Paypal...Get Verified...WTF...

[George M]

Time to check back in with my E-bay enlightened friends on the board for advice relative to the dreaded Paypal verification process. Before I embark on it...any gotcha's or lessons learned? Against my will, I am reluctantly applying to get verfied which I don't want to do...give my bank acct info to anybody let alone Paypal since they already have my CC no. My thought is to submit my checking account no. only which I keep a modest balance in versus my main bank account. With each repeated Paypal/E-bay purchase I am getting that annoying repetitive e-mail from Paypal reminding me that I am running out of funds and will have to get verified...sucks. Many of you guys are likely or have been in the same boat. Now is the time. Any suggestions?...or is resistance futile?
Thanks,
George

[John B.]

There's not much to it George. Paypal will make 2 small deposits in your account & you tell them how much they were & you are verified. Takes about 2-3 days for the deposits to appear once you start the process.

[Bill R.]

checking account not linked to my main checking account or savings account. This account is a cheapie free checking account through my credit union. I put 50 bucks in there and got verified, then i still use my 3% cashback credit card for all paypal purchases anyway.

Time to check back in with my E-bay enlightened friends on the board for advice relative to the dreaded Paypal verification process. Before I embark on it...any gotcha's or lessons learned? Against my will, I am reluctantly applying to get verfied which I don't want to do...give my bank acct info to anybody let alone Paypal since they already have my CC no. My thought is to submit my checking account no. only which I keep a modest balance in versus my main bank account. With each repeated Paypal/E-bay purchase I am getting that annoying repetitive e-mail from Paypal reminding me that I am running out of funds and will have to get verified...sucks. Many of you guys are likely or have been in the same boat. Now is the time. Any suggestions?...or is resistance futile?
Thanks,
George

[Jon K]

I have horror stories about Paypal. My friend paid me for web design services... paypal for no other reason than being able to, put the $400 transaction on "hold" on his account. Which meant that they "held" $400 from my account, basically taking it away from me... They told me on the phone they couldn't do anything about it and they were sorry. WTF. Eventually, a month later, it got resolved.

[Scott C]

Time to check back in with my E-bay enlightened friends on the board for advice relative to the dreaded Paypal verification process. Before I embark on it...any gotcha's or lessons learned? Against my will, I am reluctantly applying to get verfied which I don't want to do...give my bank acct info to anybody let alone Paypal since they already have my CC no. My thought is to submit my checking account no. only which I keep a modest balance in versus my main bank account. With each repeated Paypal/E-bay purchase I am getting that annoying repetitive e-mail from Paypal reminding me that I am running out of funds and will have to get verified...sucks. Many of you guys are likely or have been in the same boat. Now is the time. Any suggestions?...or is resistance futile?
Thanks,
George

Regarding the PayPal verification process - I sent them a note stating that I don't have a checking account, haven't had one for 20 years and don't intend to get one. They have not responded back in 1 week now.
Scott

[632 Regal]

I did the same thing as Bill, went and opened a seperate account just for paypal. I couldnt see myself allowing access to either of my main accounts.

[gale]

Hi George, hope all is going well.

I did the same thing as Bill & Jeff & opened a dedicated token checking account just for that purpose. Besides, it makes for a good "sock in the drawer" stash of money that the wife can't get to

Cheers,

ET

[George M]

Thanks guys...wondered what you did. Other question that comes to mind is...if you pay for an item on e-bay with Paypal after becoming verified...do the funds automatically come from your new bank account you have registered to Paypal or will Paypal draw from your credit card and the funds in your Paypal bank account are only a back up to Paypal if your credit card balks?
Thanks,
George
PS: I still don't understand Paypal getting a skim for transactions...not sure why they deducted a small percentage with a couple of transactions I had and not a couple of others.

[Kalevera]

Hey George.

You can usually select the "source" for funding a payment....If you're verified, it defaults to "bank account" because (this is a theory of mine) PayPal would rather do an electronic funds transfer than a credit card transaction. I *usually* change the funding source to my credit card...for all of the obvious reasons. Like Jon K. said, they sometimes mess up: it's my understanding that, although transactions appear to be electronically processed, a person manually enters the numbers. This has resulted in, for example, people thinking that they're paying $600 for an item, but they actually get charged $6000 because somebody in an office somewhere hit an extra 0 when they processed the EFT.

If you've got a "premier" account, they'll skim that percentage off no matter what you do (I think). My "personal" account can't accept credit card payments and has a theoretical limit on how much money I can receive in a month (I get around it by having people send 'quasi-cash', which isn't counted against my receiving balance), both of which are hassles at times. Yeah, it makes sense that they'd charge a per transaction fee -- they're a for-profit company, after all. Despite all of the potential issues, I still find PayPal to be the most convenient service of its type that I've encountered yet, and I have no qualms with their customer support when there are problems....

best, whit

[George M]

Hi Whit,
Hehehe...we are back to talking e-bay stuff again and you are still the man! I haven't been haunted with any dead beat buyers lately so grateful for that. I wanted to learn a bit before I went in "to get verified". Thanks for your comments. My intent will be to keep a very modest amount of money in a Paypal specific checking account as others have set up. Therefore I wondered if there was an option of setting the Paypal verified account up to draw money from my Credit Card as before versus the newly established bank account associated with getting verified. You confirmed that is the case. What you wrote makes sense...likely easier for Paypal to debit a bank account than a credit card account for a transaction. I will too set my verified account up to withdraw from my credit card for payment on purchases made.
Thanks,
George