Just renewed my Board subscription, which would have expired Saturday. I was wary about this “You don’t need a PayPal account to re-up” business, especially since recently I tried to pay for something else online in the same manner and was forced to use the PayPal account.
I was not given the option not to use my PayPal account. They knew who I was! This time, and the other time a week or two ago, it told me who I was and said I had to use the PayPal account. There seems to be some sort of recognition software at PayPal? The previous time, I finally gave up and went with my PayPal account. I gave up this time, too. There simply was no option not to use my account, apparently because they knew who I was. The screen I was taken to had two options: Sign in to my account or cancel and return to the Board.
Normally, this would not be a problem, but we had trouble with PayPal four years ago when an item paid through them was not delivered. PayPal said their policy was not to give chargebacks to customers in Thailand, because of the large amount of fraud here, so they gave us a credit to use later instead. Since we rarely – especially at that time – pay for stuff online, that was unacceptable, so I simply had our credit-card company stop payment. That did not set well with PayPal, but they were powerless to do anything about it.
Flash forward to this month, and I finally had to pay for something with PayPal. But no charge showed up in my credit-card acoount. Checking with the business in question, they said they showed they had been paid. Doing some digging into my PatyPal account, it seems that after the trouble of four years ago, they unlinked that credit card of mine and were awaiting “validation” with a new number. I’ve gone ahead and given them a new number and hope I don’t get stuck with that charge of four years ago all over again!
I hate PayPal and wish I’d not had to use them again. Has anyone else encountered this problem, with the PayPal screen detecting you have an account and so insisting you use the account to process the order?
That is correct. The PayPal screen told me (not in these exact words, I am paraphrasing here): “Look. You have a PayPal account already. So log into it or we’re not going to process your order.” They seem to have picked up on my e-mail address.
eleanorigby had the same problem earlier this month. She wound up having to talk to PayPal customer service in order to be able to just use the credit card.
I suspect the OP has a cookie on the computer that is being recognized by PayPal, and is taking him/her past the normal “front” screen at PayPal where you have the option of logging into your PayPal account or simply offering up a credit card number for processing. Might try seeing if the same thing happens when using a different computer, or you might try scrubbing the cookies off your computer and trying again. And when all else fails, as we discovered earlier, calling PayPal does seem to produce results.
Is there even the smallest possible chance that SDMB management (slash Creative Loafing) will enable resubscription by anything other than PayPal in the next few months?
It’s not a cookie thing, because we had a different computer four years ago. But PayPal seems to have picked up on my e-mail address. I did go ahead and re-up with PayPal. But the story gets weirder.
As I mentioned in the OP, four years ago PayPal refused to give us a credit-card chargeback for an item we ordered. We simply had the credit-card company cancel the charge. The amount involved was US$69. As also mentioned, I was forced to use PayPal earlier this month, too.
Now, here’s the weird part: My credit-card company knows nothing about the item I paid for a couple of weeks ago OR my Board-subscription renewal. Why not? Well, it seems that PayPal never understood that we never paid the $69 four years ago, and we’ve had a $69 credit standing there for four years. I am not mistaken about not paying. I asked the wife if she remembered the fracas we had with PayPal four years ago, and she remembered it clearly and confirmed the credit-card company canceled the charge. No doubt whatsoever.
So the item we paid for two weeks ago is free, my Board-subscription renewal is free, and I still have a balance of $6.06 left! How about that?
