PayPal Community

Has anyone else had this experience? My verified status was quietly removed without any tip from the company it was happening. Nothing precipitated this. I have a blemish-free record. The company says to get it back you either take one of its branded credit products or re-link your bank account. The company system refused to relink a very basic Citibank checking account for months. Every time I tried or associates of the company fruitlessly tried, we would then be locked out of the system for days as the system red the attempts as fraud.  Somehow, after all these months, I tried once again as I was owed money just sitting there and needed an active bank account to get it. In spite of my personal failure to link the account, an associate was able now to magically do it (I suspect as the company could be accused of stealing/keeping people's money in a limbo state otherwise). Now, with a confirmed linked bank account, I was told I still wasn't verified. I was told I had to also take a credit product from "Angela Marie" at customer service. I was also told I now had to provide the company with a birthdate and a social security number, information the company isn't entitled to/could sell/ could be revealed easily in any hack attack. I really resent this company's overt extortionate efforts to pump up its credit business. Now, when I look at the site, there is no longer a place for customers to even apply for "verified status" anymore. What is going on at PayPal?  This smells bad, the repeated solicitations in every bit of company correspondence, in every phone conversation, to take a credit product from the company in return for the verified status I need to make purchases from numerous websites abroad. ... View more

I have attempted several times to link my bank account to PayPal to get a verified account as I want to buy something from a merchant demanding a verified account. Here I will say that I'm pretty sure I ALREADY had a verified account, having set one up years ago. Seems to have vanished. Having failed multiple times to attach my bank account to PayPal, going through all the steps right up until finish line, a command comes up saying vaguely "there's a problem." I call in to ask an associate to do it. I am informed I'm now locked out for 48 hours, there's no way to bypass the system, and I am subjected to a hard sell on PayPal's credit products to verify my account that way instead. On what planet is this okay? PayPal prevents me from hooking my bank account up to PayPal, blocks me for days, won't even ask me a security question on this last hone call in an attempt to  attach the account and I'm told on the phone I'm blocked now for the next 48 hours bu the next person I call in to. I have made my sixth and seventh phone calls to PayPal today. The first to get my bank account set up yet again. Without being asked any security questions, I was told there was a problem. Again I demanded to speak to. a supervisor. Again I was put on an interminable hold. I called in again and spoke to Jonas, oeprator numner 1670229 in the Philippines. He said I was again blocked for 48 hours. I demanded a supervisor and I was instead cut off. This is too much. This is, in fact, an outrage. If you don't fix this, there is always the New York State Attorney General to launch an investigation of PayPal practices, which increasingly appear designed to wear people down so they buy PayPal-branded credit products. Has anyone else had this experience? This is Kafkaesque, and I've never experienced such a thing, and I say this as a career investigative journalist. ... View more