PayPal Asks Customer To Travel Back In Time To Make $0 Payment

By Phil Villarreal November 2, 2009

Whenever a financial institution says you’ve owed them money for nearly 40 years, it’s cause for concern. But luckily Justin, who sent us this screenshot of his PayPal line of credit account overview, has a reasonable $0 payment to make.

Justin really should consider going back in time to pay up, though, because stagflation really did a number on interest rates.

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Comments

  1. Joeb5 says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    pay with a $0 check.

  2. GMFish says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    And it’s this sort of crap why I never buy or sell stuff from eBay.

    • Nakko says:
      November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

      @GMFish: Amen to that. I bought one thing from eBay, years ago. Never went back. Canceled PayPal after hearing stories about how they sequester all your PayPal money whenever they want.

  3. AstroPig7 says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    Computers interpret time as seconds from 1970-01-01, so entering a time of 0 will produce the given date. This is definitely some idiotic programmer’s fault.

    • elangomatt says:
      November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

      @AstroPig7: I was just coming here to see if anyone had pointed out this fact. I wonder if some human put a zero in a date field, or of the programmer just messed up the code causing the date field to get the value of zero.

    • PsiCop says:
      November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

      @AstroPig7: It’s fairly trivial now to treat a “zero” date, which this is, as though it were a “null” date, i.e. an empty field. So there’s little excuse for having done this. This well could be bad programming. Or, a much-less-plausible explanation is it’s some kind of database corruption, which is somehow generating a zero date that would not otherwise have been there.

  4. jrwn says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    umm the paypal credit is actually run by GM money. The screen you are looking at is just a skin to make it look more like PayPal’s page.

  5. DirectMailFan says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    Time travel, eh? Sounds more like a posting for io9.com.

  6. wcnghj says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    I really hope the OP isn’t paying 24% APR on PayPal buyer credit and has some kind of offer of 0% or something.

  7. PLATTWORX says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    Sold on eBay for years, bought on eBay for years, used Paypal for both.

    1. Never pay for an item with Paypal using your bank account, ALWAYS draw from a credit card so you have 100% protection if you need a chargeback.

    2. Never keep a balance in your Paypal account, that is what your bank is for.

    3. Keep copies of everything.

    I have had one or two small battles with Paypal, won then both. Not hard to do if you have your act together.

    • harvey_birdman says:
      November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

      @PLATTWORX: Agreed, but you shouldn’t have to battle with them. I’ve had the same kind of situation, and it’s 3 or 4 hours of my life I’ll never get back being on hold with morons at PayPal. Life is too short to deal with people intent on ripping you off.

  8. crimebll says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    Of course, PayPal makes it very difficult to use your credit card: Once you’ve reached a certain threshold, your account have to be “verified,” which permanently sets your bank account as the default payment method (unless you get a PayPal credit card, which of course is what they really want).

    • brandmuffin says:
      November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

      I called paypal and explained the IRS emptied my bank account so I dont keep my money in it, I have a credit card that has worked just great for thousands of dollars so can we work it out………..oh yeah they know a shopaholic when they see one.

  9. sventurata says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    PayPal has been sending me monthly e-statements since 2004 advising that I have a $1.74 credit. Just write it off already! What a waste of resources.

  10. katstermonster says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    @MostlyHarmless: You wouldn’t want to make the customer support people feel bad about themselves, now. Everyone must suck equally. Some just suck more equally than others. No, it’s not too early for that literary reference…BAM.

  11. NewsMuncher says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    @MostlyHarmless: I come across bad programming all of the time.. many times, it’s the only interaction I have with a company, in that I won’t buy anything from them after seeing their website.

  12. Jesse says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    @MostlyHarmless:

    PayPal has customer support?

  13. Meggers says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    @katstermonster: Just re-read animal farm over the weekend. Amazing book.

  14. Rectilinear Propagation says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    @katstermonster: There’s an animated version on Hulu at the moment. Was I the only one miffed they changed the ending in that TNT movie?

  15. Hil-fish says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    @j-o-h-n: Irrelevant. Why would he google it? It still shouldn’t be appearing on his account.

  16. Hil-fish says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    @j-o-h-n: or were you just pointing out why it may have appeared, ala AstroPig7 below? Hard to tell when lmgtfy is so mocking in tone.

  17. MostlyHarmless says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    @NewsMuncher: Yeah. Thats happened to me as well.

  18. dragonfire81 says:
    November 13, 2009 at 4:34 pm

    @Jesse: Fuck no, they have just have morons that answer phone calls.