Hello all,
Like the title says, I'm a fairly new user to Paypal, just joined 10-06-10. I know Paypal has been around a long time, but I remember early on in its life there was a big flap over some security issues, I think Paypal got hacked or something like that, and a bunch of people lost a lot of money, etc. So I stayed clear of Paypal for a good while because of that. But, I'm still fairly active on Ebay, and it seems a whole lot of folks are still using Paypal, without any big major problems, so I figured it was time i joined up.
And so I did. Had an Ebay item I wanted to buy for 72 bucks, so I verified my bank account and beamed over 80 bucks. All good and well. I looked on my account status here and it said yeay verily there's yer 80 bucks. Great, so I sent payment to the Ebay seller.
And promptly got an overdraft penality from MY BANK, because Paypal didn't USE that 80 bucks sitting there in my account -- it went over and drew payment from the little buffer accnt in my bank, which was empty, and thus I got stung for an overdraft fee.
I think you all know what happened -- there's that little bit of fine print in the contract here, that says OH HEY, just cause you sent some money to your account, doesn't mean it's actually THERE yet. In fact, it's not really THERE for something like 3 to 5 DAYS. Hmmm... lessseee... in one day you can fly around this world. In three days you can fly to the moon. In 5 days... it takes THAT darned long to put money in an account here? In a word -- WHY????
Does it REALLY take that long to verify an ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER??? I mean, seems like you could use carrier pigeons and smoke signals and get the verification done faster than that. I called Customer Service and the rep says it's because Paypal isn't a bank. Uhh, OK, but what does THAT have to do with it? Is Paypal maybe sitting on the deposit for a while and earning some interest on it before letting you use it?? It does make one wonder.
Now I may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but I get the impression I'm not the only one who's had a problem with this. I'm really wanting to have a positive experience here, but this wasn't a good start. Maybe Paypal could try and make it more clear, especially for new users, that "Hey the money you stick in here, ain't really here, till we send ya an email telling you it's here... "
Comments?
