Paypal problems
Sometimes, Paypal is just not your pal.
The remarkable article on the right is not my own case.
The rest, below here, are my own experiences. You can read sometimes in the internet about Paypal problems, but I always thought, I have a good record, and they would never do this to me. Besides my experience by phone with then was very good, they were always friendly and helpful. And then it happened. Just as all those people reported. Without any visible reason, they shoot me in the back. BANG! Basically not giving back the money any more.
I will start with the final conclusion here, and it was my main learning effect.
In normal business, the larger the customer is, the better he gets treated, unless he is non-profitable customer. With Paypal this is not so. I keep a list of how much money they charge me on a yearly base, and when I add up my own charges and the charges of my customers (for exchanging money) it exceeds my yearly total shipping costs. And this is a lot of money, which I generate for them. The only thing which triggered problems, was the sum money I have left in my Paypal acount. That and nothing else, is my conclusion.
How it begins. Or your career path with Paypal.
It is always like this: At first you can comfortably register there. So extremely smooth. Just some personal data, your email address, and 'tada...!' you have a paypal account. Wow! this is modern times... the internet is good. But is it really good? No! this is a very flimsy process, and it attracts fraudulent persons.
Paypal makes it comfortable for themselves to gain new customers quickly, but designed the process such the risk related to this registration process is not with Paypal.
However, there is a second option to register, you may not know it perhaps. Anyone with a Paypal account can send 500 Euro to an email address, even when there is no paypal account linked to it. In that case the receiver gets an email from Paypal, saying we have a payment for you. In order to get access to this payment, the receiver just needs to open a new account, quick and easy, just write his name on the Paypal website, and tada....! He has an acount, and yes the money is there. And Paypal has a new member, but identity of this person can be fake. Needless to say, curious things can go wrong with fake persons buying goods in the internet.
Now let's just imagine this process with a normal bank.
We replace the word 'email' by 'postal mail' and 'email address' by 'postal address'. So suppose I have a normal account with my bank, and I want to send 500 Euro to somebody. Just the receiver has no account there. I can quickly solve this, buy giving his address data to my Bank, and they simply pay 500 Euro to him, and send him a letter there is 500 Euro for him waitung there. I can see online 500 Euro was removed from my account. Let's call this person Sam. So from my end, the work is done. Only, Sam has no account with my bank of course. The bank sends Sam an email, saying I have send him 500 Euro. Well, he was expecting 500 Euro from me, so that makes him happy. Only... he wonders how to get access to this money. So he contacts the bank for help. They say: Sam, it's very easy. Just go to our website an write your adress in our system. So he has nothing to loose. He agrees, and without verification of his personal data, he has now a bank acount with 500 Euro on it.
Now you will understand, no normal bank on the world is working like that. First, because that would be stupid behaviour of the bank, and second because it would be totally illegal.
Paypal found a way to deal with that. They do not call themself a bank, but a 'service' company. That realeases them from many legal obligations which bother banks.
As you can understand, after this kind of unverified registration process, real life can not work like that. Also not with Paypal. Such a process creates risks, and all in the end, such risks land either at the buyer, the seller, or at Paypal. SO they let it continue for a limited time, but then afterwards begim asking for all kind of data fragmens, which you need to prove. They won't say that up front, in order not to appear 'uncomfortable' to new users. But..... your day will come, and they want to have that data. And they will want it suddenly, and access to your money is to be restricted, if not already so.
Here comes the process which happened to me:
All of a sudden, they simply blocked my account. Well it was not totally blocked. I could still look at it. With a full block, even that is not possible. So I guess I was even lucky. I could still receive money, but only they created a small problem for me: I could not send money any more, and also not take it out of paypal.
So gettig angry, and close the account, is not going to work, because then still I don't get my money back.
Please note, I have an excellent record with Paypal. When I read in the internet about the stories about blocked accounts, law suits, and the lost payments, I always thought these people were to blame for it themselves. And I thought they would never do this to me. However it just happened to me over night. Same as all the horror stories: Bang! I was right in the middle of it, and not just once.
- Case1. The alternative truth
- Case 2. Vladimir the criminal.
- Case3. 'So called' hacked acount
- Case4
- Case5
Some interesting links I found in the internet.
Paypal complaints. (Very good site)
Paypal Sammelklage: Deutschland
Consumer Alert: PayPal Problems
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* These numbers are just as seen when I tried it. These number are variable.