I have been a PayPal customer longer than I can remember. At age 78, I tend to lose track of such things. I'll have to guess that it might be somewhere beyond 13 to 15 years. I suspect that more than 95% of PayPal's clients joined after I did. I'm not a huge customer. I own a modest little web site building and hosting business. I've been doing that work since January of 1994. Paypal is the only gateway I have ever used, no other card processing systems. I have conisitently reccommended PayPal to my clients in 7 countries. Until now - and I think we may have rwached a parting of the ways. About week or ten days ago, while I was online, an email from PayPal popped up, informing me I had just paid $1.01 to Facebook. I have a reluctant - in name only - account at facebook that exists olny because their account cancellation policies are deliberately impossible. Bu there in an email, was a claim that I was paying them, using my PayPal debit card, for something. I called PayPal Csutomer Service. Even as the CS rep and I watched, two additional charges for $1.01 appeared. The CS rep confiremd that it was ot me or anyone using my card with permission. She said it looked like they were using it to play a Facebook game. She reversed the charges.As she did that, a notice came hrough to payPal reversing the charges because either they had detected the fraud or, [erhaps it was totally an error in the FB system in the first place. So, we are all clean and happy. She then suggested that I replace the card "just to be safe." So, we started the process of cancellig the card and ordering a replacment. Along the way, we quickly realized that the info for my bank account was out of date. She suggested we delete that. "OK, says I". She stayed online with me, as I continued through the online steps for a replacement card. I quckly encountered screens that wanted details of a backup bank. I explained to her, for reasons too private to post here, I was temporarily without a bank. A few weeks ago i had voluntarily closed my bank account but would not be able to open a new one until June 3rd or 6th. "No problem" she says. She talks me through a few screens that bypassed the lack of a backup bank. When we were done she confirmed i would have my replacement card in a few days. And of course, I got a confirming email from PayPal, saying the same thing, even before I hung up. OK, I says to myself. I can live without access for a while. I have $20 bucks cash in my pocket. al my business bills are current. Got a few days of food on hand. My wife's cell phone (cash only) isn't due for 10 days. I can wait until the card arrives for pulling money out of the account (There's north of 5 figures there.) The card arrived today. Big sigh of releif. There's no food in the house other than a half box of oatmeal and a few slices of bread. The supermarket is open for another 7 hours. The cell phone store is open for a few hours and it's due today. It will be shut off tomorrow, cutting her off from her family in another country. There's an ATM at the corner. All I have to do, as the doc that comes with the card says, is . . . 1) vist PayPal 2) enter your card number 3) create a PIN. But that's incorrect advice. After Step 2 they want a backup bak account or credit card. After more than 1/2 an hour on the phone with PP Customer Service, that's the end of it. He has no way to change that requirement, even though it is obvious to anyone, that I am who I say, that I legitimately hold this piece of inert plastic that they sent me, that I deleted the existing bank account info at their suggestion and that I explained, before they issued the new car, that I would not have a bank account for a while."Sorry. Can't break the rules." That's the end of that. This is probably also the end of my many years of being a customers with an ublemished PayPal record.
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