PayPal is charging both my credit card and my account balance for the same purchases.

LindainNJ
Contributor
Contributor

Hello - I just realized that recently PayPal has been charging my purchases to my Visa card (as requested) but also reducing my PayPal account balance, so it's now down to zero. (That's when I realized there was a problem. It def should have a few hundred bucks in there - that's Christmas money!) 

Having trouble reaching anybody at PayPal's Help desk. Any ideas? Has this happened before? 

 

Part of the problem I've had with reconciling this account is that the Activity streams shows "payments" - there is no differentiation between purchases that went onto my credit card versus purchases for which I used my PayPal balance, so it's been hard to compare actual activity as I know it to what I see in my PayPal "activity" stream. Is there anywhere in PayPal that shows you just those transaction that reduce/increase your PayPal account balance? That would be very useful to me.

 

Thank you!

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2 REPLIES 2

sharpiemarker
Esteemed Advisor
Esteemed Advisor

@LindainNJ 

 

Hmm, the only time PayPal would charge twice is when you are making a purchase and it requires a back up and taps both balance and back up "temporarily" until the system determines you have enough in balance to cover purchase. Now these are completed charges on the balance and funding source (credit card)?

 

You can see how a transaction was paid by clicking it and there's a section called "Paid by...".


Kudos & Solved are greatly appreciated. 🙂
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LindainNJ
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you! It turned out that what I was seeing was, in fact, an "account hold." But here's my REAL confusion -

 

There's this thing called "automatic payments," which applies to a somewhat long list of vendors. For some reason, when you buy from those vendors, PayPal takes the money from your PayPal account first, then applies a secondary source - credit card or bank account. This happens even when your credit card is set as your preferred payment method in PayPal, and you look to make sure it's set for "credit card" before you submit your online order - they still hit your PayPal balance first. And in some cases, they then hit your bank account instead of your credit card if your PayPal account has gone to zero. The poor woman in customer service really didn't have a great explanation for me about how this happens or how it gets set up. So do you happen to know why this happens? 

 

I'm trying to use my Chase VISA in PayPal for my Christmas shopping because there's a 5X points promotion going on, but instead I'm getting 0X points because I'm essentially paying cash! Go figure. Thanks!

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