6 ms·

Well, I'm glad I don't have money left there, because I had two factor authentication turned on, and for some unforseen circumstances, I lost my phone number. P

Well, I'm glad I don't have money left there, because I had two factor authentication turned on, and for some unforseen circumstances, I lost my phone number. PayPal customer service is actually quite hard to contact, because every possibility they give you requires you to log in. I found an email address somewhere, but when I wrote them telling them about my situation, I got an email that if I log in I can check their answer in the internal ticketing system. Then a few days later there was another email asking me about my experience with their support. I'll never use PayPal again. No way in hell I'll trust a company with handling my money when they make it impossible to contact them.

lumberjack 6y ago
I have the same exact problem! I wanted to delete my account, just in case, but I cannot login. I haven't used Paypal in over 10 years. Their "service" is really not needed anymore.
- jghn 6y ago
  A lot of e-commerce sites will take PayPal these days. I like to use that vs giving my credit card information. Granted, I prefer to use things like Apple Pay but there are circumstances where PayPal is the only indirect payment form I have in common with a site
  - RinTohsaka 6y ago
    you might be interested in privacy.com as an alternative!
    - hellojason 6y ago
      Or if you have Capital One, they offer a browser extension called Eno to generate unique virtual numbers for each site or purchase.
      - hyperdimension 6y ago
        ...But does it play ambient music while the virtual number is valid?
    - jqpabc123 6y ago
      The odd thing about privacy.com is that in order to use it, you have to surrender all privacy. You are required to provide them full access to your bank account.
- mysterydip 6y ago
  If you sell on eBay, Paypal is heavily integrated, to the point I'm not sure you can complete a transaction without it.
  - wikibob 6y ago
    That is going away
  - walrus01 6y ago
    I have recently purchased a number of things on ebay with 'buy it now' and giving my visa card number directly to ebay, in what looks like a very ordinary shopping cart checkout workflow, with no involvement of paypal. No login to paypal and no mention of it. The browser I was doing it from has never logged in to my paypal account and has no credentials cached for it.
    - trident1000 6y ago
      Paypal still does the credit card transaction. I know because their black box algo blacklisted me for whatever reason many years ago and I tried that. They have no customer support its just an abyss of a company and you are a statistic. Fine with me because I really dont use Ebay but I remember that.
      - justinclift 6y ago
        No, this parent poster is talking about a new thing. I think the one you're talking about is the previous system, whereas PayPal would be the transaction processor anyway. You'd still get email (receipt?) and other bits from PayPal after the transaction was done. Now though, the CC processing on Ebay seems to be a non-PayPal version. At least, that's what it looked like today when getting stuff. No mention of PayPal anywhere, which I was pleased with having had a very bad experience with them (PayPal) a week ago.
  - ipqk 6y ago
    eBay is in the midst of migrating all seller accounts away from paypal to their own integrated solution. While buyers can still use paypal to pay, as a seller, you no longer have to touch paypal if you don't want to. On the other hand, you now have to give them your SSN #.
cute_boi 6y ago
same here. Lost 2fa due to water damage on phone. and all the data was irrecoverable. Now even if i give every data their customer service don't care. From that day i haven't used any 2fa and just use password manager with additional backup.
- xrisk 6y ago
  Use a 2FA that lets you take backups?
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    Authy seems great for this.
  - criddell 6y ago
    Or print out the QR codes and keep them in a safe place.
- vmception 6y ago
  password managers let you store the one time password key. this removes the "two factor" nature of two factor, but retains the one time password nature of one time password. I honestly can't relate to people losing their access because something happened to their phone. The QR code is just a string of letters and numbers and you can save the QR code and the string of letters and numbers. I've been doing this for like a decade.
  - katsura 6y ago
    Do they have the that though? When I turned the 2FA on it was only SMS option, so if your phone number is lost you are out of luck.
    - vmception 6y ago
      I don't know about paypal.
    - 6y ago
justinclift 6y ago
Similar here. I've been using PayPal to receive our Patreon balance each month and pay various project (sqlitebrowser.org) related experiences. Just over a week ago, when I tried logging in to PayPal (2FA is not enabled) a new screen appeared saying they'd sent an SMS with code to my phone number, and I need to type it in. Problem being, the phone number they displayed is not mine. I've never given them my mobile number, as they've always had a little blurb about that saying people have to also give them permission to receive marketing messages. Hell No. So now I'm locked out of my account. With sufficient screwing around in their help system, there is a phone number you can call: +44 203 901 7000 Trying to get through to a human being there however has proved an impossible task (after many attempts). From just being hung up on by their system, through to being told they're out of business hours (nope, double checked that), etc. Looks like in about 51 weeks, they'll start stealing the remaining balance until the account is empty. Fucking scammers. PayPal is the main reason I'm not positive on Elon Musk's history... they've been "known bad" for many years, including when he was there. He started his fortune from building a company that knowingly scams people. :(
- xoa 6y ago
  >PayPal is the main reason I'm not positive on Elon Musk's history... they've been "known bad" for many years, including when he was there. He started his fortune from building a company that knowingly scams people. :( There's plenty of possible things to criticize him for, but this seems like a weird one. PayPal was started by Confinity. He founded X.com in 99ish and they merged like a year after, but then he got the boot as CEO in a matter of, months? Weeks? Don't remember why, but while he still owned a ton of stock he was out in management. Then Ebay bought it all in like 2002. 20 years after his departure, itself before he had any real chance to make a mark, and 18 years after being bought, seems like a bit of a stretch to hold that of all things against him? Edit: also man what a crazy time, I mean it was obviously crazy even at the moment but still thinking back on the timelines it's still wild.
  - genidoi 6y ago
    It’s even more bizarre because things like Patreon and SMS text authentication weren’t around in 2002 and hardly even in 2012. Might as well criticise Tim Bernes-Lee for not developing the HTTPS spec in the 80s
walrus01 6y ago
It's interesting to see that exactly what you wrote (except for the 2FA part) was happening to paypal users 18 years ago. Things haven't changed. Their entire business model is built on nearly complete automation and no human in the loop customer service interaction.
- justinclift 6y ago
  > Their entire business model is built on nearly complete automation and no human in the loop customer service interaction. Same as the Google model then? ;)
lioeters 6y ago
> when they make it impossible to contact them Funny (and infuriating!) to be in the same situation. I have lost access to my account and the money in it, because they have the wrong phone number on file. In their support forum, there are pages of people with the same issue - they're locked out of their account, with seemingly no way to contact anyone at PayPal to resolve it. I hope they get sued for this practice of abandoning their customers, cutting off contact, and keeping the money.
- jccooper 6y ago
  You don't just have to hope; you can do it.
z3t4 6y ago
The cache-less society is no different, it's just the bandits that has changed. And it's for protecting the banks money, not your money. Paypal has always been on the consumer side though. Not trying to make an excuse for all the horror stories, just some advice: Make sure you have backups/exports of the 2:nd factor keys so they can be imported when lost. For example print your password and store it on one location, for example in a safe, then print the 2nd factor key/export (QR code, or backup codes) and put it in another safe/location. Or make several copies and store on many safe locations. And don't forget to TEST YOUR BACKUPS on regular intervals to make sure they work when that day comes.

lumberjack 6y ago

I have the same exact problem! I wanted to delete my account, just in case, but I cannot login. I haven't used Paypal in over 10 years. Their "service" is really not needed anymore.

jghn 6y ago
A lot of e-commerce sites will take PayPal these days. I like to use that vs giving my credit card information. Granted, I prefer to use things like Apple Pay but there are circumstances where PayPal is the only indirect payment form I have in common with a site
- RinTohsaka 6y ago
  you might be interested in privacy.com as an alternative!
  - hellojason 6y ago
    Or if you have Capital One, they offer a browser extension called Eno to generate unique virtual numbers for each site or purchase.
    - hyperdimension 6y ago
      ...But does it play ambient music while the virtual number is valid?
  - jqpabc123 6y ago
    The odd thing about privacy.com is that in order to use it, you have to surrender all privacy. You are required to provide them full access to your bank account.
mysterydip 6y ago
If you sell on eBay, Paypal is heavily integrated, to the point I'm not sure you can complete a transaction without it.
- wikibob 6y ago
  That is going away
- walrus01 6y ago
  I have recently purchased a number of things on ebay with 'buy it now' and giving my visa card number directly to ebay, in what looks like a very ordinary shopping cart checkout workflow, with no involvement of paypal. No login to paypal and no mention of it. The browser I was doing it from has never logged in to my paypal account and has no credentials cached for it.
  - trident1000 6y ago
    Paypal still does the credit card transaction. I know because their black box algo blacklisted me for whatever reason many years ago and I tried that. They have no customer support its just an abyss of a company and you are a statistic. Fine with me because I really dont use Ebay but I remember that.
    - justinclift 6y ago
      No, this parent poster is talking about a new thing. I think the one you're talking about is the previous system, whereas PayPal would be the transaction processor anyway. You'd still get email (receipt?) and other bits from PayPal after the transaction was done. Now though, the CC processing on Ebay seems to be a non-PayPal version. At least, that's what it looked like today when getting stuff. No mention of PayPal anywhere, which I was pleased with having had a very bad experience with them (PayPal) a week ago.
- ipqk 6y ago
  eBay is in the midst of migrating all seller accounts away from paypal to their own integrated solution. While buyers can still use paypal to pay, as a seller, you no longer have to touch paypal if you don't want to. On the other hand, you now have to give them your SSN #.

cute_boi 6y ago

same here. Lost 2fa due to water damage on phone. and all the data was irrecoverable. Now even if i give every data their customer service don't care. From that day i haven't used any 2fa and just use password manager with additional backup.

xrisk 6y ago
Use a 2FA that lets you take backups?
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Authy seems great for this.
- criddell 6y ago
  Or print out the QR codes and keep them in a safe place.
vmception 6y ago
password managers let you store the one time password key. this removes the "two factor" nature of two factor, but retains the one time password nature of one time password. I honestly can't relate to people losing their access because something happened to their phone. The QR code is just a string of letters and numbers and you can save the QR code and the string of letters and numbers. I've been doing this for like a decade.
- katsura 6y ago
  Do they have the that though? When I turned the 2FA on it was only SMS option, so if your phone number is lost you are out of luck.
  - vmception 6y ago
    I don't know about paypal.
  - 6y ago

justinclift 6y ago

Similar here. I've been using PayPal to receive our Patreon balance each month and pay various project (sqlitebrowser.org) related experiences. Just over a week ago, when I tried logging in to PayPal (2FA is not enabled) a new screen appeared saying they'd sent an SMS with code to my phone number, and I need to type it in. Problem being, the phone number they displayed is not mine. I've never given them my mobile number, as they've always had a little blurb about that saying people have to also give them permission to receive marketing messages. Hell No. So now I'm locked out of my account. With sufficient screwing around in their help system, there is a phone number you can call: +44 203 901 7000 Trying to get through to a human being there however has proved an impossible task (after many attempts). From just being hung up on by their system, through to being told they're out of business hours (nope, double checked that), etc. Looks like in about 51 weeks, they'll start stealing the remaining balance until the account is empty. Fucking scammers. PayPal is the main reason I'm not positive on Elon Musk's history... they've been "known bad" for many years, including when he was there. He started his fortune from building a company that knowingly scams people. :(

xoa 6y ago
>PayPal is the main reason I'm not positive on Elon Musk's history... they've been "known bad" for many years, including when he was there. He started his fortune from building a company that knowingly scams people. :( There's plenty of possible things to criticize him for, but this seems like a weird one. PayPal was started by Confinity. He founded X.com in 99ish and they merged like a year after, but then he got the boot as CEO in a matter of, months? Weeks? Don't remember why, but while he still owned a ton of stock he was out in management. Then Ebay bought it all in like 2002. 20 years after his departure, itself before he had any real chance to make a mark, and 18 years after being bought, seems like a bit of a stretch to hold that of all things against him? Edit: also man what a crazy time, I mean it was obviously crazy even at the moment but still thinking back on the timelines it's still wild.
- genidoi 6y ago
  It’s even more bizarre because things like Patreon and SMS text authentication weren’t around in 2002 and hardly even in 2012. Might as well criticise Tim Bernes-Lee for not developing the HTTPS spec in the 80s

walrus01 6y ago

It's interesting to see that exactly what you wrote (except for the 2FA part) was happening to paypal users 18 years ago. Things haven't changed. Their entire business model is built on nearly complete automation and no human in the loop customer service interaction.

justinclift 6y ago
> Their entire business model is built on nearly complete automation and no human in the loop customer service interaction. Same as the Google model then? ;)

lioeters 6y ago

> when they make it impossible to contact them Funny (and infuriating!) to be in the same situation. I have lost access to my account and the money in it, because they have the wrong phone number on file. In their support forum, there are pages of people with the same issue - they're locked out of their account, with seemingly no way to contact anyone at PayPal to resolve it. I hope they get sued for this practice of abandoning their customers, cutting off contact, and keeping the money.

jccooper 6y ago
You don't just have to hope; you can do it.

z3t4 6y ago

The cache-less society is no different, it's just the bandits that has changed. And it's for protecting the banks money, not your money. Paypal has always been on the consumer side though. Not trying to make an excuse for all the horror stories, just some advice: Make sure you have backups/exports of the 2:nd factor keys so they can be imported when lost. For example print your password and store it on one location, for example in a safe, then print the 2nd factor key/export (QR code, or backup codes) and put it in another safe/location. Or make several copies and store on many safe locations. And don't forget to TEST YOUR BACKUPS on regular intervals to make sure they work when that day comes.