PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
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
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.
Edit: read the article, it seems they'll take it back in one fell swoop.
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.
Think of the time savings!
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.
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.
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.
On the other hand, you now have to give them your SSN #.
From that day i haven't used any 2fa and just use password manager with additional backup.
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.
To use OTP I had to break out of that flow and start from a different part of the site.
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.
When looking at the actual attack vectors though it is vastly improved:
Mitigated - Online attacks on your account at any service
Mitigated - In person attacks on your account due to post-it notes
Mitigated - Losing your phone which was the only way you could generate a one time password
All this drama is mitigated, turning a disaster into a 5 second recovery.
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 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.
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
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. :(
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.
Might as well criticise Tim Bernes-Lee for not developing the HTTPS spec in the 80s
You seem to imply PayPal being scummy is a new development. Always has been.
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...
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
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.
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. :(
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.
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.
Ironically, swearing at the bot memorably just ended up in an automatically dropped phone call pretty much right away.
Not sure if that was due to them just dropping the call anyway (guessing so), or there's detection for people swearing.
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.
Same as the Google model then? ;)
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.
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.
More worrying is the outright nerviness - as if those companies know there are no alternatives left, or know something about our grim economical outlook.
Not to mention that almost every bank has fees too. Overdraft fees are charging you because you didn’t have money!
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.
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.
Except, at least in my case, the security code gets sent to some phone number that's not mine. So, that's not going to help. ;)
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?
> 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.
They make the money in other ways, which is a different discussion, but it does mean people aren't used to paying for a bank account.
A bank account with fees? I've never seen that. They make money by loaning out your money, so they don't need to charge a fee.
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.
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 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.
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.
Isn't the next stage, to actually take legal action?
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.
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.
Is there a charity I can send it to, without giving most of it to PayPal?
https://transferwise.com/invite/u/justinc777 <-- apparently that's an "invite" link. Just use the bare domain name if you don't want to do the invite thing. :)
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.
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.