20 ms·

PayPal inactivity fee

512 points by minusf 4y ago

realAzazello 4y ago
Just noting that this was first reported on HN a bit over two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24650344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24650344
lossmirror 4y ago
Om
sourcecodeplz 4y ago
Just in time for the Holidays.
pmontra 4y ago
My balance have been zero for 10+ years. I'll let them close the account for inactivity.
- electrondood 4y ago
  But you'll still owe them €10 EUR, is the point. Presumably, this will hit anyone who forgot they had a PayPal account. They'll just take your money in the account if you have it to cover the fee, or they'll levy the fee and close your account, and you still owe that money.
  - zinekeller 4y ago
    Did you even read it? > Accounts with zero balance won’t be impacted by this fee and this charge won’t result in any negative balance. > If an account no longer has a positive balance after being charged this fee and remains inactive for another 60 days, this account may be closed after the 60 days have passed.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
metadat 4y ago
> Accounts with zero balance won’t be impacted by this fee and this charge won’t result in any negative balance. > If an account no longer has a positive balance after being charged this fee and remains inactive for another 60 days, this account may be closed after the 60 days have passed. It's a way for PayPal to slowly siphon and eventually drain your account balance.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  Actually this is convenient for me. I have PayPal account and can't close it, because there is like 1 EUR or something like that. But I am also refusing to connect my banking account to withdraw the money. So here I am playing waiting game with PayPal.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    Can't you spend it? Perhaps on some kind of donation where you can specify the amount.
atdrummond 4y ago
Which countries does this or does this not apply to? I wonder if a creative lawyer could argue that the users with a PayPal card effectively have a gift card - which would make this illegal in the US for at least that specific subset of US users.
- dvdhnt 4y ago
  From the article: > Note: Managed accounts and accounts held by customers in the province of Alberta, which have a balance of more than $250 CAD and which have been inactive for less than five years are excluded. Accounts which have a balance equal or less than the existing FX settlement amount are also excluded. > Note: Personal accounts registered in Germany/Austria/Italy/Greece/Hungary/Poland are excluded from the inactivity fee assessment for 2022.
- zinekeller 4y ago
  It seems to be most European countries and Canada (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33602832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33602832) > I wonder if a creative lawyer could argue that the users with a PayPal card effectively have a gift card - which would make this illegal in the US for at least that specific subset of US users. Maybe that's why they refrained it applying to US users?
UncleEntity 4y ago
Two things… Logged into PayPal to find out when I joined and found out there’s a couple hundred bucks in there I didn’t know about so thanks. And as a PayPal customer since 2000 all I can say is “fuck you, PayPal”.
- lioeters 4y ago
  I second that notion. I had close to a thousand dollars in there, which I can no longer access because they have the wrong phone number on file. I can change my password, get confirmation email, etc., everything except actually access my account to enter the correct number. By accident I found that for some payments they don't require the phone number (for 2FA which I never enabled/activated) - so I'm slowly "withdrawing" by searching for vendors that accept this method of payments. WTF, give me my money back, PayPal!
  - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
    Storing money in PayPal was a colossal error, which has been the case for at least ten years now.
gkhartman 4y ago
I've noticed it can be tricky to avoid PayPal at times due to their partnerships with other large companies. Are there any decent alternatives that are viable competitors to PayPal that one might want to move to if their terms become unacceptable? If not, I guess there's always the notion of refusing to do business with those who use PayPal as their one and only payment processor.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  > Are there any decent alternatives that are viable competitors to PayPal I guess this lack of competition is the exact reason why PayPal can behave as such. I'm writing this as a very happy 10+ years PayPal user, however the number of complaints and horror stories I've read during all those years is so large that it probably means I'm rather the exception than the rule, for now (touches various things).
  - droopyEyelids 4y ago
    Every time we see a 'PayPal bad' report here, it's someone running afoul of a perfectly reasonable condition. The biggest one is people running businesses that take money now and deliver a product at some time in the future, putting all the liability for chargebacks on PayPal, and then freaking out when PayPal puts a hold on the business's funds till their product is delivered. I'd say it's not the lack of competition that allows PayPal to have the user agreement they do. It's the fact that PayPal's user agreement is as liberal as running a successful money transmitter business can allow.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kelnos 4y ago
  Are there even that many businesses that only let you pay via PayPal? I don't think I've ever encountered one. I use PayPal often enough for convenience (and to avoid giving out my CC number for a one-off purchase from a new website), but I don't think I'd be too bothered if I had to close my PayPal account. And yeah, if I ran into a website that only accepted PayPal, and didn't have an account, I'd just move on and buy somewhere else.
zinekeller 4y ago
Checking on user agreements, all clients of PayPal (Europe) Sàrl and PayPal Canada Company are covered, and I can confirm that clients of PayPal Pte. Ltd. (Singapore et al.) and PayPal Inc. (US) are NOT covered. Definition of Europe seems to be EU, EFTA (ex. Switzerland which is governed by PayPal Pte. Ltd.), and UK. Original comment follows: -------------------------- Seems not applicable to PayPal Singapore (not just for Singapore, it handles much of Asia, Africa, Middle East and Latin America and certain European countries like Switzerland): https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/SG/en/ua-103122.pdf https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/SG/en/ua-1031... Edit: And PayPal Inc. (US): https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/US/en/ua-110722.pdf https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/US/en/ua-1107.... Is it something that Luxembourg or EU required to PayPal (Europe) Sàrl (et Cie, SCA) (https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/LU/en/ua-103122.pdf https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/LU/en/ua-1031...) clients? PayPal Canada Co.: https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/CA/en/ua-091922.pdf https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/CA/en/ua-0919...
- vinay427 4y ago
  > Definition of Europe seems to be EU, EFTA (ex. Switzerland which is governed by PayPal Pte. Ltd.), and UK. This is likely because it’s the EEA, which is the EU+EFTA-CH.
  - zinekeller 4y ago
    Oh, that makes sense, I heard that Switzerland have bilateral treaties that allows them greater autonomy on financial matters. I guess PayPal not setting up a UK subsidiary is mainly due to FCA being a decent institution (Britons might disagree, but have you tried complaining to the Luxembourg CSSF?)
kiwih 4y ago
Given the list of things one can do to prevent the inactivity fee includes the simple "Log in to your account", this fee seems fair to me, especially since they will also be emailing account-holders with enough time that they can take any of the activity actions before being charged. One would wonder why someone would leave sums of money in an online account without even checking that it still existed at least once a year!
- alvah 4y ago
  you're absolutely correct, stealing customer funds is totally fine /sarc
  - kiwih 4y ago
    Why is this "stealing"? Seems like a really strong word to use.
    - coding123 4y ago
      They are taking money from people.
    - alvah 4y ago
      steal, verb: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice. The bigger question is, why do you think this isn't stealing?
    - piskerpan 4y ago
      I suppose as long as a lawyer puts unilateral changes into writing, it’s legal.
- standardUser 4y ago
  What seems fair is telling customers there will be a fee before they open an account. If they want to add a fee after the fact, they shouldn't be charging that fee without the customer opting-in.
cwkoss 4y ago
Paypal has always loved keeping money they didn't earn. They should be treated like a crypto exchange: never keep your funds with them, only use them to transact then move funds away (if no other alternatives available).
- pifm_guy 4y ago
  They love to debit any linked bank accounts to pay any fees or clawback any money so they can freeze it. And PayPal requires you link an account for verification now. So it isn't really practical to use it as you describe - you're giving yourself a false sense of security.
  - cwkoss 4y ago
    Ah, i've avoided them for over a decade now - but that does sound very concerning. Sounds even worse than the issues that made me abandon them originally (seizing on-paypal funds and preventing withdrawal via making verification process broken and obtuse)
  - regular 4y ago
    But will they know if you close the bank account that was previously verified?
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >They love to debit any linked bank accounts to pay any fees or clawback any money so they can freeze it. >And PayPal requires you link an account for verification now. What's the problem here? If you give them access to your main bank account, you're an idiot. Just set up a separate account for the sole purpose of linking to PayPal. You should do the same for any case where you need to link a bank account to an external entity.
    - jlkuester7 4y ago
      You guys have money in your bank accounts?
  - 4y ago
gw98 4y ago
I get the feeling that local regulators will eat them alive for this when the complaints start rolling in.
- lomoeffect 4y ago
  More likely these changes were driven by local regulations tbh. There's a reason this isn't a global policy. Search for dormant accounts and local regulators and I suspect you'll find an answer quickly.
snowwrestler 4y ago
> Accounts with zero balance won’t be impacted by this fee and this charge won’t result in any negative balance. > You can use your PayPal account for any of the following simple actions before December 13, 2022 to avoid the fee: Log in to your account; or ... So to avoid the fee, transfer out any balance and then log in once a year. Seems doable.
- etrautmann 4y ago
  And yet annoying and a transparent money grab
- ninju 4y ago
  Actually its either 'transfer out any balance' OR log in once a year to avoid the charge
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    Ostensibly, you'd need to login to transfer out your balance in the first place.
    - Johnny555 4y ago
      The first time, but after that, since you'll have zero balance, you wouldn't have to log in again since there's no fee if you have no balance. And technically, if you really didn't want to log in and if you have any merchants linked to your Paypal that can do auto-debit, you could make a purchase at that merchant to draw your balance down to zero.
jonny_eh 4y ago
Some product features are created by Marketing, then there's those made by Accounting.
- tintor 4y ago
  Did you mean Monetization department?
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    Not quite, Accounting tends to dislike money sitting somewhere that cannot be accessed. It's hard to classify and track over time. But yes, Accounting also likes to see revenue increase.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
consumer451 4y ago
Another horrible PayPal thing: If you use PayPal Credit with 0% to buy something, then make the automatic payments at the rate that they suggest... You will end up missing the time frame for 0%. They will charge you the full interest.
- SXX 4y ago
  Is this the case when you setup DirectDebit in UK? It's sounds like something really illegal.
  - joshvm 4y ago
    It definitely happens in the UK, I've done this and also made the same mistake. I don't think it's illegal, because they give you the terms clearly: pay it off within x months and it's zero interest. It's not like Klarna where they say you agree to make a 1/x payment every month. It's also not (as far as I know) a direct debit agreement. Virtually every credit card company also does this; you have to request to pay the full balance every month if you want to avoid interest. The only exception I can think of is the Amex cash cards where you have to pay off in full mothly.
    - consumer451 4y ago
      Apple Card Credit at the Apple store does not work like this, neither does Amazon's Chase card. Their suggested auto payments pay everything off with 0% afaik. This is all US info I have.
      - soared 4y ago
        Fidelity has the option to pay like $50/month but their UI is clear that isn’t the full amount.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      > The only exception I can think of is the Amex cash cards where you have to pay off in full mothly. Those aren't an exception -- they just aren't credit cards at all. They're charge cards.
StopHammoTime 4y ago
My non-cynical take is that they have overheads for data in GDPR-esque regions. They want an excuse to easily eliminate that overhead. They can’t “just” take your money before closing so they need to justify it.
- zinekeller 4y ago
  That would explain charging in Europe, but PayPal also impose this to Canadian users.
devd00d 4y ago
What a smart way to slowly destroy your own business.
- joenathanone 4y ago
  It's super short sighted they will make a few bucks at the expense of lost customers and their reputation.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    Whatever is keeping PayPal in business, it's definitely not their reputation.
- jfim 4y ago
  Thought the same thing. I got the notification and deleted my account. It's pretty funny too, since someone asked me to Paypal them some money shortly after. As I didn't have an account anymore, we used Zelle instead. I guess some middle manager gets to make some slides about how they made x amount of money out of inactivity fees, while ignoring all of the business the company lost.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  You can't destroy a business when they have lobbyist that will get politicians to bail them out and send them socialism checks while they complain about people getting money to afford food.
- ec109685 4y ago
  Hey, that row in their database that represents your account info isn’t paying for itself!
  - MerelyMortal 4y ago
    It costs them lots of cents to store those bits of data, it's only fair!
adam_arthur 4y ago
Is there actually a material cost for them to host inactive accounts? Even if the end goal is profitability, seems they are very eager to throw their goodwill/brand into the wood chipper, which is going to be counterproductive in the end. There are already tons of PayPal equivalent services that anybody can use. Not even sure what the differentiator is for them, or why they are relevant anymore.
- withinboredom 4y ago
  Possibly. I know in the US, banks have to report dormant accounts under a certain value, which doesn't "cost" anything but a salary/bandwidth to handle the reporting/questions/etc.
harry8 4y ago
I have only ever used paypal to pay for things with a credit card. I was tricked into having the account at all by a fraudlent and misleading UI built by ebay and that's the only reason I had it in the first place. I did use it to pay for some things so I guess their plan worked. Paypal recently, after a decade or so of use, demanded I hand over multiple forms of ID. I refused and said close the account. They refuse to close the account because I have not handed over ID documents that I don't want them to have on their files because they are untrustworthy both ethically and in terms of competence as you guys know well. So the account is there ready to be hacked. I've pointed this out to them on about 20 separate occasions and they refuse to close it. Paypal are crooks. It is in their dna. They're crooks for no reason, just from force of habit. You cannot trust them in any way. Society allowing them to have any market power whatsoever is completely insane. Yet another case of a cpu attached to a network being on the critical path of what some company is doing preventing otherwise intelligent humans from thinking a normal, critical fasshion about what they are doing and forming a minimally appropriate response, trapping the rest of us who literally cannot act at all.
- jacooper 4y ago
  I think you can force close it using a GDPR request.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
    You'll need to prove your identity for that request...
  - mometsi 4y ago
    *Invokes GDPR* You don't need to see my identification We don't need to see your identification. We can part ways and go about our business Move along Move along, move along..
- ransom1538 4y ago
  "So the account is there ready to be hacked." Paypal is for these groups: 1) criminals 2) princes in Nigeria 3) people too lazzy - to setup a merchant account.
chrischen 4y ago
My friend has has non US paypal account holding USD and it’s virtually impossible to send or transfer this money as USD without being forced to convert it (to native currency and back to USD) first at high fees.
- zinekeller 4y ago
  While I agree PayPal sucks, it may be beyond PayPal's control. It seems that some countries (in general) want you to convert any foreign remittance into local currency, seemingly to allow better tax compliance for their anti-laundering requirements. It's crazy, but I'll put the blame on governments on this one.
  - SXX 4y ago
    Somehow Wise manage to do it without forcing you to convert currencies twice...
    - zinekeller 4y ago
      Without knowing which specific country you're talking about this discrepancy exists, I cannot comment on that, but I'm sure that (except for inward remittance, which is converted to Argentinean pesos) Wise is not available in Argentina.
    - chrischen 4y ago
      To be fair the country in question is indeed not directly supported by Wise. The only way I found to easily transfer money is to buy and immediately sell bitcoin.
coding123 4y ago
I guess another month or so before google starts charging for maps or Gmail.
sorwin 4y ago
This seems like a way to almost force user retention, or increase profits. I'm guessing they must not be doing as well financially anymore
throwup 4y ago
> What is the inactivity fee? > PayPal customers enjoy a range of benefits associated with their accounts, including a full suite of tools, products, blah blah blah blah Jesus Christ, get to the point and just answer the question already. Whoever wrote this absolutely knows the company is doing something slimy.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
kaizendad 4y ago
This is sure to put them ahead of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, Zelle, and Venmo. Everybody will be excited to use the payment system that charges them the most money!
- gexla 4y ago
  If I'm reading this correctly, it's only for accounts with 12 months of inactivity. If you go for a year without logging into the service, then maybe you're not a Paypal customer anyway. Note, Venmo is owned by Paypal.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    You certainly won’t return after they suddenly charge you 10 dollar for the privilege of retaining your personal information. It’s a money grab, pure and simple.
    - gexla 4y ago
      If you login to see the activity, then they stop charging the fee (I assume for another 12 months.)
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  Venmo is literally the same software as PayPal, with a reskinned UI and UX
  - diebeforei485 4y ago
    Wasn't it built separately and acquired by PayPal?
    - gregjw 4y ago
      Yes
  - pixel_tracing 4y ago
karmakaze 4y ago
Luckily I had once set up an automatic billing live test for a SaaS product that I no longer market. The auto-billing was to verify that the system was still working. To this day I still get a monthly 0.02 payment from me to myself.
- cmehdy 4y ago
  So you're giving yourself your own 2cts on a monthly basis? What a way to practice introspection!
Alupis 4y ago
PayPal isn't a bank, folks. If you treat PayPal like a bank, you will have a bad time. Almost all horror stories you hear about PayPal involve the user treating PayPal like they were a bank. Just do not store money in PayPal... sweep nightly if you use PayPal for business. They even provide tools to make this automated. The reason this policy exists is likely to remove super old liabilities for long-dormant accounts that have been long forgotten about. PayPal is not interested in storing funds forever... they want you to buy stuff with it or transfer it to your real bank account. This policy seems aimed at convincing people to "move it or lose it"...
- scrollaway 4y ago
  > The reason this policy exists is likely to remove super old liabilities for long-dormant accounts that have been long forgotten about. That’s exactly what this is. I don’t believe it’s meant to be a money grab towards existing customers (simply because it’s such a bad one). Everything has a lifetime. PayPal by now is full of accounts from dead people, money nobody is ever going to reclaim (even if someone out there has a better claim to it). This money has to go somewhere, otherwise it’s very literally dormant. In my country (Belgium), the government has tools to let people find and reclaim money they may be owed that is sitting in bank accounts. But something like PayPal is not really able to do this. With dormant fees, PayPal is able to create a lifetime on accounts with dormant money… they will eventually zero out. That said, they’re still scum and nobody should use PayPal, ever, for anything. I work in fintech - if you’re using PayPal and need recommendations to replace it, reply with your use case and I’ll respond.
  - asddubs 4y ago
    My use case for paypal is that I don't have nor want a credit card, and places online accept it.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      Why don't you want a credit card? They offer a lot of consumer protection and a lot of rewards, and if you use them responsibly, there's zero downside.
happytiger 4y ago
This is only about accessing stored balances on old accounts rather than having to hand them over to lost property. There may be a million other reasons, but it’s the same reasons banks have account fees — to harvest the lost balances already on their books.
ivanstame 4y ago
You are crazy!
blitzar 4y ago
Paypal really is a sad example of a company. When it came to internet money they had a huge head start, the first mover of first movers and here they are; they are to payments what skype is to phone calls.
Aeolun 4y ago
Omg, as if I needed any other reason not to use Paypal any more.
onlycoffee 4y ago
Investopedia has an interesting article, search "dormancy fee", but it's about credit cards, still doesn't seem like it could be legal for Paypal either.
- resoluteteeth 4y ago
  That article says it's now illegal for credit card specifically but legal for other things like gift cards and bank accounts, so it's probably legal for Paypal as well.
frankjr 4y ago
When closing your PayPal account, do not forget to click the ~"ask us to delete your personal data" in the modal. Otherwise, they keep it even if the account itself is closed/deleted.
claytongulick 4y ago
I recently closed my PayPal account - when they had that weird thing they were trying to add to their terms about fining people if they made posts that were wrongthink[1]. The total impact to my life has been about 35 seconds of inconvenience adding a CC to steam and a couple other things instead of paying with PayPal. I'm in the habit now of divesting myself from any financial institution that attempts to influence or place controls on how I spend my money, or that gets involved with politics in pretty much any way, "right" or "left". I want my financial institution to be Switzerland and accountable only to their fiduciary responsibility. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wrongthink https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wrongthink
bayofpigs 4y ago
atum47 4y ago
I'm removing my account and subsequently removing all other accounts that uses PayPal, like turbosquid, but I'm having a hard time. They say they don't delete accounts [1], I'm sure that's not legal. Does anyone had any tips on it? 1 - https://resources.turbosquid.com/how-do-i-close-my-account/#:~:text=If%20you%20choose%20to%20no,opted%20out%20of%20our%20newsletters https://resources.turbosquid.com/how-do-i-close-my-account/#....
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  One thing you can try, but it depends on your jurisdiction is for companies that say they don't remove accounts... just use faker to create some random information.
- terinjokes 4y ago
  Turbosquid is owned by Shutterstock. I would email their listed Data Protection Officer at privacy@shutterstock.com and ask then to delete your account.
gnicholas 4y ago
> Accounts with zero balance won’t be impacted by this fee and this charge won’t result in any negative balance. So basically just zero out your account and don't worry about it? I'm just glad it's not a $2,500 fee!
- hedora 4y ago
  Keep reading: > If an account no longer has a positive balance after being charged this fee and remains inactive for another 60 days, this account may be closed after the 60 days have passed. So, I guess they are going to autodelete my account (which has always held a zero balance)? Good riddance.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    Interesting. The lawyer in me says that if an account has a zero balance then it wasn't "charged this fee" and therefore that sentence wouldn't apply. But the realist in me understands that this nuance is likely lost on them. The real question is: what sort of notice do they give before doing any of these things?
ramesh31 4y ago
Must be pretty cool to just have a "take people's money" feature. What a brilliant insight. Someone's KPI's are through the roof.
mrtweetyhack 4y ago
gnicholas 4y ago
Are they required to send a notice in advance of assessing these fees? Or is a single email notifying you of their policy sufficient? Hopefully it's the former!
low_tech_punk 4y ago
"Pay! Pal."
big_red 4y ago
when a company gets so desperate it needs to make revenue from ex customers who won’t use it’s services
albertop 4y ago
Good reminder that I need to cancel my account.
chris123 4y ago
Take all your money and all your Bitcoin off all exchanges, and especially companies like PayPal, to especially PayPal itself.
basicplus2 4y ago
They may not be a bank but they get the earnings on all that money sitting there.. it is a source of funds for the business.
aww_dang 4y ago
>I stopped reading your rant here because it's clear you are not familiar with financial regulations. This is the magic of HN. One day the community will be decrying crypto for being unregulated. "It is all a scam", "We need reasonable regulation", "Crypto is a ponzi", "There's no legitimate reason for irreversible transactions", a million more stock lines we have all read here before. The next day HN will attack PayPal for their exorbitant fees, policies and other hurdles which are necessary to comply with regulations. While some of PayPal's business policies are not defensible, most are understandable. Especially when you consider the regulatory overhead they have as a worldwide business. If HN doesn't like it, one solution would be a less regulated environment. If users love regulations, they should accept the fees as a cost of compliance. Either way, if others choose to operate in an unregulated cryptosphere, it would be nice to see a bit of "live and let live". You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
- mcbits 4y ago
  You speak as if "HN" is some dude with multiple personality disorder.
  - aww_dang 4y ago
    Any kind of generalization is somewhat inaccurate. Especially as individuals are not themselves categories. Individual posters may or may not fit into this generalization. It is simply my perception of the prevailing preferences. Would it be more palatable if I had singled out individual users and their post histories?
jerkstate 4y ago
PayPal restricted my account for a very stupid reason 10 years ago, so I kept 1 penny in there until a couple of weeks ago. I finally closed it a few weeks ago, which had to be done through customer support due to the account value being lower than the transfer minimums. I hope I cost them a lot more than the value of the account.
- sbf501 4y ago
  I got screwed in 2002 on EBay using paypal: product never shipped but they kept the money. My CC company refunded me, but paypal wouldn't let me use it again until I paid the $500 that the CC company reversed. A few years later PayPal offered amnesty and waived the $500, so I started using them again in 2006, still using them. Damn, that's almost 17 years.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
    Why... why are you still willingly using them?
    - sbf501 4y ago
      I love the convenience and have had zero problems in almost two decades. What's a good alternative?
diebeforei485 4y ago
They should be paying me if I deposit my money with them. This is nuts.
partiallypro 4y ago
I've personally never had any problems with PayPal, but they've been putting in some pretty questionable policies of late (or at least ones that have been noticed.) Like the fine for misinformation? I don't see how that was an honest mistake, then they sort of replace it with fines for "intolerance" instead. Now this. I know they have a history of freezing people's funds and just flat out taking their money as well. I never store money there but do have a card attached for easy checkout.
Ptchd 4y ago
I'll have to remember to close my account after I get the refund I'm waiting for....
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Seems contradictory to not assess a fee if you're at zero balance but if you drop to zero balance due to fees they reserve the right to cancel the account.
yalogin 4y ago
Is this some kind of joke? Companies crave users whether active or not. They spend a lot of money trying to acquire new users, in fact one of their subsidiary sends me emails offering $10 to come back. In that environment how is PayPal charging an inactivity fee? Just boggles my mind. Even more so because it costs them nothing.
- dboreham 4y ago
  > Companies crave users whether active or not. This is based on some theory about the lifetime value of a customer. If that can be determined to be zero or negative...
madelyn 4y ago
Nice. Maybe PayPal will be able to close the account I've been unable to close for the past seven years (!!!) that they've still been emailing me about, despite contacting support multiple times to try to close it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
LightG 4y ago
Tell me you have a huge amount of inactive accounts without... etc.
zaphirplane 4y ago
Combine that with being locked out of your account because the text verification never arrives and it’s all net
deafpolygon 4y ago
Those of you having a bad time, remember, Elon Musk built PayPal and he's got his hands on Twitter.
jdenning 4y ago
Well, that’s the push I needed to completely close my paypal account - good job, paypal!
kramerger 4y ago
Is there an alternative to PayPal? Bitcoin feels like russian roulette and old PayPal competitors don't seem to want my money (AliPay comes to mind)
- Tajnymag 4y ago
  It really depends on your use-case. Revolut might be one of the options. Free account, easy money transfers between other users and virtual debit cards.
shaman1 4y ago
I have a dormant account to which I lost access because I've changed my phone number. When I try to reset my password they insist on sending me a sms even if I enter my answers to the security questions. Unable to contact them via chat unless I'm logged in. The only option I have is to call them on a US number. I tried that and it went through an automated bot. Sorry PayPal, good luck with business
seydor 4y ago
12 montsh is suspiciously short. maybe it's a marketing trick -- "we ll threaten them to make some transactions, then we will say we are sorry and remove the clause"
misja111 4y ago
Well, both my 'traditional' banks charge me a monthly fee regardless if my account was active or not, so PayPal isn't all that bad.
GistNoesis 4y ago
There goes the little open-source donations.
- fsflover 4y ago
  Consider using opencollective.com instead, which is a non-profit.
Akronymus 4y ago
> The fee will be the lesser of the account balance or €10 EUR (270 CZK, 3600 HUF) as applicable*. I just love it so much when there is a footnote star, but no corresponding footnote.
- jonas-w 4y ago
  I think it is the "Note:" sektion at the bottom, but yes no Star.
helloworld11 4y ago
Worth noting here quickly, after all the (fully deserved by the way) vitriol against paypal and its decades of institutionalized, legally protected crooked practices: The world of web3 and crypto may be full of scams and scammers, but the much older world of normal finance and fintech is fundamentally little different at its core. It's only more stable, better protected legally and has covered its ass under certain laws and regulatory capture with superior lobbying for politicians to look the other way at things that are obviously crooked but legally grey enough that they can be ignored most of the time.
pdimitar 4y ago
I don't care how they perfume this, I just got in and deleted all my bank and card details from my account. If I ever get charged anything even afterwards I'll go out of my way to sue them. Seriously, the hell is wrong with PayPal.
blueflow 4y ago
> Note: Personal accounts registered in Germany/Austria/Italy/Greece/Hungary/Poland are excluded from the inactivity fee assessment for 2022. Why might that be?
- zinekeller 4y ago
  It's simply mandatory sixty-day/ninety-day notice (as opposed to PayPal's voluntary 30-day notice in places without this mandatory period).
  - jpswade 4y ago
    Mandatory under what terms?
    - zinekeller 4y ago
      Standard non-negotiable contracts (where you can only accept or reject) are required by consumer protection laws in those countries to have an effectivity period of at least 60 or 90 days (depending on the specific country) from the publication and notification date.
lakomen 4y ago
I used PayPal since 2006, because of the promise that I'd get my money back if I get scammed. A few years ago I played a browser game, Game of Thrones Winter is Coming. Chinese company. I'm in the EU. In the EU we have laws and regulations, if someone tries to scam you, you usually get your money or the product. The US has less support for the customer, aka the customer is in a worse place. In China you as a foreigner have no support. I bought a 20 eur package of Margery Tyrell, because I like the way she looks. I thought when I buy I, I would have her in my collection and could use her as my avatar. I bought it, but what I bought was 5 out of 10 requires tokens to unlock the base version of her. So I paid 20 eur for effectively nothing. It wasn't mentioned anywhere that I would need 10 tokens. The next 5 tokens would cost 70 eur! I wrote PayPal that this was a scam and that I wanted my money back. The response was that I have no proof and the case was closed with no way of appealing. I closed my PayPal account and will never return. I will also never spend money on a Chinese game.
elurg 4y ago
I don't understand why people defend this behavior.
dustymcp 4y ago
Never leave the casino without causing out.
jmclnx 4y ago
Well time o keep an eye on my Credit Card. If I see a fee from PayPal, I will tell the Creit Card Company to deny it. I will have to spend time to figure out how to close the PayPal account.
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thro1 4y ago
I can't acces my PayPal since few years, I've noticed PayPal that I need them to fix it, now I don't even remember how far I went trough their support without them doing anything, till I lost my patience and stop asking. How I could collect such fee ?
- VPenkov 4y ago
  You've got this backwards. They collect the fee from you, not the other way around. They do so until you run out of money, then they close your account. If you have money in your PayPal account, now is the time to withdraw it. If not, your account will eventually be closed.
  - thro1 4y ago
    It's a result of PayPal inactivity - not mine. So, if they made a fee for that, isn't them who shall pay it in this case ? - as they were in position to fix it but didn't, when I did everything I could and I'm not responsible for it? (AFAIR they made some change which locked me out.) It's not backwards - if they made a rule, why would they not follow it the same way as shall I ? To see me in court ??
rpaddock 4y ago
My late wife has a PayPal account. When she died I wanted to put my name on the account. They requested a Death Certificate, which I provided. They acknowledged the Death Certificate then demanded prof that she was dead, before they would transfer the account to my control. I even talked to a Lawyer about this, who also got really pissed off at PayPal's attitude. Alas there is no money in the account so he said there really wasn't anything to do. The only person that can close the account seems to be my dead wife, and she appears to have no current interests in PayPal's shenanigans'.

512 points by minusf 4y ago

Just noting that this was first reported on HN a bit over two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24650344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24650344

lossmirror 4y ago

sourcecodeplz 4y ago

Just in time for the Holidays.

pmontra 4y ago

My balance have been zero for 10+ years. I'll let them close the account for inactivity.

electrondood 4y ago
But you'll still owe them €10 EUR, is the point. Presumably, this will hit anyone who forgot they had a PayPal account. They'll just take your money in the account if you have it to cover the fee, or they'll levy the fee and close your account, and you still owe that money.
- zinekeller 4y ago
  Did you even read it? > Accounts with zero balance won’t be impacted by this fee and this charge won’t result in any negative balance. > If an account no longer has a positive balance after being charged this fee and remains inactive for another 60 days, this account may be closed after the 60 days have passed.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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metadat 4y ago

> Accounts with zero balance won’t be impacted by this fee and this charge won’t result in any negative balance. > If an account no longer has a positive balance after being charged this fee and remains inactive for another 60 days, this account may be closed after the 60 days have passed. It's a way for PayPal to slowly siphon and eventually drain your account balance.

TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
Actually this is convenient for me. I have PayPal account and can't close it, because there is like 1 EUR or something like that. But I am also refusing to connect my banking account to withdraw the money. So here I am playing waiting game with PayPal.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Can't you spend it? Perhaps on some kind of donation where you can specify the amount.

atdrummond 4y ago

Which countries does this or does this not apply to? I wonder if a creative lawyer could argue that the users with a PayPal card effectively have a gift card - which would make this illegal in the US for at least that specific subset of US users.

dvdhnt 4y ago
From the article: > Note: Managed accounts and accounts held by customers in the province of Alberta, which have a balance of more than $250 CAD and which have been inactive for less than five years are excluded. Accounts which have a balance equal or less than the existing FX settlement amount are also excluded. > Note: Personal accounts registered in Germany/Austria/Italy/Greece/Hungary/Poland are excluded from the inactivity fee assessment for 2022.
zinekeller 4y ago
It seems to be most European countries and Canada (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33602832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33602832) > I wonder if a creative lawyer could argue that the users with a PayPal card effectively have a gift card - which would make this illegal in the US for at least that specific subset of US users. Maybe that's why they refrained it applying to US users?

UncleEntity 4y ago

Two things… Logged into PayPal to find out when I joined and found out there’s a couple hundred bucks in there I didn’t know about so thanks. And as a PayPal customer since 2000 all I can say is “fuck you, PayPal”.

lioeters 4y ago
I second that notion. I had close to a thousand dollars in there, which I can no longer access because they have the wrong phone number on file. I can change my password, get confirmation email, etc., everything except actually access my account to enter the correct number. By accident I found that for some payments they don't require the phone number (for 2FA which I never enabled/activated) - so I'm slowly "withdrawing" by searching for vendors that accept this method of payments. WTF, give me my money back, PayPal!
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  Storing money in PayPal was a colossal error, which has been the case for at least ten years now.

gkhartman 4y ago

I've noticed it can be tricky to avoid PayPal at times due to their partnerships with other large companies. Are there any decent alternatives that are viable competitors to PayPal that one might want to move to if their terms become unacceptable? If not, I guess there's always the notion of refusing to do business with those who use PayPal as their one and only payment processor.

squarefoot 4y ago
> Are there any decent alternatives that are viable competitors to PayPal I guess this lack of competition is the exact reason why PayPal can behave as such. I'm writing this as a very happy 10+ years PayPal user, however the number of complaints and horror stories I've read during all those years is so large that it probably means I'm rather the exception than the rule, for now (touches various things).
- droopyEyelids 4y ago
  Every time we see a 'PayPal bad' report here, it's someone running afoul of a perfectly reasonable condition. The biggest one is people running businesses that take money now and deliver a product at some time in the future, putting all the liability for chargebacks on PayPal, and then freaking out when PayPal puts a hold on the business's funds till their product is delivered. I'd say it's not the lack of competition that allows PayPal to have the user agreement they do. It's the fact that PayPal's user agreement is as liberal as running a successful money transmitter business can allow.
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kelnos 4y ago
Are there even that many businesses that only let you pay via PayPal? I don't think I've ever encountered one. I use PayPal often enough for convenience (and to avoid giving out my CC number for a one-off purchase from a new website), but I don't think I'd be too bothered if I had to close my PayPal account. And yeah, if I ran into a website that only accepted PayPal, and didn't have an account, I'd just move on and buy somewhere else.

zinekeller 4y ago

Checking on user agreements, all clients of PayPal (Europe) Sàrl and PayPal Canada Company are covered, and I can confirm that clients of PayPal Pte. Ltd. (Singapore et al.) and PayPal Inc. (US) are NOT covered. Definition of Europe seems to be EU, EFTA (ex. Switzerland which is governed by PayPal Pte. Ltd.), and UK. Original comment follows: -------------------------- Seems not applicable to PayPal Singapore (not just for Singapore, it handles much of Asia, Africa, Middle East and Latin America and certain European countries like Switzerland): https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/SG/en/ua-103122.pdf https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/SG/en/ua-1031... Edit: And PayPal Inc. (US): https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/US/en/ua-110722.pdf https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/US/en/ua-1107.... Is it something that Luxembourg or EU required to PayPal (Europe) Sàrl (et Cie, SCA) (https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/LU/en/ua-103122.pdf https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/LU/en/ua-1031...) clients? PayPal Canada Co.: https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/CA/en/ua-091922.pdf https://www.paypalobjects.com/marketing/ua/pdf/CA/en/ua-0919...

vinay427 4y ago
> Definition of Europe seems to be EU, EFTA (ex. Switzerland which is governed by PayPal Pte. Ltd.), and UK. This is likely because it’s the EEA, which is the EU+EFTA-CH.
- zinekeller 4y ago
  Oh, that makes sense, I heard that Switzerland have bilateral treaties that allows them greater autonomy on financial matters. I guess PayPal not setting up a UK subsidiary is mainly due to FCA being a decent institution (Britons might disagree, but have you tried complaining to the Luxembourg CSSF?)

kiwih 4y ago

Given the list of things one can do to prevent the inactivity fee includes the simple "Log in to your account", this fee seems fair to me, especially since they will also be emailing account-holders with enough time that they can take any of the activity actions before being charged. One would wonder why someone would leave sums of money in an online account without even checking that it still existed at least once a year!

alvah 4y ago
you're absolutely correct, stealing customer funds is totally fine /sarc
- kiwih 4y ago
  Why is this "stealing"? Seems like a really strong word to use.
  - coding123 4y ago
    They are taking money from people.
  - alvah 4y ago
    steal, verb: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice. The bigger question is, why do you think this isn't stealing?
  - piskerpan 4y ago
    I suppose as long as a lawyer puts unilateral changes into writing, it’s legal.
standardUser 4y ago
What seems fair is telling customers there will be a fee before they open an account. If they want to add a fee after the fact, they shouldn't be charging that fee without the customer opting-in.

cwkoss 4y ago

Paypal has always loved keeping money they didn't earn. They should be treated like a crypto exchange: never keep your funds with them, only use them to transact then move funds away (if no other alternatives available).

pifm_guy 4y ago
They love to debit any linked bank accounts to pay any fees or clawback any money so they can freeze it. And PayPal requires you link an account for verification now. So it isn't really practical to use it as you describe - you're giving yourself a false sense of security.
- cwkoss 4y ago
  Ah, i've avoided them for over a decade now - but that does sound very concerning. Sounds even worse than the issues that made me abandon them originally (seizing on-paypal funds and preventing withdrawal via making verification process broken and obtuse)
- regular 4y ago
  But will they know if you close the bank account that was previously verified?
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >They love to debit any linked bank accounts to pay any fees or clawback any money so they can freeze it. >And PayPal requires you link an account for verification now. What's the problem here? If you give them access to your main bank account, you're an idiot. Just set up a separate account for the sole purpose of linking to PayPal. You should do the same for any case where you need to link a bank account to an external entity.
  - jlkuester7 4y ago
    You guys have money in your bank accounts?
- 4y ago

gw98 4y ago

I get the feeling that local regulators will eat them alive for this when the complaints start rolling in.

lomoeffect 4y ago
More likely these changes were driven by local regulations tbh. There's a reason this isn't a global policy. Search for dormant accounts and local regulators and I suspect you'll find an answer quickly.

snowwrestler 4y ago

> Accounts with zero balance won’t be impacted by this fee and this charge won’t result in any negative balance. > You can use your PayPal account for any of the following simple actions before December 13, 2022 to avoid the fee: Log in to your account; or ... So to avoid the fee, transfer out any balance and then log in once a year. Seems doable.

etrautmann 4y ago
And yet annoying and a transparent money grab
ninju 4y ago
Actually its either 'transfer out any balance' OR log in once a year to avoid the charge
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  Ostensibly, you'd need to login to transfer out your balance in the first place.
  - Johnny555 4y ago
    The first time, but after that, since you'll have zero balance, you wouldn't have to log in again since there's no fee if you have no balance. And technically, if you really didn't want to log in and if you have any merchants linked to your Paypal that can do auto-debit, you could make a purchase at that merchant to draw your balance down to zero.

jonny_eh 4y ago

Some product features are created by Marketing, then there's those made by Accounting.

tintor 4y ago
Did you mean Monetization department?
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  Not quite, Accounting tends to dislike money sitting somewhere that cannot be accessed. It's hard to classify and track over time. But yes, Accounting also likes to see revenue increase.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

consumer451 4y ago

Another horrible PayPal thing: If you use PayPal Credit with 0% to buy something, then make the automatic payments at the rate that they suggest... You will end up missing the time frame for 0%. They will charge you the full interest.

SXX 4y ago
Is this the case when you setup DirectDebit in UK? It's sounds like something really illegal.
- joshvm 4y ago
  It definitely happens in the UK, I've done this and also made the same mistake. I don't think it's illegal, because they give you the terms clearly: pay it off within x months and it's zero interest. It's not like Klarna where they say you agree to make a 1/x payment every month. It's also not (as far as I know) a direct debit agreement. Virtually every credit card company also does this; you have to request to pay the full balance every month if you want to avoid interest. The only exception I can think of is the Amex cash cards where you have to pay off in full mothly.
  - consumer451 4y ago
    Apple Card Credit at the Apple store does not work like this, neither does Amazon's Chase card. Their suggested auto payments pay everything off with 0% afaik. This is all US info I have.
    - soared 4y ago
      Fidelity has the option to pay like $50/month but their UI is clear that isn’t the full amount.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    > The only exception I can think of is the Amex cash cards where you have to pay off in full mothly. Those aren't an exception -- they just aren't credit cards at all. They're charge cards.

StopHammoTime 4y ago

My non-cynical take is that they have overheads for data in GDPR-esque regions. They want an excuse to easily eliminate that overhead. They can’t “just” take your money before closing so they need to justify it.

zinekeller 4y ago
That would explain charging in Europe, but PayPal also impose this to Canadian users.

devd00d 4y ago

What a smart way to slowly destroy your own business.

joenathanone 4y ago
It's super short sighted they will make a few bucks at the expense of lost customers and their reputation.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  Whatever is keeping PayPal in business, it's definitely not their reputation.
jfim 4y ago
Thought the same thing. I got the notification and deleted my account. It's pretty funny too, since someone asked me to Paypal them some money shortly after. As I didn't have an account anymore, we used Zelle instead. I guess some middle manager gets to make some slides about how they made x amount of money out of inactivity fees, while ignoring all of the business the company lost.
encryptluks2 4y ago
You can't destroy a business when they have lobbyist that will get politicians to bail them out and send them socialism checks while they complain about people getting money to afford food.
ec109685 4y ago
Hey, that row in their database that represents your account info isn’t paying for itself!
- MerelyMortal 4y ago
  It costs them lots of cents to store those bits of data, it's only fair!

adam_arthur 4y ago

Is there actually a material cost for them to host inactive accounts? Even if the end goal is profitability, seems they are very eager to throw their goodwill/brand into the wood chipper, which is going to be counterproductive in the end. There are already tons of PayPal equivalent services that anybody can use. Not even sure what the differentiator is for them, or why they are relevant anymore.

withinboredom 4y ago
Possibly. I know in the US, banks have to report dormant accounts under a certain value, which doesn't "cost" anything but a salary/bandwidth to handle the reporting/questions/etc.

harry8 4y ago

I have only ever used paypal to pay for things with a credit card. I was tricked into having the account at all by a fraudlent and misleading UI built by ebay and that's the only reason I had it in the first place. I did use it to pay for some things so I guess their plan worked. Paypal recently, after a decade or so of use, demanded I hand over multiple forms of ID. I refused and said close the account. They refuse to close the account because I have not handed over ID documents that I don't want them to have on their files because they are untrustworthy both ethically and in terms of competence as you guys know well. So the account is there ready to be hacked. I've pointed this out to them on about 20 separate occasions and they refuse to close it. Paypal are crooks. It is in their dna. They're crooks for no reason, just from force of habit. You cannot trust them in any way. Society allowing them to have any market power whatsoever is completely insane. Yet another case of a cpu attached to a network being on the critical path of what some company is doing preventing otherwise intelligent humans from thinking a normal, critical fasshion about what they are doing and forming a minimally appropriate response, trapping the rest of us who literally cannot act at all.

jacooper 4y ago
I think you can force close it using a GDPR request.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  You'll need to prove your identity for that request...
- mometsi 4y ago
  *Invokes GDPR* You don't need to see my identification We don't need to see your identification. We can part ways and go about our business Move along Move along, move along..
ransom1538 4y ago
"So the account is there ready to be hacked." Paypal is for these groups: 1) criminals 2) princes in Nigeria 3) people too lazzy - to setup a merchant account.

chrischen 4y ago

My friend has has non US paypal account holding USD and it’s virtually impossible to send or transfer this money as USD without being forced to convert it (to native currency and back to USD) first at high fees.

zinekeller 4y ago
While I agree PayPal sucks, it may be beyond PayPal's control. It seems that some countries (in general) want you to convert any foreign remittance into local currency, seemingly to allow better tax compliance for their anti-laundering requirements. It's crazy, but I'll put the blame on governments on this one.
- SXX 4y ago
  Somehow Wise manage to do it without forcing you to convert currencies twice...
  - zinekeller 4y ago
    Without knowing which specific country you're talking about this discrepancy exists, I cannot comment on that, but I'm sure that (except for inward remittance, which is converted to Argentinean pesos) Wise is not available in Argentina.
  - chrischen 4y ago
    To be fair the country in question is indeed not directly supported by Wise. The only way I found to easily transfer money is to buy and immediately sell bitcoin.

coding123 4y ago

I guess another month or so before google starts charging for maps or Gmail.

sorwin 4y ago

This seems like a way to almost force user retention, or increase profits. I'm guessing they must not be doing as well financially anymore

throwup 4y ago

> What is the inactivity fee? > PayPal customers enjoy a range of benefits associated with their accounts, including a full suite of tools, products, blah blah blah blah Jesus Christ, get to the point and just answer the question already. Whoever wrote this absolutely knows the company is doing something slimy.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

kaizendad 4y ago

This is sure to put them ahead of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, Zelle, and Venmo. Everybody will be excited to use the payment system that charges them the most money!

gexla 4y ago
If I'm reading this correctly, it's only for accounts with 12 months of inactivity. If you go for a year without logging into the service, then maybe you're not a Paypal customer anyway. Note, Venmo is owned by Paypal.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  You certainly won’t return after they suddenly charge you 10 dollar for the privilege of retaining your personal information. It’s a money grab, pure and simple.
  - gexla 4y ago
    If you login to see the activity, then they stop charging the fee (I assume for another 12 months.)
throwayyy479087 4y ago
Venmo is literally the same software as PayPal, with a reskinned UI and UX
- diebeforei485 4y ago
  Wasn't it built separately and acquired by PayPal?
  - gregjw 4y ago
    Yes
- pixel_tracing 4y ago

karmakaze 4y ago

Luckily I had once set up an automatic billing live test for a SaaS product that I no longer market. The auto-billing was to verify that the system was still working. To this day I still get a monthly 0.02 payment from me to myself.

cmehdy 4y ago
So you're giving yourself your own 2cts on a monthly basis? What a way to practice introspection!

Alupis 4y ago

PayPal isn't a bank, folks. If you treat PayPal like a bank, you will have a bad time. Almost all horror stories you hear about PayPal involve the user treating PayPal like they were a bank. Just do not store money in PayPal... sweep nightly if you use PayPal for business. They even provide tools to make this automated. The reason this policy exists is likely to remove super old liabilities for long-dormant accounts that have been long forgotten about. PayPal is not interested in storing funds forever... they want you to buy stuff with it or transfer it to your real bank account. This policy seems aimed at convincing people to "move it or lose it"...

scrollaway 4y ago
> The reason this policy exists is likely to remove super old liabilities for long-dormant accounts that have been long forgotten about. That’s exactly what this is. I don’t believe it’s meant to be a money grab towards existing customers (simply because it’s such a bad one). Everything has a lifetime. PayPal by now is full of accounts from dead people, money nobody is ever going to reclaim (even if someone out there has a better claim to it). This money has to go somewhere, otherwise it’s very literally dormant. In my country (Belgium), the government has tools to let people find and reclaim money they may be owed that is sitting in bank accounts. But something like PayPal is not really able to do this. With dormant fees, PayPal is able to create a lifetime on accounts with dormant money… they will eventually zero out. That said, they’re still scum and nobody should use PayPal, ever, for anything. I work in fintech - if you’re using PayPal and need recommendations to replace it, reply with your use case and I’ll respond.
- asddubs 4y ago
  My use case for paypal is that I don't have nor want a credit card, and places online accept it.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    Why don't you want a credit card? They offer a lot of consumer protection and a lot of rewards, and if you use them responsibly, there's zero downside.

happytiger 4y ago

This is only about accessing stored balances on old accounts rather than having to hand them over to lost property. There may be a million other reasons, but it’s the same reasons banks have account fees — to harvest the lost balances already on their books.

ivanstame 4y ago

You are crazy!

blitzar 4y ago

Paypal really is a sad example of a company. When it came to internet money they had a huge head start, the first mover of first movers and here they are; they are to payments what skype is to phone calls.

Aeolun 4y ago

Omg, as if I needed any other reason not to use Paypal any more.

onlycoffee 4y ago

Investopedia has an interesting article, search "dormancy fee", but it's about credit cards, still doesn't seem like it could be legal for Paypal either.

resoluteteeth 4y ago
That article says it's now illegal for credit card specifically but legal for other things like gift cards and bank accounts, so it's probably legal for Paypal as well.

frankjr 4y ago

When closing your PayPal account, do not forget to click the ~"ask us to delete your personal data" in the modal. Otherwise, they keep it even if the account itself is closed/deleted.

claytongulick 4y ago

I recently closed my PayPal account - when they had that weird thing they were trying to add to their terms about fining people if they made posts that were wrongthink[1]. The total impact to my life has been about 35 seconds of inconvenience adding a CC to steam and a couple other things instead of paying with PayPal. I'm in the habit now of divesting myself from any financial institution that attempts to influence or place controls on how I spend my money, or that gets involved with politics in pretty much any way, "right" or "left". I want my financial institution to be Switzerland and accountable only to their fiduciary responsibility. [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wrongthink https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wrongthink

bayofpigs 4y ago

atum47 4y ago

I'm removing my account and subsequently removing all other accounts that uses PayPal, like turbosquid, but I'm having a hard time. They say they don't delete accounts [1], I'm sure that's not legal. Does anyone had any tips on it? 1 - https://resources.turbosquid.com/how-do-i-close-my-account/#:~:text=If%20you%20choose%20to%20no,opted%20out%20of%20our%20newsletters https://resources.turbosquid.com/how-do-i-close-my-account/#....

encryptluks2 4y ago
One thing you can try, but it depends on your jurisdiction is for companies that say they don't remove accounts... just use faker to create some random information.
terinjokes 4y ago
Turbosquid is owned by Shutterstock. I would email their listed Data Protection Officer at privacy@shutterstock.com and ask then to delete your account.

gnicholas 4y ago

> Accounts with zero balance won’t be impacted by this fee and this charge won’t result in any negative balance. So basically just zero out your account and don't worry about it? I'm just glad it's not a $2,500 fee!

hedora 4y ago
Keep reading: > If an account no longer has a positive balance after being charged this fee and remains inactive for another 60 days, this account may be closed after the 60 days have passed. So, I guess they are going to autodelete my account (which has always held a zero balance)? Good riddance.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Interesting. The lawyer in me says that if an account has a zero balance then it wasn't "charged this fee" and therefore that sentence wouldn't apply. But the realist in me understands that this nuance is likely lost on them. The real question is: what sort of notice do they give before doing any of these things?

ramesh31 4y ago

Must be pretty cool to just have a "take people's money" feature. What a brilliant insight. Someone's KPI's are through the roof.

mrtweetyhack 4y ago

gnicholas 4y ago

Are they required to send a notice in advance of assessing these fees? Or is a single email notifying you of their policy sufficient? Hopefully it's the former!

low_tech_punk 4y ago

"Pay! Pal."

big_red 4y ago

when a company gets so desperate it needs to make revenue from ex customers who won’t use it’s services

albertop 4y ago

Good reminder that I need to cancel my account.

chris123 4y ago

Take all your money and all your Bitcoin off all exchanges, and especially companies like PayPal, to especially PayPal itself.

basicplus2 4y ago

They may not be a bank but they get the earnings on all that money sitting there.. it is a source of funds for the business.

aww_dang 4y ago

>I stopped reading your rant here because it's clear you are not familiar with financial regulations. This is the magic of HN. One day the community will be decrying crypto for being unregulated. "It is all a scam", "We need reasonable regulation", "Crypto is a ponzi", "There's no legitimate reason for irreversible transactions", a million more stock lines we have all read here before. The next day HN will attack PayPal for their exorbitant fees, policies and other hurdles which are necessary to comply with regulations. While some of PayPal's business policies are not defensible, most are understandable. Especially when you consider the regulatory overhead they have as a worldwide business. If HN doesn't like it, one solution would be a less regulated environment. If users love regulations, they should accept the fees as a cost of compliance. Either way, if others choose to operate in an unregulated cryptosphere, it would be nice to see a bit of "live and let live". You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

mcbits 4y ago
You speak as if "HN" is some dude with multiple personality disorder.
- aww_dang 4y ago
  Any kind of generalization is somewhat inaccurate. Especially as individuals are not themselves categories. Individual posters may or may not fit into this generalization. It is simply my perception of the prevailing preferences. Would it be more palatable if I had singled out individual users and their post histories?

jerkstate 4y ago

PayPal restricted my account for a very stupid reason 10 years ago, so I kept 1 penny in there until a couple of weeks ago. I finally closed it a few weeks ago, which had to be done through customer support due to the account value being lower than the transfer minimums. I hope I cost them a lot more than the value of the account.

sbf501 4y ago
I got screwed in 2002 on EBay using paypal: product never shipped but they kept the money. My CC company refunded me, but paypal wouldn't let me use it again until I paid the $500 that the CC company reversed. A few years later PayPal offered amnesty and waived the $500, so I started using them again in 2006, still using them. Damn, that's almost 17 years.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  Why... why are you still willingly using them?
  - sbf501 4y ago
    I love the convenience and have had zero problems in almost two decades. What's a good alternative?

diebeforei485 4y ago

They should be paying me if I deposit my money with them. This is nuts.

partiallypro 4y ago

I've personally never had any problems with PayPal, but they've been putting in some pretty questionable policies of late (or at least ones that have been noticed.) Like the fine for misinformation? I don't see how that was an honest mistake, then they sort of replace it with fines for "intolerance" instead. Now this. I know they have a history of freezing people's funds and just flat out taking their money as well. I never store money there but do have a card attached for easy checkout.

Ptchd 4y ago

I'll have to remember to close my account after I get the refund I'm waiting for....

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

Seems contradictory to not assess a fee if you're at zero balance but if you drop to zero balance due to fees they reserve the right to cancel the account.

yalogin 4y ago

Is this some kind of joke? Companies crave users whether active or not. They spend a lot of money trying to acquire new users, in fact one of their subsidiary sends me emails offering $10 to come back. In that environment how is PayPal charging an inactivity fee? Just boggles my mind. Even more so because it costs them nothing.

dboreham 4y ago
> Companies crave users whether active or not. This is based on some theory about the lifetime value of a customer. If that can be determined to be zero or negative...

madelyn 4y ago

Nice. Maybe PayPal will be able to close the account I've been unable to close for the past seven years (!!!) that they've still been emailing me about, despite contacting support multiple times to try to close it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

LightG 4y ago

Tell me you have a huge amount of inactive accounts without... etc.

zaphirplane 4y ago

Combine that with being locked out of your account because the text verification never arrives and it’s all net

deafpolygon 4y ago

Those of you having a bad time, remember, Elon Musk built PayPal and he's got his hands on Twitter.

jdenning 4y ago

Well, that’s the push I needed to completely close my paypal account - good job, paypal!

kramerger 4y ago

Is there an alternative to PayPal? Bitcoin feels like russian roulette and old PayPal competitors don't seem to want my money (AliPay comes to mind)

Tajnymag 4y ago
It really depends on your use-case. Revolut might be one of the options. Free account, easy money transfers between other users and virtual debit cards.

shaman1 4y ago

I have a dormant account to which I lost access because I've changed my phone number. When I try to reset my password they insist on sending me a sms even if I enter my answers to the security questions. Unable to contact them via chat unless I'm logged in. The only option I have is to call them on a US number. I tried that and it went through an automated bot. Sorry PayPal, good luck with business

seydor 4y ago

12 montsh is suspiciously short. maybe it's a marketing trick -- "we ll threaten them to make some transactions, then we will say we are sorry and remove the clause"

misja111 4y ago

Well, both my 'traditional' banks charge me a monthly fee regardless if my account was active or not, so PayPal isn't all that bad.

GistNoesis 4y ago

There goes the little open-source donations.

fsflover 4y ago
Consider using opencollective.com instead, which is a non-profit.

Akronymus 4y ago

> The fee will be the lesser of the account balance or €10 EUR (270 CZK, 3600 HUF) as applicable*. I just love it so much when there is a footnote star, but no corresponding footnote.

jonas-w 4y ago
I think it is the "Note:" sektion at the bottom, but yes no Star.

helloworld11 4y ago

Worth noting here quickly, after all the (fully deserved by the way) vitriol against paypal and its decades of institutionalized, legally protected crooked practices: The world of web3 and crypto may be full of scams and scammers, but the much older world of normal finance and fintech is fundamentally little different at its core. It's only more stable, better protected legally and has covered its ass under certain laws and regulatory capture with superior lobbying for politicians to look the other way at things that are obviously crooked but legally grey enough that they can be ignored most of the time.

pdimitar 4y ago

I don't care how they perfume this, I just got in and deleted all my bank and card details from my account. If I ever get charged anything even afterwards I'll go out of my way to sue them. Seriously, the hell is wrong with PayPal.

blueflow 4y ago

> Note: Personal accounts registered in Germany/Austria/Italy/Greece/Hungary/Poland are excluded from the inactivity fee assessment for 2022. Why might that be?

zinekeller 4y ago
It's simply mandatory sixty-day/ninety-day notice (as opposed to PayPal's voluntary 30-day notice in places without this mandatory period).
- jpswade 4y ago
  Mandatory under what terms?
  - zinekeller 4y ago
    Standard non-negotiable contracts (where you can only accept or reject) are required by consumer protection laws in those countries to have an effectivity period of at least 60 or 90 days (depending on the specific country) from the publication and notification date.

lakomen 4y ago

I used PayPal since 2006, because of the promise that I'd get my money back if I get scammed. A few years ago I played a browser game, Game of Thrones Winter is Coming. Chinese company. I'm in the EU. In the EU we have laws and regulations, if someone tries to scam you, you usually get your money or the product. The US has less support for the customer, aka the customer is in a worse place. In China you as a foreigner have no support. I bought a 20 eur package of Margery Tyrell, because I like the way she looks. I thought when I buy I, I would have her in my collection and could use her as my avatar. I bought it, but what I bought was 5 out of 10 requires tokens to unlock the base version of her. So I paid 20 eur for effectively nothing. It wasn't mentioned anywhere that I would need 10 tokens. The next 5 tokens would cost 70 eur! I wrote PayPal that this was a scam and that I wanted my money back. The response was that I have no proof and the case was closed with no way of appealing. I closed my PayPal account and will never return. I will also never spend money on a Chinese game.

elurg 4y ago

I don't understand why people defend this behavior.

dustymcp 4y ago

Never leave the casino without causing out.

jmclnx 4y ago

Well time o keep an eye on my Credit Card. If I see a fee from PayPal, I will tell the Creit Card Company to deny it. I will have to spend time to figure out how to close the PayPal account.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

thro1 4y ago

I can't acces my PayPal since few years, I've noticed PayPal that I need them to fix it, now I don't even remember how far I went trough their support without them doing anything, till I lost my patience and stop asking. How I could collect such fee ?

VPenkov 4y ago
You've got this backwards. They collect the fee from you, not the other way around. They do so until you run out of money, then they close your account. If you have money in your PayPal account, now is the time to withdraw it. If not, your account will eventually be closed.
- thro1 4y ago
  It's a result of PayPal inactivity - not mine. So, if they made a fee for that, isn't them who shall pay it in this case ? - as they were in position to fix it but didn't, when I did everything I could and I'm not responsible for it? (AFAIR they made some change which locked me out.) It's not backwards - if they made a rule, why would they not follow it the same way as shall I ? To see me in court ??

rpaddock 4y ago

My late wife has a PayPal account. When she died I wanted to put my name on the account. They requested a Death Certificate, which I provided. They acknowledged the Death Certificate then demanded prof that she was dead, before they would transfer the account to my control. I even talked to a Lawyer about this, who also got really pissed off at PayPal's attitude. Alas there is no money in the account so he said there really wasn't anything to do. The only person that can close the account seems to be my dead wife, and she appears to have no current interests in PayPal's shenanigans'.