Our adult son is an authorized user of the same Chase VISA credit card that my husband and I use. On Wednesday, November 13, 2019, our son received an email from Chase Bank. The email was entitled Fraud Alert and stated that a merchant’s charge exceeded the purchase price limit that he had set as a trigger for an alert to be sent to him. That charge was NOT a PayPal charge. It was charged to his entirely separate Chase Bank debit card (not our shared credit card) that is linked to his Chase checking account. He immediately phoned Chase Bank and resolved that matter to his satisfaction. During that same phone call, the Chase Bank agent asked him if he recognized the merchants that were paid via our shared credit card for the past several months, going back as far as August of 2019).
Our son recognized some of the transactions’ merchants, but not others. Some of the transactions were made using the <removed> VISA credit card directly (not via PayPal) and some other transactions were made via PayPal (which then drew the funds from the shared Chase VISA credit card.
Our son then phoned PayPal to alert them to the several paid-through-PayPal merchants whose names he did not recognize.
Our son then immediately phoned us and explained the situation and told us about the PayPal charges that he thought were unauthorized. However, my husband and I recognized every one of those merchants and their charges. We advised our son that the charges were, in fact, mine and my husband’s and that they were authorized, legitimate charges. All three of us were very relieved that the PayPal account was secure and had not been breached in any way.
The next day, I attempted to open my PayPal account pages online and found that my account had been closed down and was no longer available for use. I can still open the activity page and the summary page, but my husband and I can no longer use PayPal to make purchases online. I phoned PayPal several times over the next few days and explained the entire situation. The agents all sympathized with me but stated that they had no way to reinstate our PayPal account.
I then searched online for advisements on how to proceed and consequently contacted the PayPal corporate offices via email to the PayPal Executive Office and to the PayPal Executive Escalations Department and I also sent a letter to PayPal, Inc. Legal Department <removed>, San Jose, CA 95131 via the United States Postal Service.
I respectfully requested that because my husband and I have not engaged in any high risk behavior, and have not engaged in any fraud or suspicious behavior, and have not caused PayPal to lose any money, our PayPal account should be restored to us.
The entire situation was simply a miscommunication. If our son had spoken to us first, before he reacted to the alert email from Chase Bank, he never would have contacted PayPal because we would have assured him that all the PayPal charges were authorized, correct and legitimate.
I have not heard back from anyone at PayPal. This is all so frustrating. We've had our one and only PayPal account for almost ten years. I use it quite a lot for my personal online shopping. I don't feel secure buying things online by giving out my credit card information to all those sellers.
Anyone have any advice as to how to proceed in trying to get my PayPal account reinstated?
