The saga continues. The Australia Financial Complaints Authority was lead to believe by PayPal that this complaint related to the display of balances on the homepage, and so they advised me that they were investigating the complaint with a view to whether PayPal is complying with its own "Terms and Conditions". I have clarified the complaint with the following information.... ------------ Your summary of your understanding of the complaint is incorrect. I will attempt to clarify the main areas of concern below. You say in your understanding of the complaint that it is to do with PayPal removing the running balances from the “homepage” of an account. Clarification: PayPay removed the balances from the homepage a long time ago, but left a number of ways to get a running balance. It was not a problem. The problem arose recently when PayPal also removed running balances from a) The Detailed View, b) The Detailed View with filter for Balance View all Transactions and c) The PDF Statement Report. I have attached two images showing where PayPal have recently removed the running balance from the “BALANCE VIEW” screen and from the PDF statements. The CSV report view is the only way now to get running balances, and it’s not only “cumbersome”, it doesn’t even work half the time. I have attached an image “PayPal FAULTY Report Request” showing that half the requested CSV reports don’t even generate. PayPal have stated that “the service used by PayPal that provided customers with the running balance filter information has been phased out.” This does not get to the heart of the question. My question is “Why has it been phased out if not for some nefarious reason”? Running balance reporting is a way for customers to keep a track of their accounts and ensure there are no errors. The problem with PayPal accounts is that many people using the “service” do not keep a good eye on their balances, and by systematically removing running balances from all sources, PayPal are hiding possible errors from a large portion of customers who won’t go to the trouble of queuing and requeuing CSV reports, downloading them (when they work), opening with Excel and adjusting the columns so they can see the balances. The main reason for the complaint was not to ask whether PayPal is complying with their own “Terms and Conditions”. The reason for the complaint is to ask if PayPal is complying with Australian Law. I do not have access to all the legal requirements for financial institutions, and so I am asking you for help in this matter. It seems to me that there would be some law in effect that prevents a financial institution from hiding information that enables a consumer to reconcile balance errors. It is obvious from the actions of PayPal in the systematic removal of this crucial information, that they are attempting to obscure the account reconciliation process. I realise that PayPal may be simply trying to lessen the load for their support staff who have proven themselves to be extremely incompetent, but the decision to “phase out” a system designed to aid in account reconciliation could also be an attempt to skim funds from the accounts of millions of unsuspecting customers. What I am seeking essentially is advice on whether there is a law in effect that protects consumers of financial institutions. If there is no law in effect, and we are bound by PayPal’s terms and conditions I will escalate the situation by highlighting the problem with our Federal MP so that we can get a law passed to protect consumers from this type of suspect behaviour. I am also asking if PayPal higher management is aware of the “phasing out” decision, and if they are confident that the decision has not been made by someone for unscrupulous reasons, because that’s how it looks to PayPal’s customers.
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