what the hell is going on at Paypal?

usignuolo

I am self employed and currently travelling in a remote part of the north where phone and internet coverage is patchy. So I have been logging in via my phone whenever I can because I have been watching for an Invitation to Tender for a work related project where I have to register my details as soon as it is announced to stand a chance. I do this by paying a nominal fee via Paypal to the supplier. I told the supplier before I went I would be away in the north but they said they could not make any exceptions to the process.


I was in phone range when entries opened and texted the person processing entries to explain I was unable to get back at once because I was out of internet range for the rest of the morning. They replied that they were sympathetic but could make no exceptions to the process.


I got into a location with a wifi link this afternoon and logged onto paypal with my laptop and tried to send in my registration via a paypal payment.


At this point I hit paypal's new security procedures. Although I am a verified member (have been for years almost since the outset) and my account is directly linked to my Barclaycard and has never missed a payment, the software it said I had to provide extra verification - because the pc and location I was using were not my usual one and not recognised. I had to do this by accepting an automated phone call with a code.


Fine but it did not work. I clicked ok and it would only accept my home phone number as the relevant phone which of course is no use when I am not there. I managed with some difficulty to change it to my mobile number, and tried again but this time I just got an automated Paypal message saying unable to process payments at this time. (seems to be due to my unrecognised and unverified location which it will not allow me to verify).


My colleague who regularly pays for things using Paypal on his laptop, then tried to pay for me, and he got a message saying his payment would be need to verified by a text message to his mobile phone, only it showed his home phone number. It would however not let him add his mobile phone number to confirm by text,


While all this was happening a message went out from the person doing the registration for the work saying that their maximum no of registrations has been received and they were not accepting any more.


So I have lost the chance of bidding for a job I wanted and was well qualified to do. More to the point, how am I to pay for anything via Paypal in future when I am on the road? It is now telling me my profile is not complete without their phone app and the account has to be linked to my bank account. I do not want to do this


I am happy to verify via a code or text sent to my mobile phone but that does not work. What on earth am I supposed to do?

I_have_spoken

Sounds like some more preparation would have prevented p*ss-poor performance

usignuolo

Is that supposed to be a helpful remark?




I knew only that the ITT would be coming out sometime this week, not which day as this info was not available in advance. And I knew I would have a very short window in which to respond. But I could not stay at home, to wait and my other work colleague, who would normally deal with it, was called away urgently to Spain on a domestic matter last week where like the north of England, IT coverage is patchy .


So I had to trust if I travelled fully equipped to respond with fully charged laptop, phone and dongle and checked every few hours for the ITT then when it came out I would be able to respond in short order. I was handicapped because the area where I have been working is remote, and phone and web access tricky but once connected I should have been able to log in to Paypal and pay.


I had no idea they had changed the account verification process and I would need to reverify my account because I was not paying from my usual pc and location. But even the new procedure would have been ok if the new Paypal verification software worked. It does not. The methods it offered for re-verifying my account simply did not work (eg send sec code to phone, send sec text to phone). And when I had as I believed completed the full reverification process all that happened was that it refused to process my payment. Said come back later.


My colleague, who regularly buys and pays for stuff while on the road, could not get the new PP verification process to work either with his laptop either. He said it seemed to want you to install their app and link your bank account (not credit card) to pay on the move. This should not be necessary.


I have a Barclays online account and can log in and pay from anywhere so long as I have my "vericard" with me, Barclays are constantly simplifying online payments. Paypal seems to being going in the opposite direction, like Tesco. whose credit card which colleague has more or less given using because of the impenetrable runaround he gets when he tries to use it to buy something on line.


It IS unreasonable to issue an ITT on a previously undisclosed day and then announce a cut off after the first 50 expressions of interest via a Paypal payment (for the documents) before the official deadline but that is how it works in this particular case. I just have to write it down to experience.


But as of now neither my colleague nor I have managed to get our ids verified by Paypal in order to pay, despite being customers of many years with clean records.

agrinnall

Is payment by Paypal the only acceptable way? Seems like a pretty shoddy requirement when there are are plenty of alternatives available.

Big_Graeme

You have to pay a fee to tender for a job? And pay by PayPal? Not sure I'd be happy with either to be honest.

The security measures have been in place for a while but you'd only notice if you changed PC, location or both, I agree a right royal pain.

wealdroam

If Paypal are anything like Halifax, then they will not allow verification via a phone newly registered to them for seven days.

Think about it.

Anyone who had your password could register their mobile and instantly access your account if they didn't have that time delay.

I imagine you would be extremely annoyed if that had happened.

As has been said... more preparation should've been done.

usignuolo

A delay might be acceptable if you wanted to change your details permanently and you were warned it would take some days to activate, but there is no warning and in any case I am not changing my permanent location only using a temporary work one.

And my colleague had a valid mobile phone number already on file with Paypal and it still prompted that it was going to send the confirmation text message to his home number (landline).

It does seem that it is impossible to log in and pay from another address not your own if you want to use Paypal. I can do this with Amazon - ie log in from anywhere and pay for items for example I do this to buy and download books to my kindle when I am on the road.

I used to work for a service company where the sales team and the service engineers were on the road all the time. How would they be expected to use Paypal if it only works from your designated "home" PC location? What are the alternatives?

(The requirement to use Paypal to register an interest is mad I know, it is supposed to cover the cost of the initial tender documentation, again mad but it is not my project to offer and I cannot make the rules. It still raises questions about how you pay via Paypal if you are not home or office based).

I would add I am a regular user of Paypal and used it to pay the same supplier only a month ago. At that time I was still be presented with the Classic system not the new one.

PenguinJim

usignuolo wrote: »

It does seem that it is impossible to log in and pay from another address not your own if you want to use Paypal.

That can't be true, as I often buy things with Paypal while on the road. I've bought things using my tablet on the train, using my laptop in the office, using my PC at home, and using my phone while dropping the kids off at the pool.

However, once in Q2 2013, I was trying to make a purchase using Paypal my laptop from a new location, and it wouldn't let me. It wanted to perform a security check. As a result, I unable to do anything with my account for about 24 hours, which was a bit annoying, but had never happened before (or since). In fact, I was trying to purchase a time-sensitive bargain, so it was imperative that I Paypal the Paypal! (I borrowed a friend's Paypal account and everything went swimmingly... despite that friend living in another country )

Could you have been the victim of a coincidental security check triggered in part by a new location/device?

usignuolo

Well I have been doing some searching online and it looks like I have been the victim of what amounts to a perfect storm.


When I logged on to pay, I was presented with the new PP "mobile-friendly" format screen. So clearly their update program which includes "better" security has now reached me.


When I tried to pay, signing into PP using my laptop from my hotel, I got an error message saying I was at an unrecognised IP address using an unrecognised pc (in fact my regular laptop) and they would send a verification message to my home landline phone (bit of a waste of time as I was 400 miles away from home.)


So then a colleague, who does indeed use his laptop to buy things regularly with PP, tried to pay for me. He has both landline and mobile registered on his PP account. He filled in payment details and got a message saying it would send a verification text to his mobile. It then autocompleted the relevant phone number field with his landline and would not let him change it.....


He managed to get it to send him a verification text to his correct mobile after a couple of tries, but then it blocked him when he tried to make the payment for me, just would not process it. I meanwhile managed to find where to update my account (not clear in the new format) and updated my home phone number to that of my mobile and tried again, expecting a verification text. Instead I got an error message saying my request could not be processed at present. Nothing saying you will now have to wait 24 hours for the changes to activate. Or that you need to register these with them if you get a new permanent pc or location.o


Do you use your laptop pc for all your PP transactions? In which case it may be that PP has updated your record to show it is your main pc and you will have similar problem to me when you try to pay at home if that is a different pc. I am surprised that it lets you log on and pay from wherever you are as that does not seem to be how the PP security now works, it expects you to be in a fixed location for which it has recorded the IP address (although it does not tell you this). They seem to be rolling out the changes at present, maybe you still have that pleasure to come.


Doing some searching on a PP forum, I found a fairly recent message from someone who had a job in Italy for 3 months, where they created an internet account with Italian Telecom to pay for things for delivery to their home address. Italian Telecom apparently assigns you a dynamic not static IP address when you log in. The person then found they could not use Paypal to pay for things because of this dynamic IP address. They got in touch with Paypal who said basically, you cannot use temporary IP addresses, you will need to reregister as an Italian resident with a fixed IP address. Which is no good either as they want the stuff sent to their home while they are away.


I understand all the security concerns. When I pay for things with my Barclaycard, and then Barclaycard does a periodic random an audit check, they phone my home number and ask me to verify it by voice and also send a message to my mobile, listing the queried transactions. If they are really mine (which they always are) I just need to type Y. I can use either voice or text method to verify.


It looks to me as though whatever software improvements Paypal has introduced to use your home and mobile numbers to verify a payment, there is a bug as it is unable to distinguish between home and mobile phone numbers for verification. Also if you do change either number, there is no verification message saying how long you have to wait for it to become active again.


Some US based software can be odd about this. Our son lives in the USA and requested a birthday present not available here. I tried to pay with paypal but it would not let me because I was registered in the uk. So I actually phoned the manufacturer direct in the States with my debit card to order it. They refused to take the order, even though it was for posting within the USA on the grounds that they only took orders from US residents. PERIOD. In the end I found it listed with an amazon.com supplier, ordered it via amazon and it arrived within 2 days. Praise the lord for Amazon.

Uxb

Most UK consumer/retail internet connections are dynamic not fixed IP addresses.
These can change even when the line remains in sync if what is called the PPP session is interrupted.
This might be by say BTOR doing overnight maintenance or load balancing being done by your ISP across their gateways which causes a new PPP session and with it a new IP address.

paddyrg

I fully believe you that PP have been tinkering and not always for the best. I use (for security) the extra security feature odd being sent an access code to my phone for verification - it's PayPal's 2FA system. Except you then could not log in via the mobile app or mobile version of their website. I asked them, and they really, truly, actually told me that I should turn off the 2FA and reduce the security of my account if I wanted to pay for anything on the road. Laughable, if it wasn't so incompetent.