Last night I received a money request out of the blue for 7 Euros with the note:
"hi,Dear Users,You have a parcel from Germany also requires paypal to pay 7 EUR for postage. So that we can deliver to you in time,Thank you for your cooperation,Regards"
I have absolutely no clue who this person is, and I have had no interactions with anyone from Germany recently. I am from the United States. This is very clearly a scam. I attempted to report this. First off, reaching an actual human is near impossible on this platform whether it be by phone, text chat or even email. PayPal seems to go out of its way to make sure you never actually get support. I find this extremely disturbing.
Once PayPal finally let me send them a proper message, I first got an automated response telling me to try some irrelevant stuff, and that I would have to reply to them to get a message. I replied with the exact same message:
"Hello,
I received a Payment request with the following message: This is very clearly a scammer trying to get me to give them 7 Euros. I do not know this person nor have I made any payments to Germany, nor am I expecting anything from Germany. This user has the email <user's email=""> according to PayPal, and they are 100% a scammer. Obviously I am not going to send this money, but I think it is important to report their activity. Thank you very much!
-<My name>"
Paypal responded with the following:
"</user's></user's>Dear<My name>,
If you've noticed a transaction or activity you don't recognize, it may have been initiated by a family member, or it may be a part of a pre-approved payment you've authorized.
Before reporting the activity or transaction, contact family members who may have initiated the activity and ask them about it. View the pre-approved payments on your PayPal account to make sure the transaction isn't part of payments you've authorized.
If the transaction or activity wasn't initiated by a family member, and wasn't set as part of pre approved payments you authorized, let us know about it as soon as possible.
Here's how to report an unauthorized transaction:
..."
I made it incredibly clear that this is not a payment I authorized and that this is not anyone I've ever had any interaction with, and they're telling me that this could be a family member asking for money. Which, incidentally, is another incredibly common scam. PayPal is outright helping this scammer to try and trick me into sending them money. That is absolutely appalling, and this company needs to really take some accountability here.
