A year seems like an extremely short period to assume that an account is "dormant".
PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts
101–110 of 136 posts
Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But sure, most banks have fees like that 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.
Welcome to a low interest rate world. Things are even worse at Japanese banks.
I used to get bonuses for these monthly fees, from loans, cc use and balance. Now even they are going away. Then again it does make sense when I look at the actual interest payment on my checking account.
Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
It used to be that all basic (low end) US checking accounts had fees and the concept of no-fees being the norm has happened during my adult lifetime. Low end accounts (no money in them, basic tier) may not cover the yearly expenses for the bank to keep up with the legal paperwork on that account, but a high end account ($$$) has always had no-fees because of exactly what you describe. (digital life has I'm sure reduc…
> yearly expenses for the bank to keep up with the legal paperwork on that account 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?
Note: I'm on the board of a credit union.
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.
Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 e…
> Anyway, PayPal didn't allow changing account country through the UI, and there didn't seem to any other way of doing it either. 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 se…
> It makes sense legally, since a user would have to agree to a different set of terms in a different jurisdiction.
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.
Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts
#105They’ve basically found a way to steal what’s left in the account. That’s all this is. There’s probably tens of thousands of accounts that people got locked out of or abandoned with money in and this lets them steal it.
You're right about that, AND PayPal has some sort of aversion to debt obligations.
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
Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts
#106Earlier 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…
> 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…
I remember reading where Elon talked about Paypal. They implemented policies he thought were stupid but he was out.
Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts
#107there's my friendly reminder to delete my pp account
Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts
#108Fairly 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…
Or: Jump through the hoops to get it, and then over the next year use that $200 to pay people on fiverr to complain about it online periodically FOR you.
Think of the time savings!
Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts
#109They’ve basically found a way to steal what’s left in the account. That’s all this is. There’s probably tens of thousands of accounts that people got locked out of or abandoned with money in and this lets them steal it.
Oh there's more than that. I've done some work in the past in some video games, and used to get paid through a Paypal registered under a pseudonym.
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.
Re: PayPal introduces new fee for dormant accounts
#110They’ve basically found a way to steal what’s left in the account. That’s all this is. There’s probably tens of thousands of accounts that people got locked out of or abandoned with money in and this lets them steal it.
Oh there's more than that. I've done some work in the past in some video games, and used to get paid through a Paypal registered under a pseudonym. 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 th…
This is completely unavoidable due to government-imposed Know-Your-Customer regulations.