Complaint Review: Paypal - Nationwide

Paypal didn't "attack at the right moment"... waiting to leave you "helpless"....you sold something that was totally out of scope of your typical PayPal seller profile, and as a result, your account was flagged as potentially being compromised. Your selling habits set the tone...PayPal wasn't waiting for you to "screw up." As an eBay and PayPal member of many years you should well be aware of their efforts to identify suspicious activity. There are other venues for reselling tickets, however you won't garner the high profits you will from eBay. The tradeoff is the increased scrutiny.

By your own admission, you have in the past sold low dollar-amount items on eBay. Suddenly you are offering two tickets to the Super Bowl that you expected to sell for at least five grand. Your final bid was $6500. How many of the Super Bowl tickets that were offered for sale on eBay and other venues were bogus? Tickets are a high-risk purchase and a magnet for scam artists. Paypal was covering their butts. If your tickets were fakes (or non-existent), Paypal would would have to make good on the loss to the buyer and his credit card company. Then they would have to try to collect from you. Their best defense is to put a hold on your account until they were satisfied that the buyer would not file a dispute. Even if the tickets were legit the buyer could file a bogus dispute with his credit card company and put Paypal in the middle. Paypal was just being sure that they were not going to get stuck giving a $6500 refund with no way to recover from you.

Just so you know, I am not an idiot. I can tell the difference between a phishing scam and an email from paypal. I always close the email and go directly to the site. So, after many phone calls to paypal today they finally took the "limitation" off my account. I suspect since my buyer paid cash, there was no longer any reason to keep the account limited. Again they insisted that it was just a security precaution but why on earth would they require such personal information. This is very unsettling. Why is there no accountability and why can they do what ever the hell they please leaving the innocent consumer victim to abuse. Don't tell me for one minute holding on to their customer's account funds at will doesn't make them a ton of money. Again, no warning, no reason, no negotiation. I will definately use them only when absolutely necessary for my convenience and I will be shopping for a new payment source.

This is WAY beyond a "phisher" email. When I log on to ebay they are quick to remind me that my account has been "limited" before I can proceed to my ebay. I have been on the phone with paypal numerous times without sucess. THEY ARE IN CONTROL and you are a helpless victim. I never would have believed this and always thought that whoever complained about them was causing their own problems. Not anymore. I am an innocent victim of a corporation out of control. I would like to know why it was necessary to see my personal information. Who gets this and where does it go after it has been viewed? It can happen to you.

If you go to the Paypal site, it will clearly tell you that Paypal will never ask for this type of information. NEVER click on any link in an email that asks for information. This will in most cases direct you to a "spoof" site. It may look like a Paypal site, complete with logos and all, but it is fake. ALWAYS close any emails or pop ups, and then go to your Paypal site and login. Any GENUINE messages from Paypal will be visible at that time. File a fraud complaint with Paypal, and maybe they can help you track down and prosecute this scammer, although unlikely. Good luck.

I get "dire account warnings", complete with convenient address links provided for me to "correct my problems", from phishers all the time. I simply pass these "warnings" on to the referenced company. A few days later I will get an email back confirming the intended scam. I avoid PayPal except when I use a credit card through them to pay a seller. If someone gets clever, my bank handles the problem.