PayPal not such a Pal!

PayPal touts itself as a safe secure way to do business online.

They even say on their website:

100% protection against unauthorized payments sent from your account.

As a PayPal user, you’re protected from any payment that you did not authorize.
As a fraud-prevention measure, we will send an email confirmation for every online payment that you make with PayPal.

If you receive email confirmation of a transaction that you did not approve, contact us and we will work with you to quickly resolve the issue. You will not be responsible for the charges.


Well, this is NOT true.


This is one Knight's story. I gave an old pay as you go cell phone to my step daughter, but not before stripping it down to it's original condition, there was even a button for that. All pictures, text messages, phone contacts gone in the blink of an eye, like new.

On May 27th her cell phone disappeared from the Orchestra room at school after a concert. She told her teacher. On May 30th I noticed a $120.65 PayPal withdrawal from my checking account. The payment was to Virgin Mobil for a monthly cell phone plan with all of the bells and whistles. Apparently the thief used the Top Up button on the phone to open a monthly account. I had used the phone's Top Up feature on occasion to put time in $10 increments on the phone with PayPal, this feature apparently didn't "clean" from the phone when I thought I had stripped it.

I contacted my bank, reported the unauthorized transaction and they stopped payment (it still took a few days for the money to return to my account), I reported the unauthorized transaction to PayPal and reported the phone stolen to Virgin Mobil. Before cancelling the new Virgin Mobil account I accessed the phone numbers called by the phone since the theft. There was one!

I called the 8th grade friend he called, scared him, and to make a very long story short had the thief apprehended by the police and the phone recovered shortly.

Then I learned that PayPal conducted an "investigation" and determined this was not an unauthorized transaction. Yes I have a police report, yes my bank knows it is, no I didn't authorize this punk to open a monthly service using my PayPal account.

PayPals position? Tough shit! We paid Virgin Mobil and now you will pay us!

So the "safe secure service" I've used for years now will take any money I send or money sent to me until they've recoverd their $120.65. This means no more CD sales using them, ebay transactions or lodge dues paid with them because they will just take the money themselves!

I now have 3 options:

1. Get Virgin Mobil to return the money to PayPal (I'm working on it).
2. Wait until the courts make the 13 year old thief give me the money. (I'm not holding my breath).
3. Never use PayPal again! This may happen no matter what.

Fuckers!