A Personal Blog
Grrr @ PayPal
Gah.
Just tried to make a payment for something using my PayPal credit card. PayPal declined the transaction. No biggie, it wasn’t an urgent purchase. So I login to my PayPal account and find that the money has already been debited, and has a status of “pending”.
So, I call PayPal up, sure that this can be straightened out. I mean, I’ve had a lot of really good experiences with PayPal support in the past. Never a negative one.
Yeah, I call them up and explain this to them. The response? “The transaction is being authorized. It will take 10 business days for this to clear.”
…
Yes, that’s right. The transaction will be declined. The funds are being “authorized” back to me. This will take 10 days. In the meantime, the online service (no, nothing like that :p) I’m buying can’t be bought because I don’t have enough cash in my account (shy by 30 bucks).
Gah!
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Jeremy Wright on July 30, 2004 at 6:16 pm, and is filed under General. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. |
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about 7 years ago
I’ve dealt with this issue before with Paypal and a few other credit cards. It’s really not Paypal’s fault, it’s the idiot who ran your card and left the authorization on it.
From Paypal’s point of view, they can’t tell whether it’s a real purchase or not until (a) it clears, or (b) ten days pass, in which case the authorization expires. I’ve had authorizations removed before, but it usually requires getting the idiot who charged the card on the phone to confirm that it wasn’t a real purchase.
Another thing to watch out for: don’t use your Paypal debit card to check into a hotel. They’ll say “we won’t charge your card until you check out,” and then put a $200 or so authorization on the card to cover potential charges. It’s not a real charge, but for a debit card it effectively puts $200 of your money in limbo for ten days.
about 7 years ago
Yea, the same will happen on other debit card systems as well.
about 7 years ago
What was it you where trying to buy?
about 7 years ago
… I’ll keep that a secret for now. Soon to be announced :)
about 7 years ago
Oooh interesting, we love secrets!
about 7 years ago
I know the secret! :D