The lack of an ability to set a concrete default funding source of choice on PayPal has angered me continuously for the past several years. For the record, I have had a personal PayPal account for the past ten years and have never caused any problems for PayPal.
Several years ago I applied for and received a PayPal Extras MasterCard. The ONLY reason I applied for it was to verify my personal account because no matter how safe anyone says it is, I do NOT want my personal checking account linked to my personal PayPal account. (I also have a PayPal business account and use PP Virtual Terminal to process credit cards for my business)
Before the economy tanked GE Capital (the actual PP MC CC provider) continuously refused to increase the PP MC card's limit without providing anything remotely like a specific reason despite the fact that I own my own house and all three of my cars outright, own my own business that has ZERO debt, have never defaulted on anything or declared bankruptcy and I have pumped $25K to $50K yearly through my own Visa card on which I never carry a balance. When the economy tanked GE Capital LOWERED the limit on the PP MC to $450, again without providing any sort of specific reason. At that point I stopped using the PP MC and have only kept it to keep my personal PP account verified.
I don't want that useless excuse for a credit card to be my default PP funding source! I buy a lot of stuff on eBay and occasionally on other sites that gets paid for with PP. I AM SO SICK AND TIRED OF HAVING TO CHANGE THE FUNDING SOURCE TO MY PREFERRED VISA EACH AND EVERY TIME I BUY SOMETHING WITH PP THAT I WOULD LIKE TO STRANGLE SOMEONE! To add injury to insult, every so often I will forget to change the funding source and at the end of that billing period I have to pay another bill with a check.
The only conclusion that I can come to is that eBay/PP is so greedy that my continual annoyance, payment arrangement delays and overwhelming bad will toward PP are well worth the few pennies they collect every few months as a result of my mistake on a very minor purchase that is always less than $20.
It just happened to me again when I sent $15 to renew a domain name. I cannot relate how mad I am right now that I cannot set my preferred Visa as the default funding source and save all the waiting and clicking every time I use PP to change the funding source to THAT WHICH SHOULD BE THE DEFAULT IN THE FIRST PLACE. My least favorite half hour or so of the week is writing checks on Friday afternoon to pay bills. Now I have another stinking check I have to write thanks to a greedy corporation that stoops to using obfuscated and petty methods to **bleep** a few more cents out of their patrons.
I'm not the only one who feels this way. There are scads of posts about this same topic all over the internet as well as here, going back for years.
Why does PayPal want me to hate them? Why does PayPal not want to be my preferred way to pay for things? Why does PayPal want me to resent them EVERY TIME I use PayPal to pay for something? Why does PayPal not want to make more money from me? Why does PayPal not want to make it a convenient and enjoyable experience for me to patronize their service? Oh, I don't want to hear about BML either, that's not a valid excuse for forcing unwanted funding source priorities on patrons.
If I had a reasonable $20K limit on the PP Extras MC card, I would probably have started using it as my default card for all my purchases long ago and none of this would be a problem for me. Of course thousands, if not millions of people, would still be stuck not being able to exercise a simple and reasonable payment preference that would be allowed by any company who didn't have a virtual monopoly on a significant commerce sector.
While I absolutely hate ceding any authority whatsoever to politicians, at this point I'd support a congressional investigation into PayPal's practices. For that matter, maybe it is about time the FTC and DoJ go after PayPal with an anti-trust suit.
Can anyone give me a single intelligent reason why PayPal should prevent me from making my preferred Visa card with a $34K limit the default funding source for my PP account instead of the despised and nearly useless PP Extras MC with a pitiful and insulting $450 limit? Why can't I be verified without either having a PP Extras MC or giving PayPal and anyone who hacks PP access to my checking account? GREED, that's why. I'm disgusted.
Yeah, I'm just a bit upset about this. Maybe it's the feeling of being spit upon for far too many years.
J. Henry
P.S.
I have saved a copy of this post. If it is removed without resolution you can expect it to reappear in numerous places across the internet where you won't be able to remove it.
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