with 'buy it now' and giving my visa card number directly to ebay, in what looks like a very ordinary shopping cart checkout workflow, with no involvement of paypal. No login to paypal and no mention of it. The browser I was doing it from has never logged in to my paypal account and has no credentials cached for it.
Paypal still does the credit card transaction. I know because their black box algo blacklisted me for whatever reason many years ago and I tried that. They have no customer support its just an abyss of a company and you are a statistic. Fine with me because I really dont use Ebay but I remember that.
No, this parent poster is talking about a new thing.
I think the one you're talking about is the previous system, whereas PayPal would be the transaction processor anyway. You'd still get email (receipt?) and other bits from PayPal after the transaction was done.
Now though, the CC processing on Ebay seems to be a non-PayPal version. At least, that's what it looked like today when getting stuff. No mention of PayPal anywhere, which I was pleased with having had a very bad experience with them (PayPal) a week ago.
A lot of e-commerce sites will take PayPal these days. I like to use that vs giving my credit card information. Granted, I prefer to use things like Apple Pay but there are circumstances where PayPal is the only indirect payment form I have in common with a site
The odd thing about privacy.com is that in order to use it, you have to surrender all privacy. You are required to provide them full access to your bank account.
Make sure you test the recovery system. I forgot how Paypal's works, but Google's for example, will simply bypass your 12288-bit strong password and give your account to anyone. Lost a Google account that way. 2FA would've saved it (in theory).
password managers let you store the one time password key.
this removes the "two factor" nature of two factor, but retains the one time password nature of one time password.
I honestly can't relate to people losing their access because something happened to their phone. The QR code is just a string of letters and numbers and you can save the QR code and the string of letters and numbers. I've been doing this for like a decade.
Just to point out... mobile phone's aren't 100% universal, though a lot of places pretend they are.
Up until about 18 months ago I used to live in a part of the UK without any mobile phone coverage. So, any mobile number I had (with Vodafone) always expired after 3 months.
That does not make for any kind of fondness of places trying to blindly force SMS based 2FA on everyone. ;)
I thought they had added support normal TOTP now but if not you can probably still use the old method of generating a Symantec VIP style ID which has allowed you to use any TOTP app with paypal for years.
Storing the second factor in the same password manager as the password is a lot like having a post-it with the password on your desk: it's practical, but defeats the purpose.
But to add to this, I wouldn't ever set up a 2FA on a service that doesn't allow multiple second factors, and mostly static backup codes. Having only one (ie. device) is a much higher risk, of being locked out, than having the password stolen.
At least I know whoever is using my password is siting at my desk looking at the post-it (provided of course they didn't photograph it). Point being: it doesn't entirely defeat the purpose, in a similar way to how TSA locks don't defeat thieves, but delay them/lead them to find a different target.
Screenshot the QRCode, print it out, and keep it in a safe.
I have an encrypted backup of all my TOTP QRCodes and this has been tremendously useful.
I loathe sites that only do SMS 2FA, and I assume by default they just want my cell # for marketing or other privacy invasive purposes. Too many sites using SMS 2FA have poisoned the well.
That's a good idea. I've been only enabling 2fa when I can use two forms of it (totp + u2f token), but that's still vulnerable since I often carry both of those on my person at the same time.
Funny (and infuriating!) to be in the same situation. I have lost access to my account and the money in it, because they have the wrong phone number on file. In their support forum, there are pages of people with the same issue - they're locked out of their account, with seemingly no way to contact anyone at PayPal to resolve it.
I hope they get sued for this practice of abandoning their customers, cutting off contact, and keeping the money.
The cache-less society is no different, it's just the bandits that has changed. And it's for protecting the banks money, not your money. Paypal has always been on the consumer side though.
Not trying to make an excuse for all the horror stories, just some advice: Make sure you have backups/exports of the 2:nd factor keys so they can be imported when lost.
For example print your password and store it on one location, for example in a safe, then print the 2nd factor key/export (QR code, or backup codes) and put it in another safe/location. Or make several copies and store on many safe locations. And don't forget to TEST YOUR BACKUPS on regular intervals to make sure they work when that day comes.
What's up with the few monopolies left over tightening the screws to squeeze every penny out of their "customers"? YouTube playing ads every two minutes, RedHat stopping CentOS, AMZN dumping parcels somewhere in your neighborhood so they can claim to have delivered, now PayPal "introducing" (as if they could unilaterally) fees. To those always apologizing just how much of a suck the web has become: it's not like we didn't tell you all the time.
More worrying is the outright nerviness - as if those companies know there are no alternatives left, or know something about our grim economical outlook.
Nah, it's just a toxic combination of MBA's (?) being sociopaths to have the ideas + the companies involved having enough lawyers to shield them from any real harm.
Seems more like they're trying to get abandoned accounts down to $0 in their wallets so they can cancel all the abandoned accounts wasting space on their server than actually trying to charge people a fee for something.
This isn't about "wasting space on their server", it's about confiscating money left in those accounts. It's illegal for them to just take it, because it's not theirs.
Kind of a moot point when they can simply suspend your account for months for undisclosed reasons.
People literally just give up on their PP accounts, because it's not worth your sanity (dealing with Paypal's "customer service") for something like $100 left in the account.
The last 5 or 6 transactions I made on my old PayPal account each resulted in freezes of my account that required a ton of hoops to unfreeze (uploading pics of my passport, proving address with bills, etc). I eventually abandoned the account and just created another, which is what I use with no problems now, but have no idea what the balance in the old one might be since I ended things abruptly in unlock-my-account-please-for-the-love-of-god Support Hell.
I was pointing out that it’s not illegal because they’re allowed to do it. Then OP said (again) that it is illegal unless it’s a fee (not an all-at-once thing), which it is
There is a way to regain access to your Paypal account.
I used this when I forgot to change the 2fa phone number before they started enforcing it, thus leaving me no way to log in.
Use a browser / computer you haven't ever used for Paypal.
Incognito/Private browsing mode will probably be sufficient.
Go to the normal Paypal login.
Try to reset your password via "forgot my password".
Follow the instructions; security code etc.
Set a new password and confirm it.
Paypal will now log you in.
It should work - I had an old, unusable number in file, too.
If it doesn't, please try again and make sure they haven't "seen" your browser/device before. Temporarily even install a new browser if necessary.
Isn't this a consequence of attempting to use PayPal as a bank account, something you shouldn't do in the first place? (Assuming they're not doing nefarious things).
Doesn't the rogue, excess money add a cost to their accounting at the end of the year, similar to how companies don't like letting employees keep their vacation days after so long, because they have to keep the functional equivalent of that much money in savings, in case the employee leaves and they want to cash it all out?
This seems pretty reasonable, to me, barring a couple edge cases that should have a vanishingly small percentage and perhaps could be argued for as special cases (people in jail, for example).
Does Paypal have any sort of auto-deducting money out of PayPal and into a normal bank?
Making sure that discussion will not heat without checking the content:
> PayPal is to introduce a £9 “inactivity” fee for anyone whose account has been dormant for at least a year, but still has some money left in it.
So it applies to money that's left on account. Once the balance is 0, there is not extra cost.
It's not that I'm happy in particular, as I have account there also, and I had to transfer remaining money. I believe there is more cases like mine, that has PayPay to pay on some portals that accepts only that payment method, and we're not willing to share credit card information.
But sure, most banks have fees like that, and typically don't for a few years just to attract the broke people that were looking for an account with no fees. Then they turn them on.
It used to be that all basic (low end) US checking accounts had fees and the concept of no-fees being the norm has happened during my adult lifetime. Low end accounts (no money in them, basic tier) may not cover the yearly expenses for the bank to keep up with the legal paperwork on that account, but a high end account ($$$) has always had no-fees because of exactly what you describe. (digital life has I'm sure reduced said costs)
I work in an unrelated industry where the economics are the same - low spend accounts require more hand-holding (support time = money, etc.) and can be "upside down" (no profit, lossy), whereas large enterprise accounts generate money by their sheer hands-off approach done at scale.
> yearly expenses for the bank to keep up with the legal paperwork on that account
Wouldn't the yearly expenses to keep up any individual account be such a small fraction of a single cent, that we might as well call it zero?
Account information is literally just a few strings of bytes, and transaction info is similar. Even with a lot of transactions it'd likely be less than (say) 10kB per year?
There is no "legal paperwork" for accounts. The only real costs for managing accounts comes from mailing monthly statements. The last time we discussed these statements at a meeting, it was reported they cost about $1.00 (on average) to send.
...so I can just throw away all the tax documentation for my mid/high tier interest bearing checking and savings accounts at both my credit union and bank? that share certificate I have at my credit union generating dividends? "Legal" to me means "things I have to do or the police come find me." Your interpretation might be different, but my accounts have legal paperwork.
Both. Financial institutions (broadening this to cover brokerages as well) produce federally required documentation (it may be digital in 2020, automated) for tax purposes; the most common in my travels is a 1099-DIV (dividend payments) but there are many kinds for all sorts of financial things a bank could/can handle related to investment income.
Both parties submit paperwork to the IRS - the institution tracks the assets they're holding/managing and reports it to the IRS on their side; they issue you appropriate documents and you do your taxes and report it using whatever appropriate form. The paperwork is of course dependent on the situation, for the average checking/savings accounts I will guess it's the 1099-DIV as most common - simple interest payments.
Yes, paper statements must be offered due to federal law. Not everyone has a computer. Like many institutions, we make e-statements an opt-out option for new accounts; however, we still have older accounts that continue to receive paper statements.
I used to get bonuses for these monthly fees, from loans, cc use and balance. Now even they are going away. Then again it does make sense when I look at the actual interest payment on my checking account.
> PayPal is to introduce a £9 “inactivity” fee for anyone whose account has been dormant for at least a year, but still has some money left in it.
PayPal come on, first you keep, people's money hostage and now you even going to charge £9 fee? I can't get my money out because you have frozen it and I can't talk to a human being. Even you ignored my letters from my lawyer.
Google Pay and Apple Pay can surely substitute Pay Pal quickly. Alipay and WeChat Pay in Asian regions. Other, less famous alternatives as well. All of them are more consumer-friendly than PayPal itself. So far, only adoption from the merchants is lacking.
Do you have any details on how those others are more consumer-friendly than paypal?
For buyers/consumers, PayPal is relatively friendly. Getting back money from an uncooperative merchant is pretty simple and hassle-free, just need a few days wait for the response time.
Reminds me of my experience with Skrill (Moneybookers).
Skrill charged me €50/month inactivity fee (€600/year), after 6 months of inactivity, without notifying about changing of terms and conditions or any warning that my account is inactive.
The only email they sent was that they were introducing a
change to the terms and conditions about charging €1/month after 12 months.
PayPal's €10/year inactivity fee after 12 months is reasonable, especially if they warn users in advance. However, this is one of their "boiling-the-frog" tactics, and I'm sure these fees will significantly increase in the future.
It’s fascinating to me how a company that seems to be so universally despised by everyone manages to survive. Luckily for me I have always been spoiled with options, so I almost never had to deal with them.
I wonder if a similar fee would even be allowable in the US. It would seem to run counter to many states' escheatment laws (at least in my completely anecdotal understanding).
Does anyone know if this is only in the UK (since the report is by The Guardian and the fee is mentioned in GBP) or is it introduced in other countries too (if so, which ones)?
For person to person stuff Venmo seems to work ok for me.
If you're running a storefront I've had good experiences with Square, but this is just one datapoint. Their fees are a bit higher than you can get elsewhere, but if you're a small fry doing a handful of transactions a day/week they're fine.
Banks and fintech have ridiculous powers when it comes to charging fees.
Imagine Google Cloud slapped you a 70 pound fee because you are not using it enough, or "maintenance fee". The fact banks deal with money, shouldn't allow them to abuse clients like they do.
"PayPal says it will consider the account to be inactive if the user hasn’t sent, received or withdrawn money, or logged in for a year or more. Importantly, that means users can avoid the fee simply by logging in."
