This is a personal warning about using Paypal. IF you do not have Paypal, then be sure to read this warning. If you do have Paypal, also read this warning because you cannot use it to send money to people who are not members of Paypal. And it may turn out that the person you want to send money to will not want to join Paypal in order to get it.

Paypal is holding hostage $350 that a German friend is trying to pay me. They first off want to charge me $8 to receive the money and then they inform me I cannot receive the $350 (now $342) unless I give them a credit card number (which takes a month to verify doing it the Paypal way) or I give them my bank account number. I cannot receive the money they already have for me and have earmarked for me unless I do one of those two things. I have refused simply because those are joint accounts with my husband and my husband isn't about to hand over personal numbers involving our accounts to anybody. Why should we trust Paypal with this information? And I know from other people's complaints that the credit card verification deal is a real hassle--even if I wanted to do it.

Paypal claims they need to verify my address, an address I have lived at for 25 years and that the only way to do it is by having my bank account number or my credit card number. That is BS.

So since they will NOT give me the money, I asked them to reverse the money and return it to the sender. Sorry, they can't do that. Why? Because it's in my account.

Now I know why I have seen on Ebay several sellers saying they do not accept Paypal even though they accept a lot of other methods of payment.

So this is a warning. You cannot pay anybody a large sum (or maybe even a small sum??) UNLESS the person receiving the money agrees to sign up with Paypal and this requires giving personal financial information to Paypal.

I frankly don't trust any organization who is this inflexible.

Interesting enough, the man I talked to on the phone refused to give me his last name. It's company policy. He also refused to give my matter a number to identify the problem. After all, he said, all anyone needs to know to check the matter is my Email address.

Paypal has my Email address, my home address, and my telephone number. It does not need my credit card number or my bank account number in order to pay me $350 (minus the $8 fee) that my friend has already given them and specifically earmarked it for me.

If any of you are Paypal people and are having trouble with your account, the 24 hour number to call is 1-888-221-1161.

The person on the phone Brandan (no last name) said he wasn't sure if that worked outside the US, but that the following number would. It is in use from 6 AM to midnight US Central Standard Time. This number is (402) 935 2081.

Joyce Bowen