PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts • Hacker News Board

Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts

#71

Post by justinclift » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 4:44 PM UTC

ValentineC wrote: post #48

justinclift wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar here. I've been using PayPal to receive our Patreon balance each month and pay various project (sqlitebrowser.org) related experiences. 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 num…

> 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. 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…

Yep, it's a UK account

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

Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts

#72

Post by stanmancan » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

justinclift wrote: post #70

xoa wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Ahhh, I haven't really had a close interest in Elon's stuff. Only really know of him as PayPal -> Tesla -> SpaceX. 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…

That seems incredibly doubtful and highly illegal. I can’t imagine that happening without lawsuits being filed.

Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts

#73

Post by kevingadd » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

xrisk wrote: post #7

cute_boi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same here. Lost 2fa due to water damage on phone. and all the data was irrecoverable. Now even if i give every data their customer service don't care. From that day i haven't used any 2fa and just use password manager with additional backup.

Use a 2FA that lets you take backups?

Authy seems great for this.

Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts

#74

Post by carapace » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #17

Fairly unethical, though their rationale is probably something like 'hey everyone else is doing it!' 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.

TL;DR: Paypal owes me $200.

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.

Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts

#75

Post by pluc » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

PayPal is one of the worst places you can open an account on the entire Internet.

Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts

#76

Post by criddell » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

xrisk wrote: post #7

cute_boi wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

same here. Lost 2fa due to water damage on phone. and all the data was irrecoverable. Now even if i give every data their customer service don't care. From that day i haven't used any 2fa and just use password manager with additional backup.

Use a 2FA that lets you take backups?

Or print out the QR codes and keep them in a safe place.

Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts

#77

Post by justinclift » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

stanmancan wrote: post #72

justinclift wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahhh, I haven't really had a close interest in Elon's stuff. Only really know of him as PayPal -> Tesla -> SpaceX. 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…

That seems incredibly doubtful and highly illegal. I can’t imagine that happening without lawsuits being filed.

Yep, clearly very illegal.

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...

Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts

#78

Post by jccooper » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

lioeters wrote: post #62

katsura wrote: post #3

Well, I'm glad I don't have money left there, because I had two factor authentication turned on, and for some unforseen circumstances, I lost my phone number. PayPal customer service is actually quite hard to contact, because every possibility they give you requires you to log in. I found an email address somewhere, but when I wrote them telling them about my situation, I got an email that if I log in I can check the…

> when they make it impossible to contact them 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…

You don't just have to hope; you can do it.

Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts

#79

Post by LorenPechtel » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

justinclift wrote: post #68

vizzah wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hack: As soon as you start speaking to their robot and he asks "why you're calling", say something like "speak to a human". After robot tries to evade it with further programmed bullshit, say: "GET LOST!". He will quickly respond "It seems I am having problems here" and connect you to a human. Worked perfect for me several times I had to contact their customer support with the identical problem of being locked out du…

Tried multiple variations of that already. 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.

Or the bot is trying to transfer you somewhere that isn't properly set up.

Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts

#80

Post by justinclift » Sun, Dec 13, 2020, 5:09 PM UTC

LorenPechtel wrote: post #79

justinclift wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried multiple variations of that already. 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.

Or the bot is trying to transfer you somewhere that isn't properly set up.

Yeah, could have been anything. ;)