I thought I should give everyone a "heads up" about the PayPal Plugin that allows you to pay any merchant online even though they don't take PayPal as a payment. It's an easy to install plug-in that rests in your browser tool bar that drops down whenever you go to a payment page of some kind... it has fraud alert and other stuff also... altho the drop down box can be annoying if you're surfing the web cause it's always dropping down and you have to manually close it... there's no shut off for it... Anyway, What this plug-in does is generate a secure credit card number for you on the fly to use only once or more if you like and you use that for the CC payment. I installed it cause I didn't want to get another debit card from them but wanted to access my money for bills when necessary rather than wait for it to transfer to my bank account... And I have to admit it worked great... BUT... Be prepared to have your funds tied up for 5-7 days... what they do is process the payment, put your funds on hold/pending for whatever amount you're paying until the merchant Completes the transaction... BUT... when the Complete the transaction, Paypal does ANOTHER transaction and ties up more funds in that same amount... Now, here's the kicker, the transaction is completed... merchant has been paid BUT there is still that transaction of Pending for the same amount meaning the funds have been removed from your account twice... BUT THEY WILL NOT RELEASE THAT TRANSACTION OR FUNDS BACK TO YOUR ACCOUNT FOR AT LEAST 5 DAYS OF THE TRANSACTION BEING COMPLETED! I called PayPal and went thru hell with some assinine woman who I could barely understand and all they would say is "That's Our Policy" there's nothing we can do... Typical PayPal BS... So now my funds are tied up until they decide to release it and my other automatic payments will bounce and then bounce my attached checking account when it tries to withdraw funds from there... meanwhile, PayPal collects interest on my funds... So people, unless you have a lot of money in your PayPal account or don't mind having your money tied up and unusable... Stay away from using the Paypal Plugin... Better yet, stay away from PayPal as much as possible... Find other payment alternatives if you can and keep your Paypal accounts to a minimum...
Was the first deduction on your card, something to do with the 'pending charge' and the second one is the actual charge ? Because I did noticed the same with the debit cards I used. You typically need twice the amount of money if you want to make a payment. It seems to be some silly things with debit cards which cannot determine that the pending charge and the actual charge is one at the same transaction.
I don't understand this. What if you have a balance of $200 and you just used the plugin to purchase a $200 item. There wouldn't be anything left to hold.
It depends on the vendor. Sometimes, they do a Pending Charge to see if you have the money first then after a while submit the request for the money. However if they just do a direct charge then you see it as one transaction. If you view your credit card statement especially if you have online realtime statement, you may see some money taken off your balance but there is no transaction then after a while, the transaction appears. ePassporte describes it best as
And that's when they tap into your bank account to fund it automatically. Basically, what's happening is that you're paying twice for one purchase. But what is frustrating, is that even tho the transaction was COMPLETED not just verified, they insist upon holding the pending funds for another 5 days or so... My transaction was COMPLETED on the 10th, I called Paypal on the 12th to find out why my funds weren't being released and they gave me a lot of BS... We all know the funds were transferred for the COMPLETED transaction on the 10th, they know it and I know it... EFT's DON'T TAKE FIVE DAYS TO TRANSFER! So why withhold the additional funds for another 5 days?!! PayPal's Policies serve no one but themselves and I think they've just become too much of a "monopoly" and doing whatever they want to whomever they want... I am moving all of my stuff away from them as much as possible... Unfortunately, Paypal is necessary for eBay.... eBay makes sure of that especially since they own Paypal... It's a catch 22... JUST DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND STAY AWAY FROM THE PLUG-IN...
There was no deductions on my debit card... fortunately I had enough cash in my Paypal account to cover both the charges... the cash was transferred and completed on the 10th but they still insist on keeping the second Pending charge funds for another 5 business days... Now when eBay goes to take their automatic payment the funds won't be there and Paypal will try to transfer funds from my bank account where there is no money (I keep the balance very low to prevent any Paypal freezing etc) which will result in a Insufficient Funds (bounce) by my bank and will cost me $29 everytime Paypal tries to withdraw... ALL BECAUSE THEY WON'T RELEASE MY PENDING FUNDS!! At this time, I don't have the cash to put in the checking account to cover my eBay charges... I had those funds in my PayPal account... SO I'M SCREWED...
i have never used paypal plugin as i think they're only available for US verified Paypal account owners only, but i'll take note of this thread - thanks
paypal is shady with things like this. i agree that stay away from them as much as possible. i recently had my account limited because someone did a chargeback on an ebook i sold (which is lame in and of itself) so after they 'held' the amount sold in my account and finally gave it back to the guy i thought it was over. but no, since paypal charged me a fee when i recieved the money i was short like .50 cents on the total amount owed so they limited my account and it took like a week to get it resolved.
I don't mean about the deduction from your debit card but the Paypal Plug-in is treated like a debit card in this case. I had the same problem when I was using ePassporte Virtual Visa too and the pending charge wasn't cleared or lifted after the transaction was completed. Same issue with the credit card at times. It all depends on how the merchant does the charging. Some requires a 2 step charging. The first time is the Pending Charge to your Paypal Plugin which would determine if you have sufficient money and that the card is real. Then they are supposed to submit the confirmation for the charge. They may do it as two different transaction. Not too long ago, I bought an airticket using my credit card and that is what happened. I had a pending hold and the actual charge came after. Had to wait about 30 days for the pending hold to clear and until that time, twice the amount was being blocked from my account. I suspect that in your case, it may not be the merchant doing that to you but since your Paypal Plug-in is merely a Virtual number and not a real credit card, it probably belongs to main account managed by paypal and because of the massive number of transactions they have, they may have to run some batch processing to align the pending charge to the actual transaction for each of their subsidiary accounts. Probably these are not done in real time. In the end, you might want to use a real debit card for your purchases to avoid this. Just transfer all your funds from Paypal to your bank account which is linked to your bank-issued debit card. Incidentally if the pending charge is not lifted, the best option is to contact the vendor and have them fax to Paypal to have the pending charge lifted. That worked for me with ePassporte.
I personally never had a problem with the PayPal plugin, but then again I have not used it much. For what I used it for it was great.
Yes, it did work great for me too... But I'm not going have my funds frozen on COMPLETED transactions just because PayPal wants to keep it for 5 days... If the transaction hadn't been completed I would understand... and if they held the Pending transaction funds for 24 hrs or so I could understand that too... That's how the banks do it... BUT 5 BUSINESS DAYS???? Let's get real here... there's no need to keep funds frozen that long... I've NEVER had a bank or CC card hold pending transactions for more than 24 hrs... they're usually removed the same day of the Completed Transaction in the evening updates... Paypal does what Paypal wants... they control you and your money... BEWARE!
I smell another class action lawsuit coming up. Thank you for letting us know. If I were to see that new plug-in i'd be all over that, now I know to stay away, thanks!
The solution which would work best for all would be to have Paypal remove the Plug-ins option completely. At least no one would be complaining about it and it would lighten the load on Paypal's end. In the end, everyone would be a lot happier.
I have been using Paypal plug in since it first came out and have NEVER had this problem. I also never leave money in my paypal..I transfer it to my bank the second it gets in there.
Has paypal actually tapped into your CC or bank account to do that if your balance wasn't enough to cover a "double" charge? Can anyone else confirm whether paypal is actually doing this?