Hello. I've just been going through several aggravating days with Paypal. It started last Saturday when my Paypal debit card did not work, and I couldn't pay for a $23 purchase at Goodwill. The cashier thought the problem was in her system, so I walked across the street to Safeway to buy something and pull $40 cash back. That didn't work either. I checked my Paypal account and it was just fine, with several hundreds of dollars in the account. So I started reading the Paypal forum to see if anybody else was having troubles. They sure were. Many people were crying that the "Smart Connect" system was down and had been for days, and they had to pay bills and invoices today or get hit with a late fee. Other people were complaining that their Paypal debit cards were not working and they could not pay for purchases, just like my experience. Paypal was assuring everybody that it was just a tiny technical difficulty and it would be fixed tomorrow. "Tomorrow" came and went and people still couldn't pay for things. Then, one person reported in the Paypal forum that the "Smart Connect" system came back up at around 4PM on Sunday afternoon, 15 May. But my Paypal debit card still didn't work. Today, I looked into the Paypal forums to see what people were saying, and all of the threads that complained about Paypal being down had been erased. Reading the forums, you would think there was never a problem. Also, any thread that suggested or asked if Paypal got hacked was also erased. The thread that warned about new Paypal scams, emails that ask people to fill out a form with information like card numbers and passwords, was also erased. Today I got an email explaining that Paypal had frozen my account because of "suspicious transactions". I had recently bought two disk drives from Newegg at $79.99 each, to be shipped to my home address, same as always with everything that I buy with Paypal. And I also paid Omnis.com $23 to renew my domain name. How suspicious is that? What I found suspicious was that I received an email a day earlier saying that my account was frozen because of suspicious activities, and I should call an 800 number to verify the purchases, and that I should have my card number handy. I always read the headers with messages like that, to see where they really came from, and this one looked like a fake. The return address was totally goofy: v-ccolhii_boocdlhoi_galjikm_galjikm_a@bounce.mkt2944.com That sure does not look like "Paypal.com". But the message contained my real name, and the last four digits of my card number, and of course had my correct email address. How did Mr. "v-ccolhii_boocdlhoi_galjikm_galjikm_a" get that information? Oddly enough, the phone number that I was supposed to call was apparently a correct one for Paypal: 1-800-830-8574. At least, it's the same phone number as the message I got today wants me to call. I don't know what is going on there and Paypal won't say. Personally, I am inclined to believe the rumors that Paypal got hacked. They won't admit it, and won't talk about it. They are just deleting all messages that talk about it. So I'm posting to this forum where Paypal cannot delete the messages. Does anyone else have any odd experiences with Paypal during the last week?
I've been carrying on an email dialogue constantly. One fellow assured me that they would have my card turned back on within a day or so. Another assured me that they would not turn the card back on until I telephoned them. Go figure. I have not phoned because I don't have a phone any more. I got tired of Quest and T-Mobile ripping me off, and I'm quite happy without a phone. And I'm sure not going to borrow somebody else's phone and use up an hour of minutes while Paypal puts me on hold. I've been reading the posts from other people, and that's what happened to them when they called the number.