PayPal forcing me to convert currency

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.

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29 REPLIES 29

Temp20221222hy
Contributor
Contributor
What do you expect from criminal institutions? Don’t do business via criminals if you don’t want to get robbed. Bunk of Amerika is the same mind of sleazy scumbag organization—but people keep giving these joints money and now they PWN us all.
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BrentH
Contributor
Contributor
I had a very similar issue begin today - I live in Canada and a friend sent me $5000 USD thru PayPal. Because I use PayPal for USD purchases frequently, my primary currency was set to USD. However, when my friend sent the USD, it was automatically converted to $6455 CAD, THEN BACK TO USD WITHOUT MY AUTHORIZATION! So before I even opened my PayPal app, my $5000 USD payment was shaved down to $4698 USD because PayPal decided to run it through a completely unnecessary conversion to CAD then back to USD!! And to top it all off, after waiting on hold with a PayPal rep for hours, they instructed me to reset my primary currency back to CAD...and guess what happened: THEY DINGED ME WITH ANOTHER FOREIGN CURRENCY CONVERSION FEE! This can’t be legal. Definitely unethical. I already avoid using PayPal because of their fee gouging, but this is incredible. I will escalate this through national media if required. I am so frustrated by this. My theory is that PayPal does this kind of thing every day, but on small purchases, people just find the fee annoying and it isn’t worth their time to make a fuss. But on a massive scale, PayPal is skimming off a huge amount of money from consumers who either don’t recognize they’re being taken for a ride, or feel that their efforts will be futile resulting in nothing more than hours wasted on hold phoning PayPal.
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claudyag
Contributor
Contributor

Same here in Brazil since April 21 2019. All money that i receive in dollar is automatically converted to real. I am a graphic designer and sell digital products, this is causing a terrible damage for my budget. I have to pay and buy new graphics to work & now, besides to loose money with this convertion that i don´t authorize, i will have to pay in dollars using my international credit card card! When i do this, i loose money again, since the dollar from USA has a higher value than Real from Brazil. I really don´t know what to too. i am lost.

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Anomis29
New Community Member

OMG, How did you find this?! I almost gave up on using PayPal because of this...

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makefox
Contributor
Contributor

This steps are not working any more: PayPal has disabled this option in the new UI.

Any more help? This is damn the worst thing what they could do!

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Khaltire
New Community Member
Hey Brent, I have the same issue in Canada. Did you ever resolve this or it's just something we have to accept ? My currency is said to usd and people actually can only send me cad. So they pay to convert to cad on their end, I receive cad, but I have my account set to usd. So then, I have to pay to convert it back. Literally goes from sender in usd > cad> convert back to USD. What a scam. I just want to receive usd and have people send me usd. It just seems riciulous, isn't the other end person who pays the fee enoguh for them ? They have to gouge everyone. This is why PayPal will not be able to compete with things like bitcoin, no middle men
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BrentH
Contributor
Contributor
After MANY frustrating phone calls to PayPal Canada, they did finally resolve my issue. Despite the initial agent insisting that it was “impossible” to reverse the charges or transactions, I continued to ask to escalate to higher levels of supervisors and eventually they agreed that if it was “possible” to fund the account then it was also possible for them to reverse the transactions. Honestly though, I can’t remember what we did to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Something to do with the fact that I have a Canadian account, even though my primary currency was set to USD...I’m really sorry but I don’t recall the solution. Frankly, I prefer not to use PayPal after this mess. I prefer to use TransferWise which uses bank accounts directly without any of the BS from PayPal (and it gives a much better conversion rate). Hope that helps.
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LawrencePH
Contributor
Contributor

Same thing with me.

I have a friend in California. He sent me a $300 USD. I'm here in the Philippines and my account is registered in PH. I thought I would receive a clear $300 USD in my PayPal funds. But what happened is that the 300 USD was automatically converted to PHP. I want to get $300 clear but it was automatically converted. So sad.

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22Chris
Contributor
Contributor

Forget about PayPal or accept that it robs us !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In the background there are huge profits from currency convertion.
Maybe a collective lawsuit for Finance Ombudsman could help.
I have registered several bank accounts on PayPal UK.
Among other things, I have registered an account with CITIBANK UK where I have an account in EUR being naive that

I can use it paying for purchased items in EUR zone without convert currency GBP into EUR.
Also in the case of a full refund, the entire amount in EUR may be transferred directly to my account in EUR to CITIBANK
What a naivety on my part.
I bought an item in Germany for 315 EUR.
I paid from the account I have in EUR at Citi Bank UK.
It turned out that the account was charged 337 EUR instead of 315.
PayPal converted 315 EUR to GBP and reported a withdrawal of 315 EUR
and Bank converted again GBP to EUR and issued EUR 337.
End, no turning back.
Yes, I have several times.
Recently, the client has returned to me as a private transfer of 21 EUR
PayPal Balance is set to EUR currency.
21 EUR  got there, but every attempt to transfer to my bank account which is carried out in EUR causes conversion into GBP.
I have suspended the transfer transaction and wrote a complaint.
Here's the answer.
PayPal writes straight
All your accounts (no matter what currency) is dependent on PayPal account which is itself as GBP default.
A good lawyer is needed.

I know how important for you to transfer funds to your Euro bank account from your UK PayPal account.

To begin with, please be advised that your account is under UK PayPal account, which means even your Primary currency on your account is already in Euro, still the PayPal account itself is on GBP default.

The purpose of Adding a different currency on your account balance is for you not to have a currency conversion whenever you received the payment using different currency, say for example EURO currency.

It is my pleasure explaining this matter for you.

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