About 3 or 4 years ago PayPal added the option to buy cryptocurrency, which I thought I’d try. (Dumb idea 🙄)
Part of the sign up process was glitched. I retried and clicked submit one too many times, I guess. Now I’ve been unable to use PayPal for years. They blocked me because THEIR SITE was broken, but the web page essentially accuses me of being a criminal and asks for my bank records. No way in hell.
This was just for me to pay others. I can only imagine how awful PayPal is if you are a vendor.
Fuck PayPal.
I wonder if you could sign up again with a different email. Seems like they would immediately know you’re the same person. But, it is glitchy AF. So maybe it will glitch in your favor
I thought about that, but they ask for enough info that they’d be able to identify me. And then they’d probably ban me. At least right now I have the option of restoring my account, even though I have no intention of doing so.
Woops, I should have considered that. I certainly don’t blame you for not wanting to play their little game of sending them all that bullshit. There’s Venmo and other options anyway.
That’s usually how I pay if someone requests money. Venmo is owned by PayPal but my account there works just fine.
the web page essentially accuses me of being a criminal and asks for my bank records. No way in hell.
Yeah don’t bother doing that. All that will accomplish is them gathering even more information on you, they rarely/never actually unlock your account & let you use it again. You’ve been permanently blacklisted on their service, just move on. And honestly you don’t need Paypal anyway.
Similar stupid thing happened to me too I think about 10-15 years ago, I was using virtual credit card numbers that my credit card company was generating for me & Paypal thought that was suspicious enough to close my account & permanently blacklist me LOL.
Fun fact: I did learn over the years that I can temporarily create new Paypal account(s) as long as I don’t use the same mailing/billing addresses or credit cards/bank accounts. But then it’s just a waiting game, they usually figure out it eventually and close the Paypal account yet again.
I remember during the GPU shortage I managed to get a new graphics card from waiting outside a best buy for it to open. So I tried to sell my old one on eBay. Gave good pictures and followed all the rules as far as I could tell but because I had never sold anything on their platform before I was instantly banned with no way to appeal. I get they were probably having to deal with lots of scammers but if I could appeal or talk to support I could literally prove I had the GPU I was selling but as far as I could tell there was no option for that. So now I can’t sell anything on eBay unless I get someone else to sell it for me.
Same happened to me when I tried to sell my old powerline network adapters. Sign up, put them up for sale, 2 minutes later I get a mail that I’m banned without a reason given.
I still have those adapters lying around somewhere…
Does anyone know of an alternative to paypal other than stripe ( same shenanigans) , for getting paid for freelance work that is available in Europe or Asia ??
No problem, just buy crypto with PayPal.
getting paid for freelance work that is available in Europe
Banktransfers are free…
Oh, I wasn’t very specific what I was referring to is selling stuff online, like private store selling pdfs or royalty free music and stuff, cause the only two platforms that I know of are paypal and stripe
iDeal that we have in NL should become a European standard. I believe they’re working on it but it’s slow.
Not really. They have a minuscule fee of around 40cents if I remember right
Depends on the country and the context. For private people in the Netherlands, it’s free. On my business account I pay something like 12 cents, plus 2 bucks per batch (which is why most companies only do payments every so often)…
In the US it very much isn’t free. I realize the original commenter was asking about Europe and Asia, but something to be aware of if you want to visit this country. Here at least, you’re much better off using traveler’s cheques, rather than trying to rely on cash from ATMs and bank transfers.
I have no idea why, but I swear to god that we have the most bass-ackwards banking system in the world. They still use COBOL for fuck’s sake.
Zelle is free. It sucks, but it’s there.
I got locked out of paypal for no reason I could discern from like 2007 to 2015. Can’t remember the exact dates but for years it was “I can’t use paypal any more because my account broke” and then finally after years if that one day it was “oh shit it work look at that”.
Me too, for receiving a $5 refund from Digital Ocean.
Someone in Norway has the same name as me, and they made a PayPal account. They accidentally used my email during signup and I got some weird emails in Norwegian. So I called PayPal. I asked them to change the email. “You can’t, because it’s not your account, you just admitted”. Uh, ok. Can you close the account? “It’s not your account”. Can you contact the account owner and tell them to fix it? “We don’t have their email”. Can I use account recovery and close it? “Then you would be breaking into someone else’s account”.
So what should I do? PayPal put a notice on the account in case they log in, and told me to just ignore the emails. I was baffled. Just ignore the emails? Stop sending them then! But there really isn’t anything I can do. I tried account recovery anyway, but it didn’t work.
They never logged in, I think. They probably made another account with the correct details and never thought about this one. So I’ve been getting the “our terms and conditions have changed” email once or twice a year and ignoring them. They’re still in Norwegian.
I just looked it up, this has been going on since 2015. Maybe I should contact PayPal again and tell them how ridiculous they’ve been.
Report them to the CFPB. They’re forced to have an actual human review and respond.
I just wanted to share the story.
Oh, gotcha. Yeah they are shitheads. It honestly should be illegal to make an account for someone using an unverified email.
It may not be your account, but it is your email.
Dumb of them that they didn’t just remove the email address.
Same thing happened to me. Someone created an account with an email alias i never use. After calling Paypal and getting the same answer you received. I was finally able to use the forgot password feature to log in and close the account.
Paying anything bought through PayPal credit. Wow.
Same, cant use half of online services because I can’t have PayPal (and don’t want a credit card for security concerns)
What about virtual prepaid debit cards for online purchases?
Yeah, maybe a good idea to look into stuff like this. Do you know privacy friendly ones (who don’t sell or record your purchase history)?
I don’t really know any. I have a prepaid VISA with my bank. Had some fuckery happen to some of my accounts where I had my regular visa debit saved as payment method and I lost about 20€. I got them back but disabled the option for online payment for the card.
So now I only use that prepaid with the exact amount of money needed to pay for what I am buying.
I cannot really suggest any such cards that are separate services because I do not know any. Maybe look into if your bank has the option to get one.
Yeah, this sounds reasonaboe, guess I habe to check if my Bank offers something like that. Credit cards are quite uncommon where I live, most people just use normal girocards for paying in shops and stuff (or physical money)
Are girocards like debit cards or something completely different?
I just checked and I assume you are Austrian. Worst case scenario hop over the southern border and open an account here. ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
But almost sure you have something similar there as well. We are in Europe after all and banking is jot stuck in the 19th century like in the US.
Well girocards will give the shop the permission to make a one time withdrawal of the amount displayed on the screen, if that money is in your account. If the money isn’t in your account, the payment will not go through. Also if the shop wants to make a second withdrawal, you need to insert your card again and enter your (secret) pin again, they can’t choose what’s charged an when (only before you insert your card an pin, and only THIS transaction will be authorized).
Its a pretty secure system, as (as long as the card terminal isn’t hacked) you can’t spend more than you have, you don’t need to trust shops to only withdraw the agreed amount, and they can’t charge you a second time. Also the spending shows up on your account balance normally within 1 or 2 days.
From what I understand credit cards just let anyone make withdrawals of any amount, as soon as you know the numbers written on the card. So not only you need to trust the shop to withdraw only the correct amount, you need to keep track over you spendings really good, because they could just charge you an arbitrary amount of money on an arbitrary company name months after you gave them your details. Also from what I understand (normal) credit cards just will always work, and if you pay more than you have you just automatically accept a credit contract you need to pay back to your bank. Also (years ago, don’t know if still true) payments get charged to your bank account on bulk at the end of the month, which makes security and not spending to much even harder.
Ah okay so it is basically just a debit card. You see the terminal say for example 30€ and once you authorise that the 30€ are transferred from your account to theirs.
Unless there is some big difference between giro and debit cards.
It appears giro cards are just debit cards that basically only work on POS terminals and ATMs.
Amazon blocked my account when I was buying a gift for an American friend. I made the account years prior thinking I’d buy something, but didn’t end up using it. In other words, this was the first purchase on the account. It got blocked for suspicious activity, and to unblock it, I have to provide an account statement with an Amazon transaction in it… THERE IS NONE!!! THIS IS THE FIRST ONE AND IT DIDN’T HAPPEN CUS I’M BLOCKED!!! I was only buying some bloody markers and a plushy!
I got banned from the Kraken crypto exchange after waiting a year for them to approve me and after providing all my IRL credentials.
Told me I was banned, never to come back, and that they were going to report my fraud attempt to the authorities. Of course they refused to tell me what they thought I did, which didn’t make any sense because all I had been able to do was make an account and make a verification request.
Never really even looked at crypto again beyond mining dogecoin for fun.
Paypal locked my account after years of use for absolutely no reason. I never had a invalid charge, dispute, or any other kind of problem with it, just one day they decided to shut it down. They flatly refused to explain what was going on. With all the decent alternatives out there now there is no longer a reason to use their crappy service.
Love that they believe they’re the only game in town and can demand your bank statement.
I haven’t used PayPal in over 10 years. Why don’t you just leave the service?
Because it’s convenient for paying online (one login instead of having to search my debit card and also, if I got scammed, there’d be another layer of protection for me) and it’s convenient for sending money to friends when we order pizza together or sth like that. What’s the alternative?
Venmo, Google pay, apple pay
Venmo is owned by PayPal, so that might not solve anything
All data sucking big corporate leeches. I wish giropay would take off more
No one I know has venmo. Most people I know wouldn’t even know what venmo is. I’m not even sure it’s available here in Europe. I believe it actually isn’t, can’t find it on the AppStore.
And Google pay and Apple pay are nice and I personally use them but I’m not always on a device that supports them, I’m not always on shops that support them and I know a lot of people who don’t have credit/debit cards, only giro cards, and those usually aren’t supported either. And, at least in Europe, you cannot send money to friends via Apple Pay or Google pay.
Where I am from everyone used Venmo… I never wanted it, I had PayPal forever due to ebay I think in the 2000’s so why did I need another service that did the exact same thing as PayPal and it’s even owned by the same company! Sadly, I lost that battle and caved. Idk why everyone said let’s use venmo or why it got big, but I’m stuck out of convenience for others now.
Personally, I love Zelle the most since it’s a direct transfer from bank account to bank account and available immediately without the 2 day wait like the other services.
In EU, you need to use PayPal at all.bank transferes are instant, banks provide disponible debit cards , you can use Google pay Almost anywhere, which keeps your Privacy. Where is that you NEED to use PayPal in EU?
I use PayPal for their dispute feature. Bank transfers using ideal are usually final, while PayPal will charge back most of the time until the dispute is resolved. It gives you a much better position as a consumer to deal with shady companies.
Instant bank transfers cost me 49ct each and for most people I know it’s similar. PayPal is free. And I already use Apple pay, why would I use Google pay on top?
Does you bank have an option to send money for free? Mine does l. You just download their virtual wallet app and you can send instant transfers for free from that app to anyone that uses the same service. And most banks here offer it. They call it FLIK and it is really convenient.
I can send money for free but only within 2-3 business days or to accounts at the same bank. Instant transfer to different banks costs 49ct
Monero
So, crypto?
Absolutely. It is absolutely the future of finance.
I know one person who owns crypto, no shops that take it and I know of too many people who speculate with it. If it is the future of finance, that future is still fairly far away.
And Twitter is absolutely the future of social media!
See, we can all post statements that are clearly detached from reality and entirely incorrect.
Bitcoin? Ether?
Really? Crypto? For one, I know almost no online shop that takes crypto, almost no person I’d send money to has crypto and I don’t want to own crypto either since it’s rather unstable…
Sounds like an addoption problem for you. The question asked what other alternative there is and cryptocurrencies solve the problem you stated there is no alternative to. Simple as that
They don’t. They could maybe. But I want an easy solution to transfer money to people and pay online. Crypto is not that solution because I cannot pay with it in most online shops and I cannot send money directly to other people. The money has to be exchanged to some arbitrary other currency.
Unless everybody used crypto as their main currency and everybody used the same cryptocurrency at that, it’ll always be an extra step, subject to fluctuations in exchange rate and possibly fees/taxes. As long as that’s not the case, it’s not an alternative. So yes, it’s an adoption problem but one that isn’t realistically solvable any time soon
Price Crypto at the one-year simple moving average, and the volatility stops. I personally use crypto all the time and make my budget using the one-year simple moving average and it completely eliminates the issue with the volatility because that average takes a very long time to move.
Price Crypto at the one-year simple moving average, and the volatility stops.
What? No it doesn’t, you’re just shifting the volatility from your pricing to your consumption.
And that’s fine because you will always buy your requirements such as food, water, shelter, and transportation no matter what the price is. But you don’t need that new Xbox right now. It keeps prices steady, which is what people expect from a currency. And the more people who do it this way, the lower the volatility will become because more people are using it.
Cool, let’s say your average per year is a value of 50?
Meanwhile in the real world; apple costs 1 in january and 100 in december.
But yeah bro that yearly average.
You crypto bros are like a cult.
You have a nice day too.
Still, I don’t know any non-shady online shop that takes crypto.
Maybe for you, but there are large parts of the world that are relying on crypto such as the African region which for them has been a game changer as an alternative to their unstable currencies.
Gratuitas.org sells premium grade coffee for Monero. You can also look at monerica.com. There are absolutely tons of legitimate businesses that accept crypto. Actually, when it comes right down to it, it makes a whole lot of sense to accept crypto because the transaction fees are so damn low that businesses save a ton of money over credit card transactions.
But why should I base my shopping habits around a currency/platform when I could just use one that almost everyone takes. When I want to order off a random online shop, I do not want to think about whether they’ll even take the money I have.
Lesson number 1: Never, ever, never, ever, use PayPal. Lesson number 2: Don’t use PayPal.
Got locked out of my PayPal account but I apparently can’t close it.
A couple of years ago I was running a growing loans business on r/loans and the other one. One day, I got scammed. Loaned someone money and when it came to pay day, they reported me to welch out of the deal.
It took 180 days to get the money I had on my account. I tried closing the account and PayPal would not let me. It’s been years and all I get are notices of terms and marketing stuff. I try to unsubscribe and it keeps coming so I mark it as spam but Gmail does not care.
