Unfair charges from PayPal Credit?

lucaspiller

At the end of last year I bought my wife an iPhone 7 from eBay. We were a bit short on funds, so I took the offer of PayPal Credit which had an interest free option.

This month, on 18th February the first repayment was scheduled. I didn't realise it, but the bank account I'd setup the direct debit for didn't have enough balance, so the transaction failed.

On 23rd February Paypal sent me an email with a subject "Electronic funds transfer declined" regarding something called "Minimum Balance Manager":

<my bank> declined Minimum Balance Manager's second attempt to transfer money from your bank account to your PayPal account.

Balance Manager has been turned off and won't make any more attempts to restore the minimum balance that you set. To turn Balance Manager back on, log in to your PayPal account at
<can't post links as I'm a new user>, go to your Profile, click "My money", and update the "Balance Manager" section.

Yours sincerely,

PayPal

I wasn't sure what that was, so I logged into my account to follow the instructions, but I couldn't see the links the email mentioned. I went into the PayPal Credit section, and it showed that a payment had been taken on 18th February and said "You don't have a payment due", so assumed everything was ok.

The next day they sent me an email saying that I'd missed a payment, and that they've charged me a £12 fee. I then checked the bank account, and saw that no payment had been taken, and when logging into the PayPal Credit section again the previous payment had disappeared.

What I don't like about this, is if PayPal had clearly said 'your direct debit has failed, make a payment now or you'll be charged a fee' I would have done something about it, but instead they sent me a cryptic message, and when logging into my account said everything was ok.

John-K_3

The message looks pretty clear to me. I think you just need to put this down to experience and learn to budget better. Blaming someone else for you failing to honour your obligations is no way to go through life.

lildoonbuggy

What does your credit agreement say? If it sets out this charge then there's probably not much you can do, however it's always worth giving them a call to explain your confusion and asking them to waive the funds as a good will gesture. However it will be down to them so its worth adopting a repenting attitude or they may just say no. I do feel for you as the wording is, as you say, abstract but usually individual fees are set out in the credit agreement, so the point about clarity becomes somewhat moot.