Years ago I had a PayPal account with my bank linked to it. Several years ago, I do not know the exact date, I closed that account without unlinking my bank. I had assumed that Paypal would be at least somewhat competent and remove that information when an account is closed. Moving forward several years, I now have a different PayPal account with a different email, and still the same bank account. Paypal seems even more ridiculously insistent than before that I link my bank to my account, which I don't want to do in the first place. But without linking my bank I could not accept payments from people on my account, so I relented and attempted to link it. I was given the error message stating something went wrong and to try again blah blah blah. I have tried at least five times, but with my bank still linked to my YEARS LONG CLOSED PayPal account I can't link to my current account. Very annoying, and very very poor handling of my personal information by Paypal. Nonetheless, I pursued a solution.
I decided to email customer support, and was of course directed to the same FAQs and other such pages of information I had already read, so I emailed again trying to communicate that my problem did not have a solution in their help pages. So I was told to call customer support. A bit annoyed I called customer support, foolishly thinking I may find an answer to my dilemma. After wading through their automated phone system for around twenty minutes or so I was told that I would receive a call when a representative was available. And thus began some of the WORST customer service I have ever experienced. Alarm bells were already ringing when the woman who spoke to me could only seem to do so in broken English, and was very hard to understand. I attempted to explain my situation to her, and it only seemed to confuse her, she did not seem knowledgeable about Paypal at all, often repeating information or simply not answering me. After FINALLY getting her to understand what was going on with my situation she only gave me two options, both of which are just a real slap in the face for me. According to her the only way to verify my account like I had been trying to do was to either A. Open a line of Paypal Credit or get their credit card, or B. Open an entirely new bank account to link to my current Paypal account. Both of these "solutions" just feel like a punishment that I must suffer due to Paypal's incompetence.
All I had wanted to do was unlink my bank from my old CLOSED account so that I could then re-link it to my current paypal, ALL SO I COULD VERIFY MY ACCOUNT AND ACTUALLY USE IT. I do not like feeling as though I am forced to provide my personal financial details like that just to use my account, especially when I had already linked my debit and credit card, as well as my SSN. I cannot in good conscience recommend this to anyone after this utterly ridiculous problem (and I know I am not the only one who has suffered this).
If anyone has some kind of magical solution to this issue, please let me know ASAP. Otherwise, I think I am simply done with Paypal, permanently. Their awful practices, untrustworthiness, and downright awful customer service isn't worth it.
