As the title says, I'm experiencing a very annoying and infuriating problem as a result of Paypal deciding it was not going to charge my credit card, but would instead take money from one of my bank accounts without telling me. I only noticed when I got an alert from my little-used bank account that I had been charged a $30 insufficient funds fee triggered by a Paypal debit. I called PayPal and, after being on hold for 50 minutes, talked to a representative who confirmed that yes, I had directed the transaction be completed with a credit card, but that Paypal had decided, for what he termed "an unspecified security problem with the card" to instead take money out of my bank account (instead of, say, charging one of the other four cards I have on PayPal). When I pointed out that I had turned on both email and SMS alerts for any problems with my payments, but had not gotten any warning that this would take place, the rep simply apologized and said he didn't know why that was. He did offer to send me an email explaining the error that I could use to ask my bank to waive the NSF fee.
Needless to say, this is not the kind of thing PayPal should do, in my book. If I put a purchase on a credit card, charge my card. If you can't charge my card for some reason, tell me.
The icing on the cake--the rep couldn't actually send the email, despite trying twice with two different email accounts. All he managed to do both times was send a message through PayPal's secure in-app inbox. Which I can't forward. And to top it off, the message places the blame squarely on me, saying I mistakenly selected my bank account. When I called the rep on that "misstatement," he at first insisted I was misreading it and the message didn't say that, until I read him the sentence that did, indeed, say that. He then said he was sorry, but that's the only wording they are allowed to use (probably because PayPal will not provide a written admission of fault for legal reasons). He urged me to focus on the fact that PayPal was helping me get the charge waived. The charge triggered by their unauthorized actions. How magnanimous of them. [/rant]
Moral of the story (at least for me): don't trust PayPal, don't link your bank accounts, and don't expect them to do the right thing. I've now unlinked all my bank accounts and will avoid PayPal as much as I can. I'm also planning on only having one card linked at any given time, to force PayPal to either use it or tell me there is a problem.
Submitted November 18, 2020 at 09:20PM by DeskJockey98 https://ift.tt/2UH73AA
