What? Why did they take money from your account?

I've noticed some strange transactions with my account, but it was taking some cash and some credit payments at the same time. For me, it all evened out though.

Do tell when you have time.

Azeeza

According the Indian lady (who, by the way, said she had a cold and that's why I couldn't understand her), PayPal is having a problem with paying from the PayPal balance. So instead, they are taking it out of your bank account whether you have money in your PayPal account or not. So, with a mad dash to the bank, everything is now taken care of. I normally pay with my bank account but for once, I had money in my PayPal account. I read everything thoroughly and it said the payment should be taken out of my PayPal balance so I didn't worry that my bank was $20 shy of covering the payment since it shouldn't have went to the bank.
When I asked the lady what was going to happen when my account was charged with $50 in overdraft fees, she told me I should call them back and they might refund me. Ha! Yeah, right. If someone uses the word might, that means "lady, you're screwed."

This sounds rather odd. Did you call them or did they call you?

I also just found out that they cancelled my PayPal debit card that draws from my PayPal balance...without notifying me. It seems they had some security breach upon the part of one of the merchants that they do a lot of business with, so they cancelled every card that could have been connected with that business. (As far as I know, I've not used that business, but they cancelled my brand new card anyhow) The next bit of story was that they were sending out email notifications that they had to take this action, but those never went out. There I was, 3000 miles from home, wanting to use my PayPal debit card to access the money I had in my account, but unable to as it had been cancelled without any notice to me. I logged into the site and requested a new card, and for some reason, that request never showed up, so they put in the request manually on their end. Dropping the ball in a big way folks! Now I have to wait 3 weeks for a new card when I had just barely received the one I have after my original one expired. I'll be watching them closely for more fun and games now.

That makes a lot of sense then if they're owned by ebay.

That really sux since we do use Pay Pal a good bit. Hope they get their ..er, stuff together!!

I have consistently avoided adding my bank account to Paypal, because in my mind it is like giving Paypal a debit card to my bank account. If a merchant won't accept a Paypal credit card account, then I don't buy what they are selling. Also, if you buy something via bank account debit instead of credit card charge, then you don't have that additional layer of protection of being able to challenge the credit card charge.
There are federal protections for credit card purchases, that do not apply to direct bank account transactions.

I had a dispute with an ebay merchant who sent me merchandise that did not live up to the advertised promises. Initially he was quite defiant, insisting that although it was not what was advertised, it was not so substantially deficient that Paypal's refund policies would apply and that he would win the Paypal dispute. Not wanting to hassle further, I said, "Fine. I won't go through Paypal's dispute resolution process. I'll just challenge the charge on my credit card." Then he backed down and refunded my money in exchange for my shipping the merchandise back to him.

I made two purchases recently that were charged to my checking account, not the credit card I had set up for use with PayPal. I thought I must have hit the wrong button, but apparently not so after all.

Going to PayPal now to delete my bank account info altogether.....

interesting.... www.paypalsucks.com/

Wow, this makes me really glad I never set up my bank account on Pay Pal! I don't shop on line all that much but I will try to avoid using pay pal in the future!

I've been thinking about it, and if we don't use paypal, what could we use? I make A LOT of online purchases. And mostly I buy from people who don't take credit/debit card cause it's just not worth the money for a small merchant. Is there any alternative to PayPal besides the good 'ol check?