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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

#131
post #51

> I’m not really sure what half a year of holding on to my money will help PayPal achieve? If they have a pile of similar money (likely, by the stories we hear), then they earn interest, and may (IANAA) be able to point to that cash as an "asset" in situations where they need to show assets.

No, that's illegal. A financial institution cannot represent customers' assets as its own. Those are not company assets, they're liabilities (because they're not owned, they're owed).

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

#132
> will now just have to move to my credit cards directly

One of the reasons I like paypal is that it provides a great amount of control over who I pay and when and how much. I can login and reasonably easy see all of my MRC subscriptions, and cancel them as appropriate. Technically possible with credit cards directly, but not as nice.

Best of both worlds right now is privacy.com for me, they generate credit card #s on the fly and provide that same level of vision and control into where the money is going with exactly 100% less bullshit and 100% less scumbag tactics.

If you're moving payments away from paypal (and you should) I would suggest considering moving them to privacy.com instead of directly.

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

#133
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.

My Bitcoin funds are stored in cold storage (private key printed on paper and stored in wall safe; good luck in zero-daying _that_). The only thing that can end Bitcoin is breaking sec256k1 elliptic curve, and this is unlikely to happen soon.

The value of Bitcoin is based on the collective faith of the network. With a 0day that faith is destroyed and those cold storage Bitcoins hit $0 just like any fiat currency.

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

#134
post #42

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.

Not sure about UK laws, but my (limited) understanding of US law is that a minor lacks the legal capacity to sign a contract (i.e. agree to TOS). I suspect that's the legal reasoning that's caused PayPal to adopt this policy. PayPal could and should find a better way to handle transitioning people who, out of necessity, lied about their age when they first signed up. Was signing up under false pretenses a form of fra…

Minor can absolutely sign contracts.

However, it's likely that minors are not allowed to have "adult" bank accounts like PayPal.

If so, registering is committing fraud and paypal is forced to shut down the account.

Typical case of a children going against the law and the laws fights back and the child doesn't like it.

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

#135
post #48

Here's three rules someone once gave me which I can't emphasize strongly enough. 1. Never use Paypal. For ANY reason. 2. Never. Use. Paypal. For. Any. Reason. 3. See rule #1.

What's the alternative?

Square Cash is absolutely fantastic, and extraordinarily easy to use. The mobile app is great. You can even send money to someone who doesn't even have a Square Cash account yet, by simply emailing them, cc'ing cash@square.com, and putting the dollar amount in the Subject: line. That's it.

You can't beat it.

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

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venmo ... Oh that's PayPal too. I'm not a fan, but maybe Bitcoin? What about mailed checks, as a backup?

In Canada we have Interact e-transfers. For about $1 you can send money between any two banks via email or sms. The fee is frustrating, especially when you want to pay someone back for lunch or something small, but it is very convenient and basically everybody knows how to use it at this point.

Btw, EQ Bank and ATB Financial offer a few (5-10) Interac transactions for free per month.

http://www.playpay.ca/blog/comments.cfm?id=3&blogid=7

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

#137
post #40

Had the same issue last month after reciving a $3000 bug bounty. PP limited my account I uploaded a copy of my id, bing -> banned. However: After calling them, they told me to create a new account and verify it with the CC and bankaccount (that were in old acc). And as soon everything was verified they trasfered the money to the new account. So apparently it seems not to be that difficult to get your money.

Had the same experience, except when I opened the new account, they would not verify my bank account, because it was still used on the old one. That was the point where I have had enough and stopped using them.

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

#138
post #80

I only ever use Paypal as a wrapper around credit card transactions for merchants I trust enough to purchase from, but not necessarily enough to handle my credit card information directly. I can't say I've ever had a problem using them that way.

I'd worry about debit card fraud, not credit card fraud. I think the credit industry's managed to trick people into treating credit card numbers like very sensitive information whereas in reality they're not for consumers; they only are for the companies.

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

#139
post #117
post #18

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.

> something sane like a bank transfer FTFY. Zero fees, zero megacorps taking their cut, zero social graphs in the US growing a few extra tuples

in the US wire transfers cost about $30 per transfer, international cost about $50.

If you're transferring to another customer in the same bank then they're free but I've never had that luxury.

Were you referring to bank transfers to same bank customers? Because I've never heard of zero fees for bank transfers

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