PayPalReviews 2,131

I was a customer of Paypal, but have noticed that their service and accuracy has been going down for the past few months. Recently, I discovered a fraudulent charge on my checking account listing Paypal and a magazine company I never heard of. Fortunately, I bank online and can check my accounts every day. I tried contacting Paypal and after a long wait, I was put on hold for another long wait by someone called "Nigel". I finally gave up and called my bank and had to block my debit card and get a new temporary one. This was a real inconvenience for me and I will never deal with Paypal again and I caution others to opt out, also.

I have been using paypal since ebay purchased them(about 10 years). Over the years I have heard many complaints. I have given advice to many(keep funds in the account, don't do anything to appear shady). All of this advice worked well until last month, paypal froze up my own account. It was very frustrating, but I got it cleared up in 7 days. Here are a few things that I learned.

Paypal has one of the smartest computer systems in the world, designed to spot fraud. If your volume has a dramatic increase, you take excessive cash withdraws, possibly sell fakes, cannot prove where you you got your product. Or you were not honest when you signed up for the account, then you can plan on paypal freezeing up your account.(even if you are Verified, and have used their service for 10 years) Paypal will require proof of who you are(ID and credit check, and a credit card), proof of where your product came from(manufacturers invoice) proof of the location of you, and your product(utility bills, deed, lease etc.) Paypal WILL hold your funds until you provide all of this info. At first I was mad, but ultimately this policy protects paypal, and runs off fraudlent sellers. My only complaint is I wished that I knew all of this info ahead of time, I run a "legitimate" business therefore I was back up in 7 days, if I would have known the rules I would have already provided the info. By the way if(when) this happens, paypal will investigate every item that you send them, and from what I understand when this happens, you are safe from it happening again.

In reading all of the reviews on here it is easy to think that I would have been one of the people saying how great Paypal was, too. Until 2 weeks ago, that is. I have a very common surname and apparently someone in the same town also has the same name as me (odds are pretty good - like Bill Smith being in Tallahassee Florida, do you think there is only one?). This person has a negative balance on their account and Paypal's "automated matching algorithm" magically determined that this person and I are one in the same, even though the day before this happened I made a significant charitable contribution through my REAL Paypal account and it was paid promptly by my credit card. I have spent countless hours on the phone with them trying to get this resolved and have gotten nowhere. I have even contacted the Better Business Bureau (my case is still pending). I have literally gotten a different answer from each of the 9 people I have spoken to, but not one of them has helped me at all. So my account has been closed until I pay the money that this other person owes. Think Paypal is wonderful and this could never happen to you? Don't be so sure.

I used to use PayPal up till a year ago when one of their employees used my account to purchase a $275 item off the Internet from England.

I got an e-mail from PayPal stating this was a suspicious purchase and that my account was on hold till they had heard from me. I wrote back saying I did not make the purchase and that I don't authorize any payment. Next day, I got another e-mail back from PayPal, with a copy of the e-mail I had just sent stating not to authorize the payment, saying they were going to approve the purchase, and did just that.

I called PayPal immediately and talked with one of their customer service representatives who had sent me the appropriate documents regarding the site where the purchase was made and I took these documents over to my bank and request legal action be taken against PayPal to recover my money.

After this incident, I tried to cancel my account with them and they would not close out my account and held onto my bank checking account number, routing number and debit card number. They would not close out my account even at my request. Most sites I did purchase from uses PayPal to authorize and make credit card purchases without having to use a PayPal account, but because of them having my debit card information still on their files, they would not authorize any purchases without me unlocking my account because the card I was using was still being held by them. At not using the site for over a year, it is still there and I ended up having to cancel my debit card and get a new card number just to make internet purchases.

As a result, I am unable to use sites like eBay because they solely use PayPal for their sole means of making payments for items bid on. And I refuse to use PayPal.

In my opinion, they are thieves.

All I have to say is watch out for paypal scammers and hackers. Someone hacked into my paypal account twice. First time I got an email saying one of your credit cards been expired please update it. So I did, but I didn't realize it was a phishing website. But I changed my password right away and my email ID. Second time, someone hacked into my account and I got an email from paypal about unusual activity. It would of been nice if they could of have called me and told me about this, but no they had to email me and warn me about someone hacking into my account. Not what I expected from paypal.

I use paypal for ebay to buy and to sell. I haven't had any problems with using paypal as payment because it protects me in that i won't get scammed out of money or something.

The few times i've sold things on paypal i've had it where they put my payment on hold in order to make sure that the item is shipped and goes to the customer. The bad thing, is that even though you have shipped it, the customer can dispute it and say that they didn't get the item and then paypal automatically takes the money back even though you really did ship it. Then you're out of money and the item.

Even when you send in proof that you have shipment tracking and everything, they side with the customer. I got scammed so many times out of this it just frustrates me. I'm better off asking for checks or creditcard information rather than using paypal.

So make sure that you pay attention to what is going on with both ends of the spectrum. Buying AND selling.

I hate Paypal! Twice they've confused me with another user and both times they froze all the money in the account! Of course they wait until you sell something on ebay before they freeze the money, amazing how that works right? If they weren't the only payment option for eBay I'd never use them. I bought something from China on ebay for $10 that arrived broken. I told Paypal and they said mail it back. Shipping to China was $7.65! I told him I couldn't, it wasn't worth my time to pack it up and drive it to the post office to make $2. Paypal wouldn't refund the money and the seller kept it.

I don't know how long ago your review was posted, but here's something you may not know yet. I have been selling some items on Ebay and buying the items from a dropshipper. The way it worked was, I list the item on Ebay, when it sells and the seller makes payment, I take the money and buy the item from the dropshipper and they ship it to the buyer.
Worked fine until PayPal changed their payment policy about a week or two ago. Now I am told by PayPal that I will not receive my money from them for 21 days. They said this was to ensure I had the money to repay the buyer if the sale was disputed. Now I list the item on Ebay and it sells. I get no money for 21 days from PayPal so whatever the dropshipper charges me for the item, which could be several thousand dollars if you have several of their items that sold, I have to dig up somewhere to pay the dropshipper so the items will be shipped. Now the buyer has the items he bought, PayPal and Ebay have their fees, The dropshipper has his money and I not only have not received anything, but are out the cost of the products sold. To make things even worst, if the buyer disputes the sale and PayPal agrees with them, they will refund the buyers money, and you will have the product you were trying to sell. You cannot return the merchandise to the dropshipper, for he has a 14 day return policy, so you are stuck with it. I haven't quite decided if this is a SCAM by PayPal and Ebay. If you think of the millions of customers PayPal has, if they can use all the millions or billions of dollars for 21 days for nothing, I could not imagine how much interest they could draw off of all that money, and doesn't cost them a dime.
I have cancelled my PayPal account and tried to cancel my Ebay account but was told I couldn't for 30 days just in case I owe them more money. If you are going to be selling on Ebay, please check this out before you lose a bunch of money and end up with merchandise you didn't even want. J. B.

While I have wrote great reviews about eBay and Half.com, Paypal is a different story.

For those of you who don't know, PayPal and Half.com are all owned by eBay.

First, not only do you get charged fees for eBay, but you again get charged to use PayPal when you receive money. So essentially, when you sell an item, you have to pay two fees to the same company.

Second, I have had one instance where PayPal helped, yet another where they completely blew me off and ignored proof and documentation I had.

My suggestion is that if you are doing a transaction that involves alot of money and has the possibility of something going wrong, don't do it or don't use Paypal. Now I have had only one or two bad experiences in the many times that i've used it, it still can be a good service assuming you use it with people whom you trust.

Like everything else, just be careful, check, and double check!

On the whole, I have had no problems with Paypal - I use it fairly regularly for buying and selling via eBay. The lower rating, however, relates to a transaction with Dealsniper.com, from whom I purchased a DS game. I was dubious, but when I saw the payment would be processed by Paypal, I felt a little better about the whole deal.

When the game arrived, it didn't work, and after much digging turned out to be a fake copy. When I put in a claim with Paypal, they said there was nothing they could do! So, why have such a system in place then?!