A terminated employee used their work email address on their personal PayPal account

[RootsLilla]

I managed electronic resources, including staff accounts with email addresses, for a local church. As such, I also received "lost" emails that are sent to accounts in our domain that don't exist.

A recently terminated employee used their work email address as primary contact email address for a number of PERSONAL accounts, including PayPal. Thus, when the employee was terminated and their staff account closed, I began receiving messages from her personal activities, including any recent PayPal transaction notifications.

Since I have this persons PERSONAL email address as well, I contacted them several times requesting that they login to their account and update the email address to their PERSONAL email rather than their [former] employee email address. 

Thus far, no corrective action has been taken by this terminated employee, and activity on PayPal continues. 

What is the most effective means of correcting this situation?

[sharpiemarker · Accepted solution]

@RootsLilla 

Contact customer services and give them the terminated employee’s personal email address for PayPal to reach out to but…understand that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Maybe PayPal can put an account limitation on the PayPal account requesting to add/confirm a new email address and user identity.

Contact customer service:     

https://www.paypal.com/smarthelp/contact-us      

Click “Message Us” or “Call Us” option on the bottom.   

Reach out to PayPal at Facebook or Twitter:      

PayPal on Facebook

PayPal on Twitter

[RootsLilla]

Thank you! I can certainly try this approach. Fingers crossed!

[RootsLilla]

While contacting customer service LED to a solution, they were not able to effect the solution from their end. As I suspected, because I was not the account holder nor did I have access to the account credentials, they could not access the account for resolution.

They suggested I again contact the account holder, which I did. This time, I focused on the security aspect of the situation, since all account emails were coming to MY inbox instead of the account holder. And, I supplied a solution: add the account holder's personal email to the account, and once added, move to the primary email status to allow removal of the work email address.

Don't know what was different with this final attempt at contacting this individual, but THIS TIME, a response! Hopefully, the situation is now resolved.

Lesson learned.