Inactive account notification by letter

[Weeviv]

I have received a letter from PayPal (not an email) about an inactive account relating to an email address which is shown partially redacted.  However, I can tell even with the redaction that this is not an email account I have ever had, nor have I ever had any account other than my present ( very much active) one.  The letter says I will be charged £9 if I do not reactivate this unknown account.  But I cannot access this supposed account as I do not know what the email address is.  I have been all round the houses with the help and messaging system to no avail.  

Is this a scam?  I find it strange that PayPal would contact me by letter and also it is addressed to my husband but I am the PayPal account holder.  Can anyone help, please?

[Silvia601]

I’m not sure it’s a scam either. 
While the email they used in the latter is no longer active I did manage to log into PP with it, in the end and deleted my PP account. 
i think, like you Said, there is some sort of admin error somewhere. 

[Hanban1]

I’ve had this letter as well but the redacted email is my email address which makes me think it’s somewhat legit. Annoying though I have used my account within the last 12 months multiple times

[ScullionScholar]

Yes, it is strange. The email address is so redacted I haven't got a chance in working out what it is so I can't login and start the Forgot Password process.

[lw26]

I am in the same boat, but I haven't used this particular account for 10 or more years.

[inganok]

I received a letter this morning with an email that I have never seen before 

Please some one at Paypal come back to us as to what this is and end the scam

If there is someone trying to get details please Paypal put a stop to it!

[ScullionScholar]

Yes, I have said the same thing. They should react to this and put people's minds at rest. When I called PP I got the impression I wasn't the first person she had spoken to about these letters. If they want to maintain their image of a trusted organisation especially where money is involved they should come clean and publish something. I'm this close to closing my accounts.

[SusanSaunders]

If you read back through the thread there is the responses i got from paypal customer services which are iffy. They need to openly admit that they have messed up or its a scam instead of trying to point the finger back at the customer and/or telling you not to worry just ignore it without explaining what the frig is going on and why there is an account that doesnt belong to you but is in your name and address.  Its all bloody weird in my opinion 🙂

[ScullionScholar]

I agree. I think I'm going to take this to a wider audience and contact a couple of quality newspapers. Although no one as yet has lost any money, that's not to say they won't. It's very poor service from PapPal and frankly it whiffs a bit. I think a little judicious publicity in the right quarters might get PP to react and behave professionally.

[Islander483]

My wife received the letter too this afternoon... The whole thing is very strange as it's addressed to an incomplete postal address we've never used (but we still received the letter as the postcode was right). We've been married for 12 years but the recipient is my wife under her maiden name and she's never had a PayPal account! The email address is the first 3 letters of my wife's first name followed by ******@hot**********.

I don't even know how such random pieces of information may have collected, especially the home address which omits the name of our house???

PayPal can do whatever they want with an account we've never had but this is rather disturbing all the same...

[army360 · Accepted solution]

My Wife also received this letter.  It references an email address of sar*********@fas********** which is not an email address she has ever used.

I spoke to PayPal in order to track down the account.  The rep in the fraud team tried to track down the account but is only able to search on email addresses, phone numbers or bank details.  My wife isn't here so I couldn't search on the bank account as I don't know it, however searches on all of the email addresses and phone numbers that she's ever used failed to identify the account.  They are unable to search on postal address.  The rep searched on my wife's name which brought up around 100 accounts with that name in the UK, but none of them had the email domain beginning 'fas'.

So we reached a bit of an impasse. I refused to give up, but the rep couldn't search further.  She therefore put me through to the 'limitations' team.  The chap asked me what date was on the letter (23rd Nov) and he promptly told me that PayPal didn't post out any letters on that date!!!  He advised that I should send a scan of the letter to spoof@paypal.co.uk who would help me out.

At this point I lost the will to live and ended the call.

Seems to me that there are 4 possibilities here...

1.  PP have sent out inactivity letters with incorrect redacted email addresses.

2.  This is a scam.

3.  My wife actually does have this account but has forgotten about it.

4.  Identity theft type issue with a potentially dormant PP account set up in my wife's name.

I don't think it's a scam - there is no way to monetise it.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was an admin error.  We are pretty clued up with online safety so although I'd be surprised if it was identity theft, I do think this is the most likely situation.  It's really annoying that Paypal can't track down the account from the postal address.  It leaves us in limbo not knowing what is going on with the worry that the account may be a pointer to potential fraudulent activity.

If anyone gets a reasonable response from PP which may further help us gain clarity on this issue then please do post it here.

Cheers, Mike