Why is PayPal making it difficult to find your Account Balance?

Bazzinator
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Recently PayPal stopped showing your running account balance on either the screen view or the PDF generated reports. This includes the "Balance Affecting" view and the "Balance Affecting" reports.  Upon contacting PayPal about the issue, I have been informed that they have decided to no longer show your running account balance on any screens or any reports other than a csv report download. The CSV report download is the most cumbersome way to obtain balances, as you not only have to queue up the report and wait for it to generate, but to make any sense out of it you need to open it with Excel and move all the columns around to make things fit. I'm not sure why PayPal thinks this is a good idea, unless they are trying to hide something.

 

I'm sure this lack of transparency must be illegal in many countries, although I am having trouble finding if there are account reporting standards for financial institutions that include the need to be transparent in balance reporting. This not only makes it difficult to reconcile our PayPal account, it makes it easier for a dodgy PayPal employee to start skimming funds from people's accounts. I am wondering if the decision to stop showing balances was taken by such a dodgy employee who wants to make it easier to defraud account holders. Many people don't balance their accounts anyway, and if PayPal make it even more difficult to do so, even fewer people will balance their PayPal accounts, making fraud by PayPal easier to commit. 

 

As usual, when contacting PayPal I was given no explanation as to why this decision was taken. Hence, my concerns over their motives.

 

If anyone can shed some light on this I would be most grateful. Meantime I will be downloading the CSV file and thoroughly checking our balances, and I will be contacting the financial regulating bodies in Australia over what appears to be an attempt to avoid being caught out in some existing or planned account skimming plan.    

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16 REPLIES 16

swood5952
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By the way, to those saying the CSV download includes the running balance, it does NOT...  It has a balance column but is meant to be the balance IMPACT, not the actual BALANCE.

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Machineage
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It is beyond parody that the provider of an online account is unable to supply a running balance viewable online in 2021. 

I warned them I would withdraw my not insignificant balance if they didn't sort it. I have sent countless messages, but Paypal remain resolute that running balances viewable online will not be returning. So I withdrew my entire balance this week.

Ebay are also stopping seller's income going into Paypal accounts in the UK, with all sellers being required to sign up to Managed Payments.

PayPal losing all round as I see it. Can't say I'm in the least bit bothered.

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Bazzinator
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Yes that's correct. The running balance is not a true running balance. It seems to be some magical number that PayPal pulls out of their butts.

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vandersleen
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A telephone conversation with an employee did not give a real answer, not even after repeated inquiries with the use of other words.
More ambiguity and very unsatisfactory.
I am completely sick of the way PP thinks it should operate in its dominant position.
If there was an alternative to PP I would have said goodbye to them immediately.

No bank can survive this way, but PP is big and in their arrogance they think they can.

 

 

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vandersleen
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A telephone conversation with an employee did not give a real answer, not even after repeated inquiries with the use of other words.
More ambiguity and very unsatisfactory.
I am completely sick of the way PP thinks it should operate in its dominant position.
If there was an alternative to PP I would have said goodbye to them immediately.

No bank can survive this way, but PP is big and in their arrogance they think they can.

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Bazzinator
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The Australian Financial Complaints Authority has finally come back to me about this. It has taken several months, so I assume they have done a thorough job of checking the legislation. The analyst who investigated the issue is shown below.

 

Keith <removed>

Case Analyst

  1. <removed> | Free Call <removed>

www.afca.org.au

 

According to their investigation there are no Australian laws requiring financial service providers to be transparent in their dealings with consumers. So long as PayPal abides by their own "terms and conditions", they can be as opaque as the like. Australian Law does not require financial companies to report their clients financial situation clearly, and they can obscure transactions and make balancing accounts as difficult as they like so long as this is within their own "terms and conditions".

 

I can't answer this question for other countries, but for Australians it would seem that your only option is to bring this up with your Federal MP. Financial organisations like PayPal are inherently greedy and should not be allowed to set their own rules as to how transparent their statement reporting needs to be. 

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jefft92264
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I can't applaud you enough Bazzinator! I stumbled across your post because I spent the last hour trying to find where the screen was that listed all your transactions and on the end of the same line what the running balance was... You know, like a any financial institution's statement looks like. After trying the mobile app, the mobile site, then the desktop website, i was about the snap my friggin phone in half yelling, where are you hiding this information. A Google search bright me to you, and your wisdom, and I thank you for that. I share in everyone's misery over this ridiculous decision. Tell ya what PayPal, if my saving account, checking account, business checking account, or any of my credit card companies, ever decide to exclude balances from their statements, i'll be back in your corner... But don't hold your breathe. I'm furious I can't get a clean view of my daily activity with a running balance. I'm in the U.S. abd think a letter writing campaign will be on its way this weekend, starting with an email directly to the Massachusetts Senator, Elizabeth Warren. She proposed and established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and would love a juicy story like this.... Stay tuned....
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