PayPal Charges $81,400,836,908 For $26 Tank Of Gas
Juan Zamora fed his 1994 Chevy Camaro $26 worth of gas, a transaction for which PayPal charged his debit card $81,400,836,908. Unsurprisingly, PayPal saw nothing wrong with the charge and demanded that Juan prove that he didn't actually buy $81.4 billion worth of gas.
He only learned of the astounding figure when he received an email later that afternoon informing him that his debit card, which started out with $90 on it, was maxed out.
Initially, Mr. Zamora thought it must've been a joke. But after contacting PayPal customer service he was surprised to see that the company treated it as anything but a laughing matter.
"Somebody from a foreign country who spoke in broken English argued with me for 10 to 15 minutes," Zamora said. " ‘Did you get the gas?' he asked. Like I had to prove that I didn't pump $81,400,836,908 in gas!"
He would have needed more than 3 billion fill-ups of the amount he actually pumped into his tank in order to reach that outrageous sum.
Eventually, Zamora said, he was finally able to convince the representative that he didn't deserve to be in the same position as General Motors, who has lost roughly 80 billion dollars since 2005.
When Zamora returned to the Conoco gas station, he said, the attendant would not believe him until he showed her the printout of the PayPal receipt.
What moral is Juan taking away from the story? "Pay cash."
Driver Fills up Gas Tank, Receives Bill For $81 Billion [Consumer Energy Report via Jalopnik]
(Photo: NASA)
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Comments:
I hope Juan keeps pressing this issue, to find out WHY this happened. What if he was traveling and was counting on using his debit card for food or other expenses? He'd have been screwed. It's fine that they're going to fix it if he proves he didn't get that much gas, but they need to find out why it happened so they can prevent it from happening again.
Then why did he agree to buy a tank of gas for everyone in the country?
I'm being facetious of course.
By the way, the SR-71 doesn't use gasoline, it uses JP-4, a type of kerosene.
Maybe he had a leak in his tank and the gas leaked out as he was pumping it in?
Paypal thought he was buying a few weeks of the rethuglican conflict in Iraq?
Pics or didnt happen!
Someone actually had a problem with paypal? Nuh Huh.
That's a lot of free car washes!!
It's paypal, enough said
@Plates: Based on your well spoken, thoughtful and cited 16 words on a blog comment system, I have to believe your ideology is the correct one.
/yeah right
Uh.. why would he be paying for gas via paypal anyway? Unless it was one of those PayPal visas.
Well, their name is half right. You're going to pay, but they're not your pal.
Don't keep money in your Paypal account (Paypal can hold your money for several months without providing a reason per their TOS) and don't bother with their debit card.
I Use my PayPal debit card all the time because I get cash back.
If he would have used his card as a credit transaction he could have gotten 1% cash back... that's $814,008,369!!!
Hmm, maybe the gas station will fix their machine when the see the merchant fees they paid on that.
Taking the generic 2%+.20 would be over 1 million dollars.
This is outright theft and fraud if the store charged the correct amount and paypal adjusted it while still only giving the original amount to the store.
@Plates: Nancy prefers the "Pelosi-Obama" mafia as we all know who wears the pants in this political relationship
@Plates:
Someone is still all pissy about the election results because this comment has no value about the original story. Here's a tissue, you're welcome.
@Plates: Where is the devoweler when we really need some completely irrelevant, unrelated and inappropriate political sniping removed?
Yeah, I know: banhammer for complaining about another commenter... but really, what is this comment doing on Consumerist?
These gas station credit card holds are getting out of hand!
@se7a7n7: Considering how crappy PayPal is to everyone, perhaps you should consider something else that gives cash back.
PayPal has debit cards? That's news to me.
if you buy gas on a regular VISA or MasterCard or Discover, they limit the amount per transaction to something like 70 bucks.
I'm guessing that the debit system with PayPal does not have this limitation, although my regular bank debit card has a 400 dollar a day transaction limit to avoid fraud
@Closed captioning provided by Homerjay:
can the pumps even go that high what is the hard limit $9999.99?
some CC have soft $100 - $75 limits. Do the pumps have any that are not card based?
@GothamGal: That didn't stop Bush haters for the past 8 years (and it still continues).
But, I agree with the gist...this is a useless comment.
Good thing this was not a Credit card, at 18% finance charges, he would have owed almost 15billion in interest every month assuming that he could not pay the credit card off in full every month (but every Consumerist reader always pays off their CC bill in full every month so this is a non issue...right?!?!?)
By my calculations it would take about 17,000 years to pump that much gas.
@Greasy Thumb Guzik: Beautiful, beautiful aircraft. The SR-71 is my favorite exhibit at the Air and Space museum.
The lesson I take away from this story is DON'T USE PAYPAL unless you absolutely must.
Why? 1)They're not a bank, and they're not bound by the same laws and regulations that banks are; 2) They have absolutely no compunctions about fucking you over very badly; and 3) If they do, you'll have virtually no recourse as long as they abide by the rules that they themselves wrote, because of #1.
You can bet your ass that if Juan had been charged $81 instead of $81 billion for his 26 dollar fill-up that he STILL wouldn't have his money back, and would likely wind up having to write it off.
@Plates: Can we get a report button? I am so tired of seeing the out of place political whining injected into comments.
@pecan 3.14159265: It is the best tool they have as it allows you to instantly empty the account at the local ATM.
Cards are issued by Chase, so you can use any Chase ATM for free (Paypal does charge a $1 fee for all ATM transactions).
The card also comes with cashback, I'm grandfathered in with a 1.5% CB bonus.
@Zain: I agree about not keeping a balance in PayPal but their debit card is a faster way to withdraw money than waiting 5 days for a transfer to your bank account. You can withdraw up to $400/day via an ATM & unlimited/day as a debit card in stores.
What I find concerning is that a CSR was trying to argue that an $81 billion gas station card swipe wasn't an error. Is logic forbidden in call centers now?
@Plates:
You sir, have just won my vote when Consumerist does the next user purge.
While I respect your right to have whatever political view you so desire, with that right comes the responsibility to know when it's appropriate to let loose. This probably isn't a good place.
@Joeb5: There's no way pumps ever go anywhere near what is absolutely feasible for most cars or RVs or whatever to hold.
The most bizzare thing in this case is that PayPal, being the dense jerk it is, didn't automatically go "well that must be wrong..."
@pecan 3.14159265: Oops. What I mean is, there's no way RVs or cars could come close to pumping any amount of gas that would approach the threshold for what the pumps will interpret as a real amount.
@Joeb5: over the summer, i got to drive a mini bus with a tank capacity of 30-35 gallons. with gas prices averaging $4/gal, we would usually max out the $100 auth and have to "start over" to top off the bus.
it's obvious what happened here- he re-auth'd 800 million times.
@TinyBug:
Good points. The fear that I have is that PP is just the first of many financial service providers that are/aren't what they purport to be . Paypal takes in money,but it's not a bank. Paypal pays interest and charges for handling money,but it's not a savings and loan. In fact,the list of what PP isn't is a damn sight longer than what it says that it IS.
Since they have exploited every comma splice and ambiguity in the law,they are running what amounts to a large unregulated bank that doesn't pay for or have any intention of getting FDIC protection. They also sidestep laws that are intended to protect depositors from malfeasance and outright theft by getting you to agree to TOS that pretty much takes away any rights you may have with a regulated entity.
I have always had a queasy feeling about Paypal, and the events of the last 8 months have made me even more leery of a financial company that seemingly answers to no one,not even it''s customers.
If it ever blows up,it shouldn't surprise anyone.
@pecan 3.14159265: With my PayPal debit card I can access and spend funds deposited to my PayPal account (from buyers and clients) within minutes of the deposit. The alternative is to initiate a transfer to my bank account and wait 4-5 days in limbo before it hits my bank account.
'What moral is Juan taking away from the story? "Pay cash."'
I find it just a bit annoying, lazy, and fickle for your advise to be 'pay cash'. Especially considering ALL your other posts tell everyone they should charge it to a card so you can fight the company or do a charge back.
If Juan's car broke down and left him stranded in the middle of nowhere would your advice be 'ride a bike'?
@Joeb5: Working for a gas station, the highest I've ever seen was $600 of diesel for the train yard across the street from us. The pumps would not allow anymore than that on a single transaction. That was also when diesel was running around $1.45 or so a gallon.
Maybe she should have been driving a hybrid. Good luck getting it cleared up with Paypal.