Time to dump Paypal?

[aboudd]

This posting is a little off topic, but since I have used Paypal to buy and sell gear on line for years I thought I would bring Paypal's new policies to light ahead of their implementation April 1, 2012. I normally ignore these things and my guess is that you might also. Here are the new terms that I find intrusive and unnecessary, as Paypal does not indicate what would justify cause for this invasion of your financial privacy.

"ordering a credit report, or verifying your Information against third party databases or through other sources." Credit reports are notoriously inaccurate and whose 3rd party databases are they going to access? Multiple inquiries can actually lower your credit score. This is not quite as invasive as a trans-vaginal ultrasound, but bad nonetheless. There is no reason for Paypal to do anything more than any bank or credit card company to verify your identity. Mother's maiden name, prior address, the name of your dog, the last four digits of your social security number are normally and a few other questions are enough for Chase Bank, why not Paypal?

There are a few other things that might bother you, you should visit their policy updates page.

[Brian Hirschfeld]

I cannot stand paypal, they have preeminently stopped me from being able to use my AMEX platinum card, because of an internal error of theirs, where they told me I would have to remake my account. Then after doing exactly as they had said, I tried to use the account I re-created and they told me that I could not use the card, because it had been permanently blocked on their system, because it was deleted from and account and added to another account in an amount of time that their system did not allow. They went on to say it had nothing to do with me or my credit card (I already knew that) and that it was simply the way their system was designed. This to me was utterly unacceptable and has lead me to use them as little as possible.