PayPal danger - PLEASE READ

booneruk

Jordec said:

Sorry Booner, just saw your edit at the bottom. The account was cleaned out using the card on PayPal. That emptied the account, so 5 days later, even though by this time PayPal was aware it was fraud, they reverted to the Direct Debit set up for Apple. You are correct, that was reversed by the bank within hours.

Ok, something I'm not sure of after all this - are you still missing any money?

booneruk

QrizB said:

Jordec said:

I’ve asked the admin to delete.

OP I'm sure your warning was posted in good faith; it's just that the problem doesn't seem to be as widespread as you initially thought.

It would be a shame if this thread is deleted. Other people may be along to report the same problem eventually, we are all wanting to help out here.

sausage_time

There was a less exciting post about this less than a week ago:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6626515/quick-paypal-tip-i-discovered-today

Chief_of_Staffy

It's Paypal. Don't be surprised. Just before I'd had enough of their incompetence, technical failures and extortionate charges last year, and closed my accounts, I did check my automatic payments and found seven had been set up, all without my permission. I checked a few years prior to that and found several that time too. No money had been taken, but that's not the point.

booneruk

Chief_of_Staffy said:

It's Paypal. Don't be surprised. Just before I'd had enough of their incompetence, technical failures and extortionate charges last year, and closed my accounts, I did check my automatic payments and found seven had been set up, all without my permission. I checked a few years prior to that and found several that time too. No money had been taken, but that's not the point.

I'm sorry that just sounds far fetched to me. Set up without your permission / action ? So you'd never had any dealings with those companies, ever and somehow they compromised PayPal's systems to set up automatic payments against your account - but then never drew anything through them?

I've been using Paypal for 20+ years, have been using the automatic payments for various subscriptions for years and have never had a single problem with any of it.

Now this feels crazy, but I feel the need to say it - I do not work for PayPal.

Chief_of_Staffy

booneruk said:

Chief_of_Staffy said:

It's Paypal. Don't be surprised. Just before I'd had enough of their incompetence, technical failures and extortionate charges last year, and closed my accounts, I did check my automatic payments and found seven had been set up, all without my permission. I checked a few years prior to that and found several that time too. No money had been taken, but that's not the point.

I'm sorry that just sounds far fetched to me. Set up without your permission? So you'd never had any dealings with those companies, ever and somehow they compromised PayPal's systems to set up automatic payments against your account - and then never drew anything from them?

Who said anything about not having dealings with the companies, or made any allegation of them 'compromising' Paypal's systems (whatever that means)? With each of these companies I made a single purchase, but had no subscription or recurring changes. Yet when I looked, they were all registered as an automatic payee on Paypal. The 'last payment' was always the single payment I made for the purchase, so none of them took more than they should, but the point is that had they wished, they could have.

booneruk

Chief_of_Staffy said:

booneruk said:

Chief_of_Staffy said:

It's Paypal. Don't be surprised. Just before I'd had enough of their incompetence, technical failures and extortionate charges last year, and closed my accounts, I did check my automatic payments and found seven had been set up, all without my permission. I checked a few years prior to that and found several that time too. No money had been taken, but that's not the point.

I'm sorry that just sounds far fetched to me. Set up without your permission? So you'd never had any dealings with those companies, ever and somehow they compromised PayPal's systems to set up automatic payments against your account - and then never drew anything from them?

Who said anything about not having dealings with the companies, or made any allegation of them 'compromising' Paypal's systems (whatever that means)? With each of these companies I made a single purchase, but had no subscription or recurring changes. Yet when I looked, they were all registered as an automatic payee on Paypal. The 'last payment' was always the single payment I made for the purchase, so none of them took more than they should, but the point is that had they wished, they could have.

You probably didn't read the small print during checkout - there are valid reasons why an automatic payment agreement (much like a direct debit) is set up. If a company doesn't make this clear, they're in the wrong. For example If I buy an internet domain name, it will need renewing after a year and therefore most domain companies will set up an automatic payment if PayPal is used, and like a direct debit they have to initiate a payment. It's more an authority to take payment than automatic payments. I also have Uber set up as one - so when I use Uber, my Paypal gets billed without any steps. It's great for that.

If you didn't have any interaction with these companies and they added an automatic payment to PayPal against your account, then they would have very much compromised PayPal's systems. That's what I meant by that.

It's not a bad habit to go into automatic payments every now and again and tidy things up. This actually gives us somewhat more control than the Visa/Mastercard systems for recurring charges -  Continuous Payment Authorities (where we'd have to phone the bank and get someone to cancel an agreement)

Chief_of_Staffy

booneruk said:

Chief_of_Staffy said:

booneruk said:

Chief_of_Staffy said:

It's Paypal. Don't be surprised. Just before I'd had enough of their incompetence, technical failures and extortionate charges last year, and closed my accounts, I did check my automatic payments and found seven had been set up, all without my permission. I checked a few years prior to that and found several that time too. No money had been taken, but that's not the point.

I'm sorry that just sounds far fetched to me. Set up without your permission? So you'd never had any dealings with those companies, ever and somehow they compromised PayPal's systems to set up automatic payments against your account - and then never drew anything from them?

Who said anything about not having dealings with the companies, or made any allegation of them 'compromising' Paypal's systems (whatever that means)? With each of these companies I made a single purchase, but had no subscription or recurring changes. Yet when I looked, they were all registered as an automatic payee on Paypal. The 'last payment' was always the single payment I made for the purchase, so none of them took more than they should, but the point is that had they wished, they could have.

You probably didn't read the small print during checkout - there are valid reasons why an automatic payment agreement (much like a direct debit) is set up. If a company doesn't make this clear, they're in the wrong. For example If I buy an internet domain name, it will need renewing after a year and therefore most domain companies will set up an automatic payment if PayPal is used.

If you didn't have any interaction with these companies and they added an automatic payment to PayPal against your name, then they would have very much compromised PayPal's systems. That's what I meant by that.

It's not a bad habit to go into automatic payments every now and again and tidy things up. This actually gives us somewhat more control than the Visa/Mastercard systems for recurring charges -  Continuous Payment Authorities (where we'd have to phone the bank and get someone to cancel an agreement)

There's only two I can think of that might be down to a auto-renewal (I say might, I'm pretty sure they weren't), but I checked 3 or 4 of the others and they were just ordinary purchases. One was a dog harness. The point is, Paypal are very eager to do checks in some areas, often holding money for weeks in the case of new accounts, but they seem to simply take the word of some businesses that it's OK to set up a channel for the business to take money from the customer at any point they choose.

Zanderman

booneruk said:

QrizB said:

Jordec said:

I’ve asked the admin to delete.

OP I'm sure your warning was posted in good faith; it's just that the problem doesn't seem to be as widespread as you initially thought.

It would be a shame if this thread is deleted. Other people may be along to report the same problem eventually, we are all wanting to help out here.

There's an existing recent thread here: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6626515/quick-paypal-tip-i-discovered-today

No real need for another, especially one that is rather overly alarmist. 

Sure there's arguably a need for this to be highlighted, but probably best by merging the two threads appropriately. 

booneruk

Zanderman said:

booneruk said:

QrizB said:

Jordec said:

I’ve asked the admin to delete.

OP I'm sure your warning was posted in good faith; it's just that the problem doesn't seem to be as widespread as you initially thought.

It would be a shame if this thread is deleted. Other people may be along to report the same problem eventually, we are all wanting to help out here.

There's an existing recent thread here: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6626515/quick-paypal-tip-i-discovered-today

No real need for another, especially one that is rather overly alarmist. 

Sure there's arguably a need for this to be highlighted, but probably best by merging the two threads appropriately. 

They're distinct enough topics though, this thread is regarding fraudulent (or more likely accidental) repeat debits to an automatic payment agreement on PayPal - and the suggestion it's a big issue we should all be looking out for.

The thread you link to is just someone saying there's this "automatic payments" management screen you can go to in PayPal.

However I do think this one is destined to go.