I ordered a 45 product on eBay and went to checkout. After providing my paypal password, I was taken to a screen asking me to enter a credit card. I checked, but the credit card I have been using is not expired. When I called paypal (twice), they told me that there was nothing wrong with my credit card, although it will expire in 45 days.
Every attempt to pay, took me to the same trap, including the same item with different sellers (including a US seller).
When the call was escalated to a supervisor (whose English was speak-only, no listening) I got 1.5 hours worth of worthless theories.
- merchant would not accept Discover (nonsense)
- card wouldn't pay internationally (not true)
- why didn't I just give paypal another credit card to fool around with?
- merchant wasn't really known to paypal
- merchant wasn't really an eBay member
- I didn't have the merchant's email address (isn't that the point of eBay?) (Did she know about eBay?)
- and a boatload of other inane ideas.
The actual problem: I had previously pre-ordered an item from PBS.org, that will be shipped later, amounting to $30 or so, and "paid" with paypal. Although my credit limit is high, paypal has my credit card "on hold" until PBS.org ships my product and charges me for it.
Although this is an amateurish bit of accounting practice on the part of paypal, it seems that they could at least own up to their problems without suggesting that the solution is for me to give them even more personal financial information, and without wasting two hours of my time while they muddy the waters--without EVER discovering the problem on their own.
My advice: don't use paypal for anything but an immediate shipment. They are not sophisticated enough to handle a pending transacation.
