EBay’s highly criticized fee changes—lower listing prices but a 67% increase in seller fees—kicked in last week, and next month eBay’s payment service PayPal will start holding certain deposits for up to 21 days if PayPal considers the transaction “high risk.” PayPal earns interest on any money it holds—and it’s perfectly legal because PayPal is a deposit broker and not a bank. If you do find your money stuck in “high risk” detention, there’s only one way you can attempt to earn money from the delay, and that’s by sticking it in PayPal’s Money Market Fund.
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What Can You Do If PayPal Holds Your Funds For 21 Days? Gamble With It In Their Money Market Fund
By 2.28.08
Seller Gets Scammed On eBay Despite Doing Everything Right
By 2.11.08
Read the tragic tale of this screwed eBay seller over on Metafilter. He did everything Paypal told him to do to avoid being scammed when he sold a cellphone, including, when the buyer returned the item, opening it in front of a police officer. Problem was, the buyer/scammer sent back a smashed gold cellphone instead of nice $500+ cellphone that was sold. Seller protection policy should apply, right? Nope, it doesn’t cover “items not as described.” Failure.
PayPal Error Stymies One Laptop Per Child Shipments
By 1.27.08
Tired of repeatedly hearing that his One Laptop Per Child was on the way, PC World’s Harry McCracken called OLPC and was surprised to discover that the charity didn’t have his mailing address on file. Apparently, PayPal passed McCracken’s payment to OLPC without providing his address.
DirecTV Screws Reader Six Ways From Sunday Night Football
By 12.10.07
About six months ago I moved into my apartment in Chicago to learn that the only service available was with DirecTV. Not only that, but we were forced to use MDU communications, a DirecTV reseller. With no options for television, I reluctantly purchased my own HD receiver off eBay (The HR-20) to avoid entering into a contract with them for two years. When I received my unit, I called MDU to sign up and the CSR at MDU told me that since I had my own receiver, I could sign directly up with DirecTV. Awesome I thought, I can cut out the middle man. The CSR at MDU even transferred me to DirecTV account set up line himself.
Add Super-Protection To Your Logins With $5 Security Key
By 10.17.07
If you have a PayPal or eBay account, or use OpenID to login to participating sites, then for $5 you can add a second layer of security that is virtually impossible to break unless the thief physically locates you and steals a little plastic device. The PayPal Security Key is a small, keychain-ready fob with a unique ID that’s tied to your account. It generates a new six-digit code very 30 seconds, which you have to enter whenever you log in. The down side is you have to have your security key with you in order to read the code. But the benefits are huge: you basically have a 2nd password that changes 2,880 times every day—and that isn’t available anywhere online.
302 Phone Numbers To Reach A Human At Paypal
By 10.5.07
Paypal is not known for being friendly or easy to reach, so we’ll help you out with a whole bunch of unpublished internal phone numbers. Tons of people trying to scam them probably turned them off the whole friendly customer service bit , but why should us regular customers be subjected to the same treatment as a 419 scammer?
College Student Learns How Overdrafts Work
By 9.20.07
Forgive me, I’m a bit emotional over this. I’m raging mad and sad and disappointed because today Wells Fargo just lost my business. Yeah, I screwed up in this, but I’m a poor college student, and I thought I fixed it before it was a problem…
Check Credit Card Statements For "STC SAWA RECHARGE RIYADH SA"
By 8.28.07
Check your credit card and debit card statement for unauthorized charges from STC SAWA RECHARGE RIYADH SA. The Saudi Arabian phone card company is fraudulently passing charges to consumer’s cards, usually for sums of $80. If you find one of these unwanted charges, contact your card company to dispute the charges. This may not be enough, as consumers report being the charges hitting their cards multiple times, even after reporting them. In these cases, it may be better to cancel the account.
Northwest Airlines Accepts Paypal?
By 7.9.07
Northwest Airlines has announced that it will begin accepting Paypal as a payment method on its website. Why? Apparently, there is a demand for this. Stephanie Tilenius, vice president of merchant services for PayPal, said in a Northwest Airlines Press Release:
“We are excited to add Northwest Airlines, one of the world’s largest airlines, as the first airline to accept PayPal. Many of our customers already book travel with Northwest Airlines and are eager to use their PayPal accounts to do so.”
eBay Only To Verified PayPal Addresses Or You Can Get Scammed
By 6.25.07
I haven’t sold very many things on Ebay. I run a DJ company and had a brand new Pioneer DJ CD player that sells for over $1000 that I wanted to sell on Ebay. I went through the process of selling it and the winning bidder (who had very low feedback) payed me very quickly via paypal. The address the person gave me was for her son in Nigeria. Yes, I know Nigeria I should have known, but I was naive and trusted this person. Plus, I had seen on the Paypal website that they have up to $1000 – $2000 of seller protection. So I figured if it was a scam, then I was covered.
The $61 Billion Dollar PayPal Error
By 4.10.07
The item is priced at $28.95, which TUAW said seemed a bit high. It seemed fair to me. I should have listened. When I went through the purchase process and clicked “buy,” my Paypal order screen listed the price as $61,803,552,167.70 USD.
By Air, Boat, Or Plane, Paypal Sucks For Transaction Disputes
By 3.17.07
How is that Paypal gets away with having a customer service system completely unreachable by humans?
Paypal Security Key Fob User? Log In Faster
By 3.5.07
A minor annoyance of the Paypal security key is that it introduces a second login screen for your six-digit code. Did you know you can skip the secondary screening?
ORIGINAL VIDEO: PayPal Security Key First Look
By 3.1.07
You can get yours from PayPal for $5 here. — BEN POPKEN
PayPal Restricts Eligibility For $15 Off $30 Rebate
By 2.19.07
PayPal has instituted new restrictions on its $15 off $30 rebate introduced two weeks ago. At first we thought the offer, $5 less than the rebate offered last winter, meant PayPal hated spring. We were wrong. PayPal hates you.
Cardavenue Doesn't Respond To Fraud Claims or Emails?
By 2.15.07
The idea behind Cardavenue is interesting. If you get a gift card you don’t like, you can trade it for another using their site. They charge a fee and ostensibly offer some protection against fraud. They don’t, however, answer their emails or process their claims, and that makes us sad.
