My account has, for years, been configured such that the primary source of funds is a bank account and the secondary is a credit card When I made a recent purchase I read the usual notice: if the primary source was insufficient, Paypal would "fall back" to the secondary source for the balance. As usual, I left this the way it was - there has never been a problem with this setup and I didn't expect any problems this time.
I checked my Paypal account and the transaction said the funds had been collected from the primary source (bank) and that the transaction was complete. I went to my bank website, where I found that this wasn't true: the transfer had been denied due to insufficient funds. No problem, I thought... that's exactly what secondary "fall-back" funding sources are for. So I went to my credit card website, but strangely there had been no transaction there.
I returned to my Paypal account: it still said the transaction had been completed via withdrawal from the bank. Returning to the bank website I found that the insufficient amount was even lower: I had been levied an "insufficient funds" charge of $30. This was unpleasant, but since Paypal had discovered the first source to be insufficient I figured that they would now fall back to the secondary source.
Then I got an email from Paypal, informing me that they were not only *not* going to fall right back to the secondary source, they were going to wait three days and attempt to withdraw the funds from the bank again, which will trigger another $30 dollar "insufficient funds" charge and possibly affect my credit report in an undesirable manner.
I searched the website, found no mention of this practice. (No, I'm not accusing Paypal of not sharing this information - I'm sure it's in the fine print somewhere, and that it is my fault for assuming that the words I'd read about fallback to secondary sources were defined according to standard English definitions and usage conventions.) I searched the forums, and found just enough information to start getting worried.
So I called tech support. They told me the standard practice is to check a second time after three days before moving on to the secondary source. This process was unstoppable, and with arrival of the non-business-days weekend even getting the recipient to refund the payment (which might not even be possible - it was a time-sensitive and binding purchase) wouldn't clear up the situation before Paypal triggers another fee rather than moving on to my secondary source.
This is starting to feel like a car crash in slow-motion: I can see it coming, I can feel the dread and urgency, but I have no choice but to wait for the inevitable collision.
I've looked all over my Paypal account - I can't see a way to switch funding sources after a purchase has been made. I can't delete the bank account or re-order the funding sources because I have an impending transaction, which ironically happens to be the very transaction that made me seek out such remedies in the first place. I appear to have no option but to wait and watch Paypal inflict further depredations upon my anemic bank account while it ignores the credit card source that was added, so I thought, specifically to prevent situations like this one.
In the final analysis, I suppose I made some assumptions that, however logical, turned out to be incorrect. In a moral and legal sense, Paypal has not violated any agreements or over-stepped the bounds of the working relationship I have with them. I find that this fails to console me overmuch as I watch my bank account get flogged by a process that I thought was set up specifically to avoid such problems. Looking at the big picture, the main product Paypal sells is convenience - no more mailing checks or purchasing money orders. But if I had to place a dollar value on the convenience they have afforded me throughout my time as their customer, I would come up with a number that is less than the $60 this little experience has cost me.
- Benny
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