I am a US citizen currently living in China. I've had nothing but a bad experience using PayPal since my move. I'd like to share my experience, and ask others if they've had similar experiences. Paypals first advice was to open a new account in the new country. Unfortunately, this requires that I have a local Chinese credit card, which is a pain to obtain. I have a local bank account and a debit cart, but PayPal doesn't recognize local debit cards. I believe they also require local identification (I cannot use my US passport, if I am not mistaken), but I'm not Chinese. As for using my current US account abroad, that's a huge pain. First, even after notifying the PayPal staff that I am living abroad, they assume that any activity coming from China is suspicous, so my account is blocked often. Second, unblocking my account from abroad is another huge pain. Options to verify my identity are: recieve a text (I cannot input an international number into my account to verify my identity, and I no longer have a US phone number, so that doesn't work), recieve a phone call (same issue as recieving a text), or emailing a photocopy of my passport (which I've done twice now with no response from PayPal). Everytime I want to unblock my account, I need to call a customer service representitive and waste both their time and mine to manually step through the proccess. This usally take several days. Most of this time is spent answering the same questions over and over again: Have you tried setting up a new account? Yes, but I need a local card? Have you tried blah blah blah.... yes but, blah blah blah. I'm not sure why PayPal has chosen not to embrace customers who live abroad. I say "chosen" because clearly it is a choice on their part, not some sort of technical issue. Why not simply let customers enter an international number and have a few additional security gates if need be? Why not even call the customer on their international number to verify their identity? Technology is growing crazy fast, and I find it hard to belive this is a problem that PayPal "cannot" solve. It's obviously a choice... the question is why? Anyway, I'm wondering if anybody has any similar experiences to share, and if there are any alternative to PayPal that you recommend? I'm ready to jump ship... this has already taken enough of my time.
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