I spoke with PayPal.
The rep said they never apply payments to the Standard Purchases, only to the Deferred Interest Purchases, but I have to pay the sum of the Standard Purchases to avoid interest on my next statement. If I pay the amount of Standard Purchases (and the amount of Deferred Interest Purchases expiring in that billing cycle), the payment does not go towards the Standard Purchases, it only goes to Deferred Interest Purchases.
So, I have to pay the SUM of all my Standard Purchases, over and over, every month, to avoid interest, but paying that amount doesn't pay off the purchases. I'm a rocket scientist, and that still does not make sense to me! I have paid my March Standard Purchase four times already and it's still on the books! I'll pay it, again, this month -- along with every other Standard Purchase I've made since and already paid multiple times.
I had a Standard Purchase due in January, why didn't that carry over? My Standard Purchase Balance went back down to zero, after I paid the Amount to Avoid Interest in full. BAsed on what the rep said, my payment should have only been applied to later Deferred Interest Purhcases.
Which brings me to another question. Why does PayPal apply payments only to Deferred Interest Paymnets when I have decided to take more time to pay them off? That is, why isn't PayPal paying off Standard Purchases first and allowing me to take the full six months, say, to pay them off, if that's what I've decided to do. (I don't mind if they apply any amount I've paid, in excess of Standard Purchases, to Deferred Interest Purchases -- that's great, I expect it -- but to make me pay the amount of Standard Purchases and, then, only apply it to Deferred Interest Purchases, to me, is absurd!
I asked the rep, "Ya mean there is no way I can pay off the Standard Purchase Balance!!??" And he said, "Well, if you want to pay off the balance of the entire statement at once, that would include the Standard Purchases. But, we're going to apply the payment to all -- all the promotional purchases first, THEN the Standard Balance." (That's as close as I can come to his exact words.),
Well, at the end of the conversation, I inquired about calling and asking them to apply a specific amount of my payment (made online) to the Standard Balance. He did not once suggest that, before, during our converstaion.
CONCLUSION:
I told the rep that I would pay, this month, the Amount to Avoid Interest, then call and allocate the amount of the Standard Purchases Current Balance to be paid out of that money.
It was the only way I knew to end it.
