PayPal Can take money from your account without informing you.

[CarlosMarques]

If you read the User Agreement, you'll see:

3.10 Third party initiated payments (including Recurring Payments).A third party initiated payment is a payment made on the basis of your advance Authorisation to a third party (for example, a merchant or a mobile app provided by a merchant or eBay) to collect funds from your PayPal Account.

I will not post the rest of the paragraph but, to my understanting, means that any third party can tell PayPal that you've authorized them to charge you whatever they want.

PayPal will not inform you or confirm with you.

In my case, Bitdefender told PayPal that I had choosen an auto renewal option for their software. Based on this, PayPal created a pre-approved payment to Bitdefender that would charge me automatically every year for the renewal of bitdefender. 

Now even if I had chosen the autorenewal option with BitDefender (which I didn't), I never authorized PayPal to actually allow a pre-approved payment. PayPal did that based on information PROVIDED BY Bitdefender!!! And without informing me or confirming with me.

I'm reading the user agreement correctly? Can anyone comment pls?

[snowshoe]

Been in business and using PayPal for quite some time and I've never heard of a merchant or vendor contacting PayPal and asking them to setup a recurring payment for a customer.  Things just don't work that way.  There's has to more to this issue than what has been posted.  It's possible you agreed to a billing agreement and didn't realize that had happened .... that's a common mistake as some merchants or sellers can be a sneaky at times however, they can't just contact PayPal and say "hey bill this guy".

[CarlosMarques]

Thank you snowshow for your reply. 2 comments:

1) My case is irrelevant. Let's say I did agree to a billing agreement with a merchant. Still that billing agreement has to be setup with PayPal. In principle it should be set up by me or at least with my express permission to PayPal (not to the merchant). I assure you I never set up a billing agreement in my PayPal account

2) please read 3.10 of the user Agreement we all agreed with when signing in with PayPal and please tell me what it means then.

3) I have been trying to get a straight answer from costumer support as to how a Billing Agreement is set up in PayPal withou my knowledge, but so far, no luck...

Coincidence or not, at this time the "Legal agrrements" link on PayPal is not working 

https://www.paypal.com/pt/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/ua/ua

So I cannot copy the relevant parts of the user agreement. I'll try again later and post it here.

Best regards

Carlos

[snowshoe]

We can debate until the cows come home but, an agreement cannot be setup without some action on your part.  (And yes, I'm quite familiar with the User Agreement.)

[CarlosMarques]

Yes, thank you for the display of wishfull thinking, now, 

 the third paragraph of 3.10 of the User agreement for the Europeean Union states that when we sign up with PayPal, we are AUTOMATICALLY...:

 3.10: ......"You hereby authorise and instruct PayPal to pay the third party (or another person they direct) amounts from your
PayPal Account for amounts you owe as presented to us by the third party. You agree that PayPal is not obligated to verify or confirm the amount the third party presents to us for the purpose of processing this type of payment"

furthermore, paragraph 6 of 3.10 states (I did the Bold):

"Third parties who present us with a payment request under this provision hereby:
*  warrant to PayPal that the amounts they present have been agreed and consented to by the User whose Account will be deducted (including changes to those amounts) and that they will give prior notice of the deduction to the User; and
*  agree that they will notify their customers at least 4 weeks in advance of the amount they will collect if that amount has increased in such a manner that the customer could not have reasonably expected to pay such an amount, taking into account that customer’s previous spending patterns and the circumstances of the payment and that they will be liable to PayPal for any refunds of such payment in accordance with the terms of this User Agreement."

So, as a conclusion, paragraph 3 means that a merchant can instruct PayPal to create a Recurring Payment (note the writing in Bold). PayPal is not obliged to verify or confirm (for example by requesting your permission).

The first point of paragraph 6 means that PayPal assumes that the user (you and me) have agreed to the Payment (PRESENTED BY THE THIRD PARTY-again note the writing in bold). Again PayPal washes their hands and does not even feel the need to confirm.

The 2nd point of paragraph 6, states that it is the responsability of the merchant (not PayPal's) to inform the user but even then, only in very subjective circumstances.

Anyone has actually read this? 

[CarlosMarques]

This is an answer I got from Customer Support. I think it clearly says that automatic payments are creatd based on third party information that does not have to be confirmed by the PayPal user:

Remember, I did pay to avangate, but I never created a Billing Agreement or agreed to such a Billing Agreement. In the mail that PayPal sends to approve the payment, there is no reference to the Billing Agreement.

So, again, PayPal creates Billing Agreements on our accounts based on info from the merchant without informing us.

"

Dear,

Thank you for contacting PayPal regarding the Billing agreement.

I have reviewed your account and I can see that on July 24th, 2013 you have completed a payment toand therefore aBilling agreement has been created. 

Basically in the terms and conditions on Avangate B.V. informed that at the moment you have completed the payment, an automatic payment will be created.

It is my pleasure to assist you. Thank you for choosing PayPal.

Yours sincerely, 

Fabiola 
PayPal 

Copyright © 1999-2014 PayPal. All rights reserved.

PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A.
Société en Commandite par Actions
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RCS Luxembourg B 118 349

"

[LWhitaker]

Same thing has happened to me -- Avangate b.v. has been taking money from me since Dec. 2010!  Never heard of bitdefender, don't even know what it is.  

PayPal makes a lot of money, huh?  Those 3rd parties make a ton as well.

L.

[CarlosMarques]

yeap.

I stopped using PayPal altogether. If people really understood the EULA's nobody would used their services. From the moment you validate your credit card with PP, you give them absolute control over your credit and associated bank account. it's terrifing. Most of the time it goes well, but when it goes wrong, you're ******. And the worst thing is, you actually agreed to it when you signed with them.

Funny thing is, PP seems to be ashamed of their own EULA beacuase when asked about the meaning of specific parts of it, they just "smile and wave"

regards!

[Bettina313]

The same thing has happened to me. I just got an email that I have authorization a payment to Facebook $0.38. I log in PayPal to find out what this is about and see somehing I have never seen before. Since July 2011 Facebook has collected thousands of dollars from me. I didn't even see any of these transactions. How I didn't see this I don't know as I have bought books through Amazon,  etc. How could his happen and where is my money? I'm a disabled Veteran and can't use this kind of mess. I have cancelled it 9f course,  but what else can I do? Is there any eay I can get at least a part of my money back? And what is this continuous and flunctuating charge for Facebook?

[Bettina313]

The same thing has happened to me. I just got an email that I have authorization a payment to Facebook $0.38. I log in PayPal to find out what this is about and see somehing I have never seen before. Since July 2011 Facebook has collected thousands of dollars from me. I didn't even see any of these transactions. How I didn't see this I don't know as I have bought books through Amazon,  etc. How could this happen and where is my money? I'm a disabled Veteran and can't use this kind of mess. I have cancelled it of course,  but what else can I do? Is there any way I can get at least a part of my money back? And what is this continuous and flunctuating charge for Facebook?