Paypal double account error

They are taking your money twice due to a bug

[Receptional]

[networks.silicon.com...]

It appears that Paypal have been unable to fix a running sore that has caused some withdrawels to be debiting your paypal account twice instead of once. The bug is due to a through a third party processor (unnamed).

Paypal were "unavailable for comment" (why am I not surprised) although they had thought the bug had been fixed last week.

It brings into question the whole idea of keeping your money in cyberspace - or by trading on credit card for that matter - which strikes me as just as dangerous for people who do not reconcile their cards.

The story came to me at the same time as a new phishing scam that I hadn't seen before, confirming a payment on my otherwise unnamed credit card for some payroll service I was supposed to have signed up to. I didn't click on the associated link, but our CTO did from a safe machine, to find the site trying to load a trojan.

With people having to be wary of Phishing at one end, and wary of technology at the other, we tread a fine line in cyberspace when trying to keep the boats afloat.

[HRoth]

They have been double- and even triple-billing and then crediting back my account since the end of August. It has been in the red several times on account of this. I have had to call them three times. It's impossible to keep track of how much is in there because of course, Paypal, unlike any other financial institution, does not supply a running balance with each transaction. They don't WANT you to know exactly how much you have in there. Finally this last time they had the nerve to lecture me that the problem with these extra charges and credits back was basically mine, that I had to keep an eye on whether a pending charge was actually completed or not and so on. I said, no, the problem was their incompetence, that I have cut up my Paypal ATM card and wouldn't be using it ever again, and that I have gone back to just transferring the money to my bank. Then Paypal has the balls to send me a customer satisfaction survey.

I am so glad that I did not go any farther with changing to PayPal Pro after I investigated it some and found out how unworkable it is. Can you imagine how this would affect that?

[pp_rb]

My account had an accidental second charge due to this glitch, and it was refunded on 9/20. (I have a "Debit Card Credit Received" for the correct amount, and when I click on the Details link it is NOT connected back to a Debit Card Authorization or any other transaction.)

However, it is possible for you to see multiple entries in your History for the same purchase through normal use of the PayPal Debit Card. This is due to the way the merchant processes the transaction. When the merchant first authorizes the transaction, they may put your funds on hold without finalizing the sale. Some will then capture on the original authorization, but others will create a new transaction for it.

In some cases the merchant may create a new transaction without first cancelling the original authorization. The authorization will eventually expire, but those funds will still be on hold in your PayPal account until it expires or is cancelled by the merchant. I've had one case where a merchant did not cancel the original authorization, and it caused my account balance to be negative. There was no overdraft fee for this, and when the authorization expired a day or two later everything was fine with my account.