bitterdiatribe
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posted on October 14, 2000 07:16:09 PM
A few minutes agoI received an email informing me a bidder had sentme $ via PayPal. I went to my box and its empty.
I re-read the notification of payment email from PP and it says the following:
"You've got cash!
_________has just sent you money with PayPal.
Amount: $______
Simply click http://www.PayPal.com/links/uni and complete the
one-page registration form to claim your money. For a limited
time, if you sign up and activate your account, you will
receive a $5 New Account Bonus.
You may withdraw your money at any time by requesting a check
or making a direct deposit to your bank account. You can also
send the money to your friends.
PayPal lets users send money to anyone with an email address. Use
PayPal.com to settle restaurant tabs with colleagues, pay
friends for movie tickets, or buy a baseball card at an online
auction. You can also send personalized money requests to your
friends for a group event or party.
X.com's backers include Nokia Ventures, Madison Dearborn
Partners, Qualcomm, Sequoia Capital, Deutsche Bank, idealab
Capital Partners and Goldman Sachs. Our state-of-the
-art encryption provides the highest level of security.
For more information about PayPal, check out
http://www.PayPal.com/.
Welcome to PayPal!
Note: If you already have a PayPal account, be sure to log in
at http://www.PayPal.com/ and add this email address in the
Profile subtab under My Account to collect your money."
I looked under the profile tab and i still cant find a way to claim my money.
When u click the link on the email this is what appears:
http://www.paypal.x.com/cgi-bin/webscr?REDIRECT_URI=/links/uni
I am a verified member and have been for over a year. This has never happened to me.
Are they holding my money for ranson to force me to upgrade?
Are they not keeping to their word when they said we have until Oct 16 to upgrade or until over a six month period we accept up to $500.00 in payments?
Is this their latest tactic of intimidation and deceit?
Have any of you experienced this today?
By the sign up page link on the email they are telling me they r either no acknowledging I am already a member OR that in order for me to claim my money i have to re-sign or re-join under Premier or Business.
This is very upsetting.
Anyone has any feedback on this?
Thanks in advance.
Bitter Diatribe
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tomwiii
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posted on October 14, 2000 07:32:40 PM
bitterdiatribe: This sounds like a simple problem! What usually happens is this: your winner INCORRECTLY entered your email addy -- however it was CLOSE so you got the EMAIL but not the MONEY!
What I would do is contact the buyer; tell him to cancel the PENDING pmt; and then resend with the CORRECT email addy!
Although I think Pay-Hell SUCKS! & MUSK SMELLS, this is usually a minor problem!
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bitterdiatribe
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posted on October 14, 2000 07:38:48 PM
Thanks for your reply. However I disagree.
The mistake email address has happened to me before so I never got the email or the money.
Here it is telling me I have it but in order to "CLAIM" it I have to sign up with PayPal.
I am already a member.
I am back to square one.
<<<<<<frustrated
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amalgamated2000
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posted on October 14, 2000 07:47:11 PM
I had the same thing happen recently. Normally, if there's even a slight typo in an email address, the email will not be delivered.
However, there are 2 exceptions that I know of that are a problem with Paypal.
In my case, it turned out that the problem was that the buyer had put a period at the end of the email address. The notification email still reaches the sender, but with the period on the end, Paypal doesn't recognize the email address as belonging to you.
This problem would be extremely easy for Paypal to fix, but they don't seem interested, as far as I can tell.
The other possibility is if you have a .net address and the buyer sent the payment to the .com (or, much more rarely, the opposite.) Usually, you wouldn't receive the notification, but some ISP's are configured to send both to the same address. This problem would be harder for Paypal to fix.
If either of these is the case, you have two options. One is to notify the buyer and ask them to cancel they payment and send it to the correct address.
The other possibility is if you can figure out what the error was, you can add the erroneous address to your account. Theoretically, you shouldn't be able to do this since the email address isn't actually yours (in the .com/.net case) or is invalid (in the period case.)
Also, if the problem is .net/.com and you add the incorrect address, there's a possibility (though very slight, in my opinion) that it could cause trouble in the future if the ISP is foolish enough to discontinue the email forwarding and then assign accounts on that domain to different users. I can't imagine an ISP being foolish enough to do this, as it would cause lots of problems with many things other than Paypal.
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All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed.
[ edited by amalgamated2000 on Oct 14, 2000 07:49 PM ]
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mcjane
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posted on October 14, 2000 08:03:54 PM
Same thing happened to me the other day & the buyer did indeed enter my email address
in wrong. I have a .net address & they entered .com My isp uses both so that is why I received the email from PP. In order to receive money it has to be exact. Someone on AW suggested I go back to PP & add the same address with the .com (you are allowed up to 8 addresses) I did & a few minutes later the money was in my account.
Try it, it worked for me.
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uaru
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posted on October 14, 2000 08:16:16 PM
"Is this their latest tactic of intimidation and deceit?"
<sigh>
After you get through charging PayPal of wrong doing have the buyer fix the error on the email address. This is sad.
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bitterdiatribe
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posted on October 14, 2000 08:21:46 PM
Yes, sad.
Especially when I have 20 auctions closing tonight most of which will be paid for via PayPal and those funds will be frozen until I upgrade.
<sigh indeed>
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lmsh
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posted on October 14, 2000 08:27:06 PM
I just had 5 auctions end, 4 paying wiht paypal. I was a little leary of still using them with all the talk but it looks as if everything is the same as it was before. Don't seemed to be charging me any fees and my money showed up right away. As soon as it does, no matter how much, I transferred it to my bank account. Should be there by Tuesday. 
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uaru
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posted on October 14, 2000 08:30:08 PM
"Especially when I have 20 auctions closing tonight most of which will be paid for via PayPal and those funds will be frozen until I upgrade."
Please supply your information leading you to this conclusion. If your funds are frozen upgrading will have no effect.
[ edited by uaru on Oct 14, 2000 08:30 PM ]
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bitterdiatribe
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posted on October 14, 2000 08:37:13 PM
uaru
I do not understand where your condescension stems from and why u seem to have this tonewith me.
Its my frustration with today's situation and distrust of PayPal after their constant reminders of upgrade that leads me to fear that if PayPal is holding any incoming auction payments until I upgrade I HAVE to upgrade in order to get my money from them
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amalgamated2000
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posted on October 14, 2000 08:47:37 PM
If this really were some evil scheme to force you to upgrade, do you really think they would be offering you a $5 bonus?
Unless you domain is a .net, the problem is probably a period as I described above, and you can claim your money simply by adding your address with a period on the end of it.
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All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed.
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mrpotatoheadd
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posted on October 14, 2000 08:48:51 PM
bitterdiatribe-
You have been given good advice above- the buyer almost certainly mis-entered your email address. Rather than fearing and distrusting PayPal, wouldn't it be easier to just contact your buyer?
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bitterdiatribe
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posted on October 14, 2000 08:51:50 PM
The bidder was contacted by email. She told shedoes not see any errors on her end.
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uaru
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posted on October 14, 2000 08:53:10 PM
"I do not understand where your condescension stems from and why u seem to have this tonewith me."
My apologies if my manners seem poor, I know they could be improved on. I just think it is very sad when the wrong conclusions are founded on fears and not facts.
The buyer obviously made an error on the email address you assumed the worst that PayPal was responsible. I'll wager you any sum the buyer has made an email address either the com/net or period error. This is not a problem restricted to just PayPal just tell the buyer to check and see if the payment is pending and check for the com/net suffix or a period in the email address.
PayPal will not freeze your account if you don't upgrade, the worst that will happen is after Oct 16 once you've reached $500 from credit card payments starting on Oct 16th any future credit card payments will remain as 'pending' in the buyers account. That will have no affect on your funds. There is a lot of fear without reason, I think you'll admit when that happens its a sad situtation.
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outoftheblue
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posted on October 14, 2000 09:00:32 PM
bitterdiatribe
The same thing has happened to us in the past. There was no wrong address but the payment just didn't get to us and we did receive the email. I think it's a glitch in the system. Follow the advice of tomwiii and everything should be fine.
If your funds are frozen you would know it. You would not be able to access the account. That's what I have read on several message boards.
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amalgamated2000
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posted on October 14, 2000 09:07:32 PM
This is not a problem restricted to just PayPal
Actually the period thing is Paypal's problem. It would be ridiculously easy to fix. But the problem persists...
I agree that the .com/.net thing is not Paypal's fault, and there's not much they can do about it.
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All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed.
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uaru
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posted on October 14, 2000 09:24:48 PM
"Actually the period thing is Paypal's problem. It would be ridiculously easy to fix. But the problem persists..."
I don't know if the period is a problem that other services share. If you'd like to send some money back and forth we could test others out. Contact me at [email protected] if you're interested. The net/com problem I was able to test with my own account with other services.
I don't always agree with you, but I do respect you and feel you are trust worthy... well trust worthy enough for some test with small amounts.
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mrpotatoheadd
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posted on October 14, 2000 09:29:40 PM
But don't you see... if this problem is figured out, then everybody will have to find something else to blame on the PayPal conspiracy.
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amalgamated2000
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posted on October 14, 2000 10:12:16 PM
I appreciate your trust uaru, but I've already done some tests. Payplace and Exchangepath both reject email addresses with a period on the end. Paydirect filters out the period.
All Paypal would have to do to solve this problem is configure their software so that periods at the end of email addresses are filtered out.
Personally, it no longer matters to me. I now have both my email address and my email address with a period on the end listed as 2 seperate addresses on my Paypal account. Now, if this happens again, I will never even know it. The money will go into my account as usual. Pathetic, but effective.
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All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed.
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rkflower
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posted on October 15, 2000 12:08:44 AM
Thank-you mrpotatoheadd,
I'm getting tired of the PayPal conspiracy,
it is usually human error.
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toolhound
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posted on October 15, 2000 02:21:05 AM
I have went through this same thing. The buyer after double checking still was sure it was sent to my address.
It was sent to a .net and mine is a .com address. I just added a .net to my PayPal account and it came through.
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tomwiii
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posted on October 15, 2000 07:16:24 AM
Although I now think Pay-Hell Sucks and Musk Smells, I still feel this is one of the simpler problems with Pay-Hell that could have been easily solved by the seller!
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zeenza
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posted on October 15, 2000 08:05:19 AM
Sadly, I am waiting for 1000.00 from Paypal on 2 transactions. The bidders have already received their items. I requested the funds the same day money was deposited but it has not arrived. I am starting to feel a minor panic...
In the past, the money arrived within 3 days.
Technically it says up to two weeks. So I am not at that 2 week point as yet. Hopefully I am not dead in the water here.
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carat01
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posted on October 15, 2000 04:20:23 PM
I had the same problem, got the email but no cash there. With msn they add "email" after your name before @. Buyer cancelled and re-did it with no problems.
Also resisted to upgrading from individual to Premier, however, finally gave in and did it. Wasn't happy about it at first but now it's no big deal. I think we are all looking for the free lunch, however, it doesn't exist anymore. So lets enjoy whatever "free" time we get and not complain so much. How many of us that are selling out of our homes, by ourselves, are paying state and federal taxes? When do we "cross the line" of fun and business?
With all the articles that keep popping up about taxing the internet sales I figure we are on a "free" pass for now, doesn't mean it won't end tomorrow, but might as well enjoy while it lasts.
Life is short, so what if PayPal makes a few bucks off of us, isn't that what we are doing by selling? Aren't there enough conspiracy theories out there without adding PayPal to the list?
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