Paypal Direct Debit speed. Not sure if this should be a vent or praise! :-P

vacheron

Having spotted that Lloyds bank are offering £500 for switching an account with 3 active direct debits, and being otherwise able to meet all the criteria, I thought that will do for me!.

However, the Santander account I intended to switch it only had 2 active direct debits set up. Not a problem though, PayPal allow you to set up your bank account to use for payments which shows as a Direct Debit, so I'll do that and make some regular purchases and as soon as they take the payment and it shows in my Santander account as the third active direct debit, I'll switch it over to Lloyds.

Cut forward over 2 and a half weeks, I have made numerous payments by PayPal totalling over £350, which they have duly paid and I have received the goods.

Have they made any effort to actually recoup all this money they have paid for me on my behalf?…. they have not!

Typical finance institutions, chasing people for money like wolves until the customer actually wants that to happen, then suddenly they become a charity! 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️😁

flaneurs_lobster

My pessimist self would make me worry about this sudden largess by PayPal.

Do you have any other payment methods or bank accounts linked to your PayPal account?

Do you have PayPal Credit happily charging you interest on this balance?

Not likely reason - I once managed to confuse my two PayPal accounts (I know, me bad) and complained about inactivity on the wrong one….

vacheron

I used to have my Barclays account Connected, but removed that and added Santander instead.

I also have 2 credit cards linked. which I usually use as the primary payment method. But I made sure I set the default to the Santander Bank account, which I have confirmed was used for all the transactions.

There are also no transactions on any of my other linked accounts which also backs this up.

I had a £10K PayPal credit line for years, but asked them to remove this a few years ago as it wasn't getting used… which they did.

I only have the one PayPal. Google suggests they use a slower (cheaper) DD payment method and take the risk in the interrim, so payments can take 2-4 days to clear sometimes, but some of these have been 14 days plus now! 🤪

flaneurs_lobster

Is the DD showing as set up on your Santander account?

For my last switch (also Lloyds) I set up DDs on each of my PP accounts and then sent £1 Friends'n'Family from one to t'other and back again. Worked a treat and that was paid in about a week.

Maybe sending a cash payment might kick the DD to life? Got a pal with a PP account?

vacheron

Unfortunately I can't tell as there was already a dormant PayPal DD in the payments section which has been carried across from about 2 bank switches ago!

So all I can see is Paypal, and No Date! 🤦‍♂️

I also switched another couple of DD's from regular monthly providers which are showing, but I thought PayPal would be quicker! 🤪

vacheron

That's all I can see right now. Actually, when I click on the right arrow I can see "Setup 20th March 2026".

Lloyds are just specifc that they need 3 ACTIVE direct debits, so I want to see 3 values there before I apply.

Dear PayPal, PLEASE take my money! 😂

qsk

For the same purpose as you, I set up a Paypal DD to draw from my donor account. I did a £1 top up in Paypal through that DD and was warned it would take a couple of weeks. The £1 was collected in that time frame and the DD is shown as active in my donor account.

vacheron

Thanks for your comment. Pleased to report that Santander have shown an actual value today (13 working days after it was taken). I thought that this would be for all transactions to date, but no, just the very first transaction I made for £19.99.

I guess the rest will follow over the next couple of weeks, but at least I can now apply to Lloyds with confidence….. just watch me fail the eligibility check now! 🤣

vacheron

All done. Lloyds signup took about 6 minutes from start to finish, the application even scans your passport biometrics chip whcih is a new one on me!

Cashback is £500, so I make that £5000 per hour, so well worth the wait in the end! 😀