I got a call last night. AFAICT it was a robo-call, but it purported to be from PayPal saying I was going to be charged a fee on my PayPal account if I didnt’ - click - at that point I hung up.
I am 95% sure it was a scam. Can the Dope reassure me about the remaining 5%? The clown with the accent telling me he is from “Windows” and needs me to allow him to access my PC because it is generating error messages I can deal with. Likewise with the chirpy bitch claiming to be from a marketing survey company who tries to sell me credit cards. But I haven’t heard the PayPal one before.
I routinely get emails from PayPal hawking their latest promotions, and every communication from them, from the beginning, has been via email. Seems to me if they wanted to notify me of something that’s how they’d do it.
Does PayPal even have your phone number in their records?
The prudent thing to do would be to contact PayPal and ask them if they make these kinds of calls. My guess is that they don’t, and you did the right thing by hanging up. I doubt you will hear from them again.
If it’s legitimate you should receive something by mail, or perhaps another phone call. If they call back you should ask lots of probing questions of them and ask them to verify they are from PayPal and not a scammer, at which time they will hang up on you. That should alleviate your remaining 5% of doubt.
Recently PayPal changed its user policy so that using the service made you subject to advertising calls from them. It was pretty controversial.
That said, this particular call sounds like a scam. You were right to hang up. They would contact you by email, snail mail, or a call from a PERSON if you owed a debt or were subject to a fee. A robocall sounds bogus. The fact that it was made with urgency (hurry or you’ll be charged!) seems a clincher.
If you want to check, just log into your account online and check for alerts. You shouldn’t even have to contact customer service, your account info will show you.
When I was setting up a PayPal account for a nonprofit - which was a major pain - I would have loved to been able to call someone. I suspect they figure that if you are computer literate enough to use PayPal you are computer literate enough to use email.
I’m betting the caller id for this call was not PayPal, but Unknown caller or Toll Free or some random number. We have audio caller id - the phone says the caller name or number. Except for a few political calls, it hangs up as soon as it goes to voice mail.
So, Shodan, 5% non-scam is way too high. The probability of it not being a scam is slightly lower than that of Taylor Swift breaking down my door to have mad sex with me tonight. Was there a person or was it recorded? If there is a person you can play with their head if you have spare time.
I had a dispute with a PayPal transaction a few months ago. Someone in SE Asia used my account to buy some service I’d never heard of before (it was some kind of online gaming service the best I could tell). Pretty obvious it wasn’t me who made the purchase. No idea how they got my info.
There was no way to call PayPal as far as I could tell, I could only communicate via their website and email. To their credit they reversed the charge quickly with little fuss and I changed my password. If any process would involve a phone call you’d expect a transaction dispute would, but nope. So I agree that it’s extremely unlikely that this was really PayPal contacting you by phone, they seem phone-phobic.
Yes, I think it was a robocall. I hung up before I could be sure.
I get a different robocaller sometimes, where it tries to pretend to be a real person with some BS “Hi! I’m Biff Bifferson from ScamCo! Can you hear me OK?” He responds the same way no matter what, so I generally respond “I just got out of prison for murdering telemarketers” or something like that. Pointless but amusing.
PayPal may email to you, to inform you about their new T&C’s or that your Credit card you’re using is about to expire regarding your account.
Most of the time, they just send you ad stuff about how great they are or to send you a payment confirmation/receipt regarding a purchase you just made.
You’ll have to log into your account and then click there to agree to new T&C’s - which is rare - REALLY rare.
They never ask you to send them your details or any other info.
A couple years ago a relative got duped by one of those “Windows Tech Support” scams and they got her to set up a PayPal account for payment.
I found, called, and talked to a quite helpful PayPal customer support person who arranged for the account to be closed down (and hopefully investigate the account the funds were to be transferred to).
They do have phone support. Don’t know why anyone claims otherwise.
