Paypal Woes

August 12, 2020 11:14 PM

A few minutes ago, I tried to use the Paypal app to transfer a small amount of money to my bank account. Somehow, my entire balance was transferred! Is there any way to stop this? I called Paypal support, but they are currently closed.
posted by matkline to Work & Money (4 answers total)

Response by poster: Follow up question--why the hell does Paypal make it the default to transfer your entire balance on their mobile app? Surely they would prefer to keep your money in house and earn interest on it?
posted by matkline at 11:15 PM on August 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's a relatively new thing that caught me out in exactly the same way a few months ago. As far as I know it can't be stopped, at least not within the app. Definitely not if you used the instant transfer feature.

It might be worth looking at the transaction on the website if you used the free transfer option that uses ACH since it is unlikely the batch has yet been processed. There may be a button to cancel, though I doubt it.
posted by wierdo at 11:45 PM on August 12, 2020

I gave up on using Paypal for transferring money -- if something goes wrong there is no apparent recourse. They have an array of fines waiting to be used and it took some contortions on my part to avoid paying one. I now use my bank for a monthly transfer I need to make.
posted by Agave at 11:08 AM on August 13, 2020

PayPal customer support is extremely hard to communicate with, even in non-pandemic times. I know someone who recently was scammed out of some money by a hack into his PayPal account. Even the police who investigated on the victims’ (there were many) behalf said they could not get a response. What finally helped is he found a PayPal executive on LinkedIn and was able to message her and she responded.
posted by areaperson at 1:51 PM on August 13, 2020