I signed up recently to be able to use instore payment for my purchases at Home Depot. I was offerred a $5 off $25 purchase which expired the 18th. Knowing that the swipe card for the system would not get here in time to use before the promotion ended I signed up to use my mobile number to access the instore system. I got the text message and confirmed the number. Everything looked wonderful. Three days later (today) I went to Home Depot and picked out some items I needed. When I went to pay via my new instore payment PayPal option my payment was declined; three times. I begrudgingly paid via another method (of course forfeiting the $5 credit by doing so). When I arrived home from my shopping trip (which is about 20 miles away in the next town) I found a couple emails from PayPal waiting for me. They said that it was declined and I needed to check my payment sources. I did so. They are currently set up as PayPal balance first; with my checking account as a backup funding source. The balance in the account is $0 but the checking account has plenty of money. Odd. While looking up how to contact PayPal about this (btw, your email options don't show any options dealing with the in-store Paypal system) I got a telephone call from Sergio at PayPal on my home phone. It seems he needed to verify that the activity at Home Depot was in fact me. I confirmed that it was and while I had him on the phone I asked why the transaction was declined when there was plenty of money in the back up funding source. He told me that the transaction was declined automatically because the phone number I used was new to my PayPal account. In other words, not my fault, PayPal just decided to red flag my first use of their system for giggles. Unfortunately I was not at all amused to find out that my embarrassment of having the transaction declined was intentional (not to mention not getting the $5 off). I do understand the possible need to verify the new number. What I want to know is why did PayPal feel the need to wait until after I tried to use the account to verify? There was plenty of time (3 days) to call and verify it between when I signed up and when I tried to use it. How disappointing to find out PayPal has decided to just embarrass its customers at the register instead. In the future you might consider verifying new numbers before declining the payment. It would have saved me some embarrassment. . . and five bucks.
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