Just the impetus I needed to close my own account. PayPal has been useful to me approximately twice in the last twelve months or so; I can live without it. On the other hand, I donāt need the inconvenience of more unsolicited calls.
I find paypal useful, so Iām not going to close my account, at least not yet. But they are not the only company to do things like this and so you just arm yourself to shrug off their shit.
For my home telephone number, Iāve ported it to a cloud telephony provider for $3 per month plus $0.05 per minute usage. https://www.callfire.com/pricing I have a simple phone menu (no voice mail) that transfers calls to one of our four mobile numbers. 95% of the calls made to my home number are hangups - the robo dialer does not know how to press[1] for me, [2] for my wife, etc.
For our mobile phones we run an app called Mr. Numbers http://mrnumber.com/ which crowd sources the flagging of spam originating telephone numbers. Some spammy calls still do get through, a couple a week, but most are caught and simply hungup on before the mobile phone even rings twice.
If paypal resorts to making non-opt-out marketing calls, they will simply be filtered out with the rest of the spam.
PayPal, hmmmm. Oh yeah, I remember when PayPal went public 13 years ago. EBay paid [Oct. 2002] $1.5 billion for all of PayPalās shares at the time. Draw your own conclusionsā¦
I am not a lawyer, but Iāve had to do some research on this topic for professional reasons. It would appear to me that PayPalās rule is a direct violation of FCC regulations on telemarketing robocalls.
FCC rules require express written consent for telemarketing robocalls, and the company isnāt allowed to require the consumer to sign the consent agreement as a condition of receiving any goods or services.
For a readable article on the topic, see here: http://www.natlawreview.com/article/fcc-adopts-rules-requiring-written-consent-telemarketing-robocalls
For the actual text of the FCC regulations, see here: http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=033a7e3f1768924106b5e869167a73ae&mc=true&node=sp47.3.64.l&rgn=div6
Tyrannical socialist sharia EU rules require direct marketing companies to give you an opt-out option every time they send you a message. Your personal data cannot be disclosed to a third party without your consent, nor can they be sent to a non-EU country unless it provides equivalent levels of protection.
How we look to the USA and sigh at our lack of Freedom!
PayPal is currently my websiteās merchant processor, so I am responsible for a few thousand dollars of their income per year. Iāll ask them about it.
Good thing I gave them a 1-900 number for their recordsā¦
I changed my # at PoorPal to (XXX) 555-1212. Here in North America, thatās always a fun number to hand out on webforms. Using āJennyās #ā can cause hassles to innocent civilians.
Iāll also note that PayPalās own phone # is (888) 221-1161. I canāt guarantee that the webform will accept that answer, but it would be loads of fun if that works.
They walked it back earlier today.
I just tried it. It does. Hopefully they wonāt deactivate my account over it, but if they doā¦ well, maybe itās time to find an alternative.
Iām pretty cautious about Paypal having read the horror stories.
I will never link it to a bank account again (had that set up at one point), and if I sell anything, I immediately transfer that money ASAP as it comes in.
The convenience factor is quite nice, but I would like something with a little more consumer protections. Ebay always rules in protection of the buyer (itās own issue), but it seems like Paypal doesnāt have very good protections against predatory sellers.
Does anyone know a paypal alternative that offers a better deal, that is still somewhat widely used?
The only answer Iāve ever found to that is, āVisaā.
How quaint. I remember when the FCC mattered!
This seems like the worst time to try this sort of thing
PayPal has always been sleazy, but for a lot of people, it was the only way to make on-line payments work, since banks were slow at groking the internet. Now, there are increasingly other options on-line, and a lot of their market share has a barrier to switch, but if they annoy their customers enough, people will put up with that pain just to get away.
People donāt use a GVoice number for all their public facing/unneeded phone numbers on account signups?
Really?
Next youāll tell me people donāt use Mailinator.com for throwaway mail accounts.
I changed my phone number to (000) 000-0000, and the system accepted it. However, everyone needs to note that PPās terms donāt limit them to simply the number you currently have on record. They assume the right to use any number they can find, by any means, associated with your name. This would, one assumes, include any phone numbers in their database backups. So, changing your phone number now probably wonāt protect you very much.
Right now, Iām mulling over deleting my account. I used PP once over the past two years. It was a transaction with a private seller, which seems to be the primary domain for PP transaction anymore.
Iāve heard too many horror stories about PayPal, its TOS, and its resolution of disputes. If going through PP is the only way to purchase a product, then I really donāt need the product
As @pjcamp points out, they have responded to public outcry, but it was sheer corporate arrogance to include those terms in the first place. Saying āWeāre sorry, weāve fixed itā isnāt going to cut it.
Instructions for opting out will be displayed on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying āBeware of the Leopard.ā
Thatās the display department.
I do a fairly large amount of business though ebay and paypal. Thatās the āCustomer serviceā department.
