My girlfriend has inadvertently lead to us being up a Paypal creek without a paddle.
In brief, my gf opened a Paypal account and received payment into it before we realized she’d signed up wrong. We need to verify this account, which requires an American bank account. We don’t have one! (skip to * if you’re in brief mode)
Not so brief - towards the end of last year my gf started doing some online work which paid via Paypal. A little history is required here; we’re in South Africa, and SA has fairly strict** foreign exchange controls - unless they are traveling abroad an SA citizen is generally not able to acquire foreign currency. This meant Paypal was simply not on the map for SA until last year, when a bank (First National Bank) arranged to have Paypal access as an options for clients of the bank.
This was about all I knew when her work assignment came about. I figured South Africans could now open Paypal accounts, get paid in them, buy stuff if they wanted - it was only if they wanted to put money in their Paypal account (or transfer from Paypal to a bank account obviously) that they would require an FNB account. Couldn’t have been more wrong, and it was due to complete lack of experience with Paypal - we didn’t know that before Paypal allows any transaction the account has to be verified (which does make sense) - though they make scant mention of this until you try transact.
However, the Paypal account she opened is an American account, and needs to be verified with an American bank account. We didn’t know it then but Paypal has a different account system for SA.
We’ve since gone on to open an account with FNB and open an SA Paypal account, but we’re stuck with money in an unverified account. To be clear - this is her money, she worked for it, there is nothing illegal going on here. We had in fact written the money/account off as too much trouble, but unfortunately our financial situation at the moment demands that we make an effort.
*
We’ve emailed Paypal several times to enquire if they could help out but haven’t heard anything useful back from them, which leaves us in the obviously tricky situation of having to trust someone from the internet.
So what I’m asking from some kind American soul is this; I’ll give you the account details, and you then verify the Paypal account with your bank account. Thereafter transfer the money in the Paypal account to our new account, less your commission. We’re offering 25% of what’s in the account. After that, you can keep or delete the account.
Please PM if you can assist (you need to have a bank account not currently linked to Paypal).
If anyone has any suggestions for any other way we can resolve this, please do suggest!
Prior to this encounter with Paypal, I had thought them to be a fairly upstanding citizen of the web (much like Amazon). However after perusing their ‘help’ section, and the community area, I’m more inclined to sit them in the scammy/scummy side of the scale.
From their help page PayPal Help Center - Personal
Question : How can I become Verified without adding my bank account?
Answer : Add and confirm your bank account.
:rolleyes:
Option 2 (of 2) is to take a Paypal credit card.
Reading through the community area, there are far too many complaints similar to mine where people have received money into an account only to find they can do nothing with it, and the Paypal response is either nil or sly half-answers.
People ask if they can use a Paypal account without adding a bank account, and the answer (from Paypal support) is consistently something like “Sure! Although you will need to add a bank account to increase your maximum transaction rate”. What they neglect to include is “…from ZERO”. It looks suspiciously like they’re actually encouraging people to get money transferred in - people they know can’t or won’t be able to verify, and the money sits in an unverified account until… it defaults into Paypal’s pocket. I’m sure the amounts involved over time are non-trivial.
There are also numerous complaints of the charge/reverse system Paypal uses to verify accounts by credit card - they charge $1.95 to the card and then promise to reverse it after you confirm the code. It seems often the code is not received, or it is and it’s confirmed, but the reversal never happens. In the first case, people often acquire several of these non-reversed payments and STILL don’t get a code.
If Paypal were honest they’d say up-front: “bank account required, $1.95 joining fee”. It’s actually quite disgusting that they’re allowed to operate like this. It was only recently I found out about the Katrina donations mess, that really should’ve been a red flag to the entire internet community that Paypal are not scrupulous. I don’t know, maybe Americans already know this and the word is just getting out internationally.
Sorry for the length of this plea/rant, but desperate times are near 
** I’m still fuming after the bank recently sent out notification that as per regulations, funds received into a paypal account may not be used to make a paypal payment - the funds need to be withdrawn into the linked bank account first, and funds for making payment must then be transferred (from the bank acc) into the paypal account, where, as per previous regulation, they may not linger past 30 days.
Nice set-up for both the bank and Paypal, as fees obviously apply all the way (in addition to the losses for the user incurred by needlessly changing currencies). It’s a fine example of how the SA consumer is constantly reamed and helpless to do anything but pay for it.