Below is more detail from a note I sent to a company I was attempting to make a purchase from. I just spent an hour following LINKS around the PayPal website and the PaPal Community website in an effort to report/question the interrupted transaction experience I had on January 4th ... and only finding IRRELEVANT answers, and LINKS to ever more issues and options which AVOIDED the possibility that the PayPal Administration and infrastructure MIGHT require an adjustment or addition to make the processes more client FRIENDLY, I could not stay longer. I wish I could say that the experience was unbelievable or surprising .. but this is why I sought to leave PayPal far behind in 2018. On the morning of January 4th, I selected my purchase-to-be, it went into the CART, and when I went to pay for it .. I was pre-advised that I could pay with a Credit Card directly and NOT through PayPal. This FAILED immediately. I was FORCED to sign into a PayPal account to even use my credit card (CC). Initially, the ONLY advisory I received, repeatedly .. was to contact my credit card provider (NO Notice as to WHY?). My VISA card is provided by the CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) so I called SUKHVIR (male) at CIBC Visa Customer Service,[Removed. Phone #s not permitted] He checked my card account and confirmed, several times, that NO attempt had been made by any party to place a charge, and, there was noting wrong with the account. He advised that I wait and hour until the real Customer Service Department opened and then query them. He was actually in the FRAUD Department. He suggested that I try contacting PayPal Service and get their feedback on the odd PayPal advisory. I scanned the PayPal website and used both their website SEARCH and several online SEARCH engines in an attempt to find a phone number or e-mail address. As had been the case, years earlier, there was none. The STRATEGY of PayPal has been to place answers to all the queries which developer staff can IMAGINE ... even though most have NEVER experienced any PayPal transaction problems themselves ... and then take the god attitude that there cannot be any other problems ... and if so, they don't matter or care. However, I decided to make an attempt to get past the "Contact you credit card provider" advisory by setting up a NEW PayPal account. When I made an effort to SETUP a new account, I was advised that I already had one? Whatever the PASSWORD was on this OLD account, it was nothing I had used in 6 YEARS! So I requested a Password reset and entered a modified one to match their more recent requirements. Returning to the CART to attempt to make a payment again, I was now notified that .. "the system was Not Working, try later." I decided to fill out the details in my -- Account from Nowhere -- so I signed in and began VERIFYING the details on record. I was immediately welcomed as a RETURNING client and presented with a notation of my PRESENT CORRECT Address and phone number. Well, no harm I thought in following the links through to check all of the area details and preferences. ON the ACCOUNT, accessed through the GEAR icon on the sign-in page, I initially had difficulty confirming my Phone number with PayPal sending me ACCESS codes that did NOT work. Eventually, one worked. Continuing, I found an ADDRESS that I had NOT EVER used on PayPal from several years previous and that was inaccurate from mid-2020. I updated it. I removed the OLD address so I could Add the present, and so I could make the Present a PRIMARY address. Security Questions and a Customer Service PIN were updated as whatever was on record seemed to be imaginary for this NEW Account from the Past. I was informed that I had given Shopping Permissions to ONE ??? yet, there was no way to find out WHO this was, or to remove such Permission. Eventually, I made my way to the Financial settings, referenced as WALLET. There, I found the only Credit Card noted was of an OLD one, gone by at least 2 years. In SUMMARY, it might be possible that the attempt to pay the CART total was applied to the DEFUNCT details of a PayPal account that I had CLOSED in 2018 .. which of course, would FAIL. WHY ask me to contact my CC provider with NO idea as to WHY? Why NEVER prompt me to VERIFY the particulars on an account which had not been used .. in YEARS? CONCLUSION: I now, thanks to my taking a LOT of TIME I had other work to do in, to follow through on POSSIBLE PayPal problems which PayPal seems unable to CAUTION me about or direct me to. Indeed, the BEST PayPal could do is to throw out a Red Herring of asking me to check with my CC provider ... for some undefined reason ... which made PayPal look like a SCAM to the FRAUD representative at one of the largest and oldest banks in Canada. Then, PayPal informs me that I already have an Account ... which I had cancelled YEARS before! I continue to have an ACTIVE Visa CC account. I now have a PayPal Account totally revamped with ACCURATE details .. NO thanks to any advisories or cautions from PayPal.
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