Hi everyone, Posting on behalf of my Mum here as it won’t let her herself due to being locked out of her account, and we’re pretty much at desperation point now/don’t know how else to get help with this. It’s a bit of a long story so I’ll try to explain clearly but please bear with me. So essentially my Mum’s been with PayPal and EBay for years (since about 2007 I believe) and her PayPal account is linked to her EBay account. She’s always used PayPal for purchases and also for people purchasing from her on EBay and aside from her PayPal being hacked years ago (which was resolved and she got her money back), never had any problems until now. However, last Tuesday (28/07/2020) she went to purchase something on EBay through PayPal, and rather than letting her login straight away the way it would normally, it said ‘for security reasons you need to change your password’ (so a forced password change essentially). Anyway, she clicked on the reset password link and was surprised to see an email she didn’t recognise as one of the options for the password reset link/code to be sent to, alongside her correct email address underneath. This worried her a bit but she selected the correct email address, however no reset email came through. So she waited a while, checked her spam folder as well as normal inbox and kept waiting. Nothing came still so she requested another reset email (again, to the correct email address) but still nothing came through. In the end after many times of calling, she managed to get through to PayPal on the phone (phones only very rarely manned at the moment cause of Covid) who said that they’d send her a link whilst she was on the phone, but still nothing came through. By this point she was starting to panic due to the combination of not receiving the reset emails and an unfamiliar email address being attached to her account, so she told PayPal she was starting to worry she’d been hacked (especially since she was hacked years ago), at which point PayPal offered to put a restriction on the account to make sure nobody could get into it (aside from anything else my Mum has a lot of money in this account) whilst the password reset situation was sorted out. My Mum agreed to this, believing it was the best thing to do and that she might have been hacked. At this point PayPal also advised her to contact her email provider (Tiscali) as they stated it showed their emails were going through successfully so it must be a problem at the email provider’s end. On their advice, My Mum then called Tiscali (she’s now called them three times) and they took the high security off the account and unblocked everything, but still no reset emails have come through. It’s now over a week later, my Mum has called PayPal repeatedly but since that initial time she got through she’s never been able to as after the initial automated questions it cuts off. She’s had about 10 webchats and counting but all they ever say on chat is ‘we’ll send you an email reset link’ which is beyond frustrating as obviously the whole problem is that no emails are coming through from PayPal!! She’s repeatedly asked them if she can reset her password in any other way, i.e. over the phone or through a text code, but they say that her mobile isn’t registered with the account (very strange as I’m sure it is) but also that there are restrictions in place so they can’t do it any other way anyway, even though it was my Mum who agreed to the restrictions being put on to prevent potential fraud!!! She’s now at a complete stalemate situation and loss for what to do, and as mentioned earlier has a substantial amount of money in that account and no access to her funds. Understandably this is really stressing her out and causing a huge about of anxiety. Please can anybody help??? Best Wishes, Charlotte.
