Paypal converting currency without permission, skimming off the top!

[tinflute]

I have a paypal account in Canada, associated to a Canadian bank account.

I have received a payment in Canadian dollars, and paypal automatically converted it to US currency. They use their own exchange rate and apply a fee for currency exchange.

Now, I need to convert these funds back to Canadian dollars in order to withdraw to my bank. So, again, paypal uses their exchange rate and applies a fee for the conversion.

This is theft, pure and simple.

Can someone explain what justifies paypal to convert payments to another currency without my permission?

Should I be filing a dispute claim?

Has anyone else had this experience?

[PayPal_Adrian]

Welcome to the boards!

I'm sorry to hear about the unexpected conversion - if the funds were automatically converted, this means that the account had previously accepted a payment in that currency, and when that previous payment was accepted, the option to "accept the payment and convert to my primary currency in the future" was selected.  You can reset this by going back to the profile and changing your payment receiving preferences to "ask me" for whenever you are paid in a different currency.  You'll then be able to change the setting for this particular currency the next time you receive a payment.

Thanks!

Adrian