Last night I got a text from my bank asking if I had authorized a $100 payment to a vendor I had never heard of. I replied, No.
This morning as I check my email, I see a message from PayPal stating that I have authorized a payment to that vendor in that amount.
Since I have not the vaguest idea that this is about, and I have no agreement to pay $100 to a vendor I've never heard of, I click the link to manage the transaction in the email.
PayPal sends me an SMS to confirm my ID, and upon entering the confirmation code, I am directed to a page that tells me nothing other than something went wrong.
There is no link for me to click to go back to my account or anything, just a non specific error message.
So, I go to PayPal.com and I am sure enough logged into my account presumably as a consequence of entering the code a moment ago.
In my transaction history, there are no transactions.
Though I am happy to assume that someone made a mistake, it matters to me very much if my PayPal account has been compromised, so I would very much like to find out why I was notified by PayPal and my primary financial institution, why somebody thought it was a good idea to send $100 to a vendor I've never heard of, at my expense.
There is apparently no way for me to do this, at least not at night. There is no means by which to simply send an email. The AI chatbot (one of those plagues of modern technology destroying this planet) runs me around in circles, telling me if I want to dispute a transaction, then I just go ahead and click on the transaction I want to dispute from within my account history.
But there is no such transaction in my account history, and thus no means to dispute that which is not presented.
OK. Fine. Great. I am happy to assume that, whatever caused me to get this message, has been resolved.
But somebody really needs to explain to me why I got the text from my bank and the email from PayPal about a transaction I did not authorize.
There is absolutely no (obvious) way to do this.
So I call PayPal, but although things are getting started just fine here in New Hampshire at 7:00am, it will be a few hours before the PayPal folks start answering the phones because they love paying California taxes I guess.
Can I request a call back? Apparently not.
Can I leave a message? Apparently not.
Can I send an email? Apparently not.
I'm really glad I stopped using PayPal after they started interfering in politics. If I had to deal with this kind of negligence on a routine basis, I would surely lose my mind.
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