[dwallbaum]

Gentlefolk;

Interested in comments from an eLiterate community.

I had a PayPal account which sent me an email saying that a substantial amount of money was being sent to a vendor. This was the standard confirmation email.

I had not authorized such a payment, but I didn't panic since I had no money in the PayPal account anyway. But I called the PayPal help line to discuss the issue.

Two things happened. One was apparently my PayPal account had been accessed using my logon credentials to place the order. Oooppss... But the second, more important issue was that since there was no money in the PayPal account, PayPal was accessing the associated checking account to transfer the money to the vendor.

I was not pleased.

PayPal support said that the EULA states this is their procedure. And after some digging, I did find that there is a hierarchy or accessing funds for purchases if there is insufficient funds in the PayPal account.

I was totally unaware that PayPal would do this, so PayPal and I had a spirited discussion about this.

Am I the only one who didn't know that PayPal would go after associated funds to settle purchase agreements? PayPal sd. they are not a bank, but a payment clearing house. I sd. my understanding was that if funds were not avail. in the PayPal account, the transaction could not be completed.

Apparently, there is no way to designate that ONLY PayPal funds be used for transactions.

Has anyone has other experiences like this with PayPal? And yes, I am cancelling my PayPal account as a result of this, which is a pity, for PayPal struck me as a really neat idea.

Thx!

Don