I recently made a purchase where the option was to Buy Now by logging into my PayPal account or pay using a debit or credit card. This facility was 'powered by PayPal' and I have seen this before. However, I received notification from PayPal that the payment was 'pending' while PayPal checked that there was no issue. I then received a receipt of payment. Following this I received a separate email from a no reply Paypal email address requesting that I send two forms of ID to [Removing] email with a case number to quote. Before sending anything I checked and re-checked the validity of this email, even referring to posts on this community. Perhaps against my better judgement I sent the documents with any details not required by PaPal redacted (note: the info provided would not require a scammer to obtain and they offer no clues to my logins and passwords etc). I then heard back from "service" at PayPal (UK this time) that the information was received but 'didn't quite cover everything we need' with a link (legitimate) to login to my PayPal account to resolve. My question is twofold: how can this matter, if legitimate, be resolved when the original transaction was not linked to my PayPal account - therefore there is no record of it in my account. And secondly, why are PayPal sending email requests that themselves appear to be very suspicious and likely to be judged to be phishing scams. Why not clearly state why the information initially provided 'didn't cover everything' instead of vaguely asking me to login to my account. If indeed, I am not in the midst of a phishing scam, I'd be grateful if any community members can suggest a way out of this conundrum. Thank you.
