What a hellish last couple of days I’ve had trying to deal with the company called Paypal that so many of us rely on for our bits of income. I used to rely on them more than I do now when the regulations weren’t so strict. I used to use paypal mostly for collecting payments from pay per view operators way back in the day when money was much easier to make.
Today, paypal as pretty much backed away from the adult industry. Just like other suppliers like Nochex, who built their reputations and financial wealth through adult processing, and then at a later date abandoned the very people that made them such a powerful entity. Its not necessarily their fault since both Visa and Mastercard had to place more costs/restrictions on retailers because of the large amount of fraud occurring. Whether its chip and pin, finger print recognition or having a DNA sequence is stored on the card, all of these can be faked. There’s no such thing as total security on-line for payment processors that are linked to your credit card or bank account.
I think any payment processor linked to a bank account is far more dangerous as money transferred from your account into paypal and then onto another third party retailer. This is simply not covered by the banks insurance, if you wish to make a claim. You might not get your money back at all by allowing paypal to use your bank account for funding purposes. It is far more secure to use a credit card for funding since if there’s a problem then because its not your money, you generally don’t have to pay for things that are in dispute until its resolved. The other big bonus is that if something iffy is going on with your paypal account you can block them permanently by simply phoning your card supplier.
Paypal actively encourages people to use a bank account and apart of the reason is money. It costs paypal far more to process funding request from credit cards than it does via a bank account. Also, money from a credit card is not guaranteed money, it can be taken back off paypal up to 6 weeks after the request, in form of a charge back. Where as a bank account is different, if takes up to 5 days to transfer the money, but when it arrives at paypal it is real money that exists entirely in their account to make interest from. Paypal makes enormous amounts of interest from just holding on to your money for longer than that is technical necessary. I think its a fair way of doing business, but it they should tell people its not the bank that has these delays, its Paypal.
For my particular problem, I had a paypal account that I’ve had for years and I wanted to close it down since many of the people that used to pay me via paypal stopped using it 2-3 years ago because of the various changes in the terms and conditions. So, last a while ago I logged in to my account to remove the current bank and credit card details, and thoroughly corrupted my address details and password. Finally I clicked the “close account” link and it said my account was closed. I thought that was it, after all when paypal says they’ve closed your account you expect it to be closed, right? Well, its not. They still keep all your information on their systems. This means that they have all your bank, credit card information and personal residential details stored on a computer connected to the internet, which is unbelievably insecure. In fact is down right insane and makes paypal a fantastic target for hackers; which it is of course.
Just in case you were wondering why I deleted/removed my account details. It was a vain attempt to make sure the data paypal continued to store beyond closure would be invalid and completely useless to any hacker. Only now I know actually removing this information myself didn’t do any thing as it is still recorded on the paypal computers. So, in essence when you join paypal they continue to hold all your information that you have ever entered through their system and there’s no way to get this removed. I find this a frightening prospect myself, don’t you?
Any way, I couldn’t access my old account and I don’t have all the old financial details. I routinely swap bank accounts every few years chasing those better deals and interest rates. Plus, also I’ve had to change my credit card once after it was cloned, bizarrely after shopping for something using a paypal transaction. Whilst I was sipping tea in the UK someone bought a laptop in little woods and within an hour bought 20 odd tickets for a Broadway show in the united states. There was no flight in between and so unless teleportation has been invented then you know your credit card number has been disputed to someone else too!
Early this month I received an email from paypal saying that my account (the one i closed months ago) was under restrictions. Hold on a minute I thought, how can I have an closed account under restrictions? Was because paypal didn’t really close it? maybe? So I called the expensive rip off line 0870 number paypal has which is routed to a call centre in India – who are all very polite and nice, but unless you give them the last 4 digits from a bank account or/and credit card you had years ago then they can’t help you. As most people that know me personally, I barely remember last week never mind what I did 3 years ago in July, on the 6th.
Luckily I found an old bank statement filled under miscellaneous which helped somewhat, but I didn’t have the old credit card information, and of course the credit company are not allowed to give that information out over the phone – quite rightly. I rang the paypal rip off line back again and gave the system the last 4 digits from my elderly bank account I once had and eventually got through to a human being after shouting “Agent” a few dozen times. I talked to this nice Indian lady who said she can’t put me through unless I also gave her some digits of the credit card number too. BUT I don’t FFF*** have it I thought.. No one has it or is willing to give it me over the phone. That call ended as politely as possible, though I was gritting my teeth and not having polite thoughts at all. I was thinking, paypal and me as psycho knifing paypal in the shower.
I called my credit card provider on a number that was still more expensive than a standard UK call but not as much as paypal rip off rates. Of course the credit card company couldn’t give me the old number over the phone for security reasons (i knew this! everyone knows this, even my nephew whose 4 – I told him). They said all they could give me was the last 4 digits. So I took them and wrote them down.
Then finally I rang paypal on technical support (08707 307 191) which i think is slightly different to customer support. Certainly the recorded voice and menu system was completely different. I tapped in the 4 digits of my credit card number that hasn’t exists for ages when the system prompted, praying paypal won’t also ask me for random digits of the full number further into the call. I explained my situation and this time the operator said he would email the development team to ask them to close the account for me. Now all I have to do is wait for the email.. Now.. oh oh why couldn’t they do that on the first call, before I had probably spent £10 on their rip off lines? Is it because paypal makes 1.5p per minute you think? Am I that cynical? Not usually, but who knows with paypal.
So.. The lesson is.. don’t imagine closing an account with paypal is going to be an easy thing to achieve! You may quite easily lose your mind, think bad thoughts and invent several interesting swear words. The swear box has made a small fortune from me today.
