Long time user, no account freezes or chargebacks, "You can't use PayPal anymore" - what's going on?

[cembry90]

Tuesday I received what I initially thought was a scam email to get me to log into a fake PayPal website: (image)

After a review, we decided to permanently limit your account as we found potential risk associated with it.

As a result, we can no longer offer PayPal services to you.

Any bank or credit card information that’s linked to your PayPal account cannot be removed nor can it be added to another account. You can still log in and see your account information but you can’t send or receive money.

If you have funds in your PayPal balance, it will be held for up to 180 days. After that, we’ll email you with information on how to access your funds.

After looking into it further, it seems it's actually from PayPal - logging into my account, I'm greeted with this message: (image)

You can't use PayPal anymore

At PayPal, we value a safe community for our customers to do business. We recently received a report of unauthorized debit or credit card use associated with this account and can no longer offer you PayPal services.

Any bank or credit card information linked to your PayPal account cannot be removed nor can it be used to create a new account. You can still log in and see your account information but you can’t send or receive money. Any money in your balance will be held for 180 days, after which we’ll send you an email with instructions about transferring your money.

Reference ID: PP-L-265███████49

As a long-standing customer of at least 10 years (probably closer to 15), I'm thoroughly confused why this is happening all of a sudden. I mostly use my account to make purchases on eBay and to transfer money from Coinbase to my bank, but I've done these for years and of course it's not against their terms of service or else eBay or Coinbase would stop using PayPal as an option. I've not shared my account, reviewing my activity shows only one transaction (which I did complete) within the last 30 days, I've never been suspended for any terms of service violations, and I have not done any bank chargebacks (as some users have mentioned).

I sent them an email to hopefully get this straightened out, stating politely that anything wrong with my account could be worked out (and that I didn't even have a chance to do so before this email).

Anyone else having this issue for seemingly no reason?

[DMJohnston1 · Accepted solution]

A lot of people are having this problem - I know I am. 15 years with no problems, an unexplained account lock that's escalated to a permanent lock with no explanation...certainly sounds familiar. And I hope you didn't have much money in that account, because a lot of people aren't getting it returned. I would certainly be interested to know if you hear back from customer service, but my guess is that you won't. No answers are forthcoming and this has been happening for a while now, so the best any of us can do is guess at what's going on.

My only advice, and I'm totally sincere about this: If you have any media contacts at all, now would be the time to reach out to them. People don't think all that much about payment processors and I'm not sure that PayPal's questionable behavior is widely known, so getting the word out might put pressure on someone to take action.