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If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it

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Re: If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it

#11

Post by iDemonix »

jrnichols wrote: post #4

What an epic failure on PayPal's part. Is there some banking law that I'm unaware of that would cause them to take such drastic actions? It sounds like the OP is definitely above the age of 18 now too, so why would PayPal suddenly decide to yank the rug out from under him? It'll be interesting to see if there's a follow up.

I'm 26 now, almost 27. I think it was the "We'll contact you within 180 days" thing that pissed me off the most, because it's just such a crap, random number that I likely agreed to in their ToS.

As a partial update, after spending 30 minutes clicking every page of the dashboard, it was obvious that money was stuck, and my friend couldn't dispute it as it was sent as a gift, as it wasn't payment for work. Luckily, if you head back to your settings and flick back to the old web UI whilst it's still available, the refund button shows up in the view transaction details page, and it let me refund it. I lost the £20 or so in fees, but at least I can pay some unexpected bills more easily now.

Re: If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it

#13

Post by p49k »

nicky0 wrote: post #10
p49k wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I dislike PayPal, I would never want to trade it for Bitcoin. All it takes is one zero-day exploit for all of my funds to disappear at once without a trace. Any purchase I would make has zero protection and zero recourse for recovering funds if I'm ripped off. No, thanks. I just want something like PayPal, but that is run by people who have empathy and care about providing a good experience.

Depends how you store your bitcoin. You can't zero-day exploit a cold wallet.

I don't use bitcoin, so I might be missing something, but don't you have to transfer funds from the cold wallet to your device at some point, and doesn't that mean that any malware waiting on your device could just grab the whole thing at that exact moment?

In any case, even if you could secure the wallet, it still doesn't address the fact that once the funds are sent, they're not recoverable; I think it's unreasonable to expect a payment system with no rollback mechanism to go mainstream.

Re: If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it

#14

Post by jaclaz »

nicky0 wrote: post #10
p49k wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I dislike PayPal, I would never want to trade it for Bitcoin. All it takes is one zero-day exploit for all of my funds to disappear at once without a trace. Any purchase I would make has zero protection and zero recourse for recovering funds if I'm ripped off. No, thanks. I just want something like PayPal, but that is run by people who have empathy and care about providing a good experience.

Depends how you store your bitcoin. You can't zero-day exploit a cold wallet.

Still, a number of things may go bad, at least judging from:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Cold_storage

Re: If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it

#15

Post by iDemonix »

huac wrote: post #12

They had Paypal Student before, where your account would be linked to your parent's account. But they shut that down recently, with no way to reactivate or unlink the account, and you're unable to reuse your email when making another account.

It's almost as if they have a PR department that's geared towards pissing people off.

Re: If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it

#17

Post by c0achmcguirk »

> There are alternatives to PayPal, it’s just become so ingrained in to online life that it can be easy to forget that.

This is very true, but I like to think of how predominant MySpace and Hotmail were at one time. Someone will come along and do it better. Stripe, PaymentSpring, heck even Bitcoin are all potential disruptors here.

I think the days of PayPal's dominance are numbered.

Re: If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it

#18

Post by loeg »

Just close your account if you have a PayPal account at all. They limit and freeze funds at random and good luck resolving it.

OP, You can refund the funds to the sender less Paypal's 30¢ cut, I believe. That might be the best way to get the money back to your friend, and then they can re-send it to you with something sane like Google Wallet.

Re: If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it

#19

Post by loeg »

carsongross wrote: post #5

> I’m not really sure what half a year of holding on to my money will help PayPal achieve It doesn't help them. If it were possible they would complete every transaction with minimal fuss. The reason transferring money is so difficult is due to governments who wish to prevent capital flight, "laundering", etc. Paypal fought against this intensely early on.

My traditional bank has fewer restrictions on money movement and far better customer service when further verification is needed than Paypal. They have to comply with the same regulations.

Re: If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it

#20

Post by mxstbr »

This exact same thing happened to me, though I was thankfully allowed to withdraw my money and open a new account with the same bank details.

Call your local PayPal support hotline and explain to them what happened, I was immediately escalated to higher level support who had me provide details of why the money was in my account, which they verified and then unlocked the withdrawal and bank accounts. Still had to make a new account, but that's a small price to pay!

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