PayPal forcing me to convert currency and lying about it

Kieranlon
Contributor
Contributor

I have an Irish PayPal business account. I receive some payments in dollars and would like to withdraw those dollars into a dollar bank account that I set up specifically for this purpose.  However, PayPal automatically coverts the dollars to Euros when I try to withdraw them (so my bank has to convert them back, and I lose a huge amount on the currency conversion fees). I've spoken to PayPal 4 times on the phone about this and they lied to me on three occasions, before finally telling me it was PayPal policy. The first time they said it was my banks fault and told me to contact my bank (which I did, to no avail). The second time they said I just needed to change the primary currency of my account (which I did, to no avail). The third time they tried again to tell me it was my banks fault and that they could do nothing about it (another lie). On the fourth occasion they told me that it was PayPal's policy and that I had signed up to these terms. Obviously they make money on the conversion so that's why they have this policy. I submitted a complaint through their complaints system but I haven't even received a confirmation of receipt. It leaves me speechless to be honest. 

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7 REPLIES 7

kernowlass
Esteemed Advisor
Esteemed Advisor

@Kieranlon

 

Doubt they were lying, when you phone up you get a call centre guy reading from a script usually.

The advice the have given over the years has been admirably incorrect at times  Smiley Frustrated

 


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nevadasmith
Advisor
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sending fund from one bank to another in the same country usually takes place via a clearance system operated by the central bank,and it is in local currency,aka in your case the euro.

that's the way it works,you and I cannot change that,try to find another way if yo don't want to pay currency conversion twice.

-try sending the US dollars to someone who has a US PAYPAL account you can trust,he/you will still have to pay some fees,once he gets the US $,he can download it to his US bank account and from there,wire you the US dollars,but you will be looking at paypal fee and intl wire transfer fee,

or he can stuff US $ in a well concealed envelope and mail it to you,if it is lost or stolen,not much you can do,or he can buyan intl money order,use western union,moneygram ,bank intl cashier check,but it would cost you processing fee both ways.

-or you can use the US $ TO buy something from someone in USA,something that you can easily resell in Euros at a profit? to make it worthwhile doing

question-why cant you just keep it as Euro?

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kernowlass
Esteemed Advisor
Esteemed Advisor

@nevadasmith

 

question-why cant you just keep it as Euro?

 
Because its in USD at the moment, thats the problem.
 
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nevadasmith
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another way to transfer fund from Paypal to your bank ,at least it is available in USA is using a debit card which works with Paypal.

But then I am not sure if the card is issued by an Irish bank,what happens if you try to transfer US $ using a card issued by Irish bank?

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kernowlass
Esteemed Advisor
Esteemed Advisor

@nevadasmith

 

You can't withdraw to a card in Ireland, only to a linked bank account.


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nevadasmith
Advisor
Advisor

where did you get the US$?

dID YOu sell something on a US site like Ebay USA and all items are listed with US $ ASKING PRICE?

Or on some site which you can specify which currency you accept,say if you ask for eURO,then everyone has to convert their local currency to EUro to pay you,conversion fee would be on them,not you.

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Kieranlon
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

Thanks for your replies.  It's actually a UK bank that I have the US dollar account with. Similarly, when I try to withdraw GBP to my UK bank (in this case my GBP account), PayPal converts the GBP to Euros and my bank then converts it back to GBP, so it has nothing to do with how Irish banks clear.

 

About the lying part, I grant that the help reps themselves probably weren't actually lying, but I was repeatedly given the wrong info from PayPal (the company). If you read this thread from another PayPal user you can see that the company were able to solve the problem previously, but they don't seem willing or able to do it in my case: https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/About-Settings/Withdrawing-money-in-USD-instead-of-my-local-curr...

 

 

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