Mixed feelings about paypal
By
Emberly,
Posted on: 2010-08-20 06:43 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Quote:
Sorry to hear that you had such a miserable experience. Paypal has a bit of a reputation for being troublesome to deal with, and especially so when they get the idea that fraud might be involved somewhere. As far as your concern about a profile on you, I have had similar things happen with online banking or shopping with a credit card. They just get a little weirded out when folks make dozens of purchases from the same IP address/physical location and suddenly make a purchase across the country, or similar. Once i had to reset my IP address on my cable modem; what a pain in the *** that was for a week or two while I convinced all these money-related companies that I was still me.|
Originally Posted by Redd35
I also still don't get why CoX banned my accounts until the paypal issue was resolved.
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To answer the quoted question, your accounts were likely banned because Paypal alerted the merchant (NCSoft) that fraud may have occurred, so they locked the accounts while the investigation happened. Glad everything worked out in the end!
Quote:
Actually this same basic scenario just happened to me about a month ago. |
Originally Posted by Redd35
I don't know how to feel about this, but I bought 2 GR collection packs with my paypal account and shortly afterwards both of my CoX accounts were banned.
Apparently I made the purchase from a loction that was not in my "known purchase loctions" so paypal freaked out and thought it was not legit, somehow told the CoH billing department and both my accounts were banned. Finally got the issue resolved after 24 hours but still would have liked some notification other than "Your account has been suspended, this can possibly be due to <reasons that didn't help me and made me panic>" I applaud paypal for taking proactive measures to protect against fraudulent activity, but it's kind of scary that they have a "profile" on me and can tell if a purchase is "not normal" I also still don't get why CoX banned my accounts until the paypal issue was resolved. |
I live in the US and have a confirmed PayPal address here. But I made the "mistake" of trying to use PayPal to buy the new Mutant Super Booster pack while I happened to be on a business trip in Japan. PayPal overreacted by assuming my legitimate purchase was fraudulent (due to the foreign IP I assume) and reversed the payment. NCsoft reacted to that by instantly banning my account (which by the way had been continuously active without interruption since before CoH Headstart). It took me several days to clear the mess up.
Like you I suppose I should be glad PayPal decided to be so "proactive" with protecting my account with them. But the whole situation has turned me against ever trying to use PayPal with NCsoft again for any purchase anywhere.
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Quote:
This is pretty much standard procedure for banks and I guess PayPal is kinda sorta like a bank. I am very surprised they didn't contact you first however, to make sure everything was actually okay.
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Originally Posted by Redd35
I applaud paypal for taking proactive measures to protect against fraudulent activity, but it's kind of scary that they have a "profile" on me and can tell if a purchase is "not normal"
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Quote:
For my situation PayPal informed me via email of their concern about my transaction probably about a millisecond -before- they reversed the payment regardless of my desires. I guess you could call that a "warning" of their intent, but I'd call it an extreme overreaction. *sigh*|
Originally Posted by Zikar
This is pretty much standard procedure for banks and I guess PayPal is kinda sorta like a bank. I am very surprised they didn't contact you first however, to make sure everything was actually okay.
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I just consider the whole thing a Lesson Learned...
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Quote:
I am actually grateful for their vigilance. My bank (a small CU) called me after we got back from a vacation in another state, asking if certain transactions were valid. I half expected it, having been through it before with them... I was all ready to say. "oh sure, we went to Washington to visit family"... until they said, "Did you recently pay for a taxi in POLAND?"... |
Originally Posted by Emberly
... As far as your concern about a profile on you, I have had similar things happen with online banking or shopping with a credit card. They just get a little weirded out when folks make dozens of purchases from the same IP address/physical location and suddenly make a purchase across the country, or similar. ...
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... errm.. "no. I don't even have a passport (yet)".Thing is, my friend also had her card number stolen so, since we shop together fairly often, we compared our receipts. We suspect the Wal Mart around the corner from us.
Unfortunately, ID/CC fraud is so prevalent, over-vigilance has become SOP. With such a large business like Pay Pal, I can see how getting the personalized phone call is a little unlikely ... but I'm glad you were able to get it resolved.
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Quote:
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Well again I don't mind that PayPal thought they were protecting me from something bad. The part that irks me is that their actions caused NCsoft to think I was trying to do something bad to them because they had no idea whether I authorized the reversal directly or not.
PayPal ought to be smart enough to warn you DURING the payment process that it thinks you are a trying to do something fishy (from say an unconfirmed location) so that it doesn't have to go through the motions of fully paying a 3rd party then reversing that payment at a later time. Until I am sure they would be able to deal with that kind of thing I'll never risk using PayPal away from home again.
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I don't know how to feel about this, but I bought 2 GR collection packs with my paypal account and shortly afterwards both of my CoX accounts were banned.
Apparently I made the purchase from a loction that was not in my "known purchase loctions" so paypal freaked out and thought it was not legit, somehow told the CoH billing department and both my accounts were banned.
Finally got the issue resolved after 24 hours but still would have liked some notification other than "Your account has been suspended, this can possibly be due to <reasons that didn't help me and made me panic>"
I applaud paypal for taking proactive measures to protect against fraudulent activity, but it's kind of scary that they have a "profile" on me and can tell if a purchase is "not normal"
I also still don't get why CoX banned my accounts until the paypal issue was resolved.
In time, I'll come to forgive you.