posted on August 23, 2001 01:07:55 PM new
I have a paypal debit card and I use it all the time, one company that I purchase gas from only authorizes $1.00 and then about 3 or 4 days later, it posts to my paypal account in the correct amount, no problem, until today.
I was going to use paypal to pay for an item and I knew that I didn't have enough funds in my account to cover it, so I was going to use my CC to pay.
Well now the part that gets me, paypal automatically uses the funds that are already in your account and then only charges the balance that you do not have enough funds for to your CC. No problem, right? Wrong, I used my debit card a few days ago to purchase gas and the authorized amount is only $1.00 pending, when I actually got $10 in gas, thus if I had used paypal to pay for my new purchase, it would have taken all the funds from my paypal account, not leaving enough for the gas purchase several days ago.
I see this as a potential problem for many users of the debit card, if they are not careful and check the balances pending, I noticed and used another method to pay for my purchase, although I would have prefered to use paypal as would have my seller, but in this case it made it impossible.
I think this is something that may need to addressed and how come we can't just charge the entire amount to our CC, why does our balance have to be used first? THat is what created this problem for me.
posted on August 23, 2001 03:13:22 PM new
I thought if you used the debit card for more $ than was in your Paypal account, it would reject the card, not carry forward and charge your CC on file for the difference....
posted on August 23, 2001 03:21:25 PM new
It wasn't the debit card that was used for more than was in my account, it was used to make a purchase which is still $1.00 pending but is actually a $10 purchase.
So the problem is to pay for a purchase that would require more funds than are available in my paypal account, I would normally just use my CC, but that would still take all of my funds in my paypal account thus not leaving enough cover that pending charge.
I don't really know if this is fraud. When using Debit credit cards (they are sometimes referred to as check cards also) the issuing bank/company sometimes have a temporary surcharge until the item actually clears. I saw this on the news once. This might be the case here. I would contact Paypal. They might be the ones charging the $1 . This is not a very well known practice by consumers, but I think it is somewhat common for some banks. I would look into it. Hope this is the case for you and not actual fraud.
posted on August 28, 2001 08:47:18 PM new
I would double check that only $1.00 is authorized. Seeing as how it could cost upwards of $70 to fill up some of these mongo SUVs of today - I can't believe any gas station would authorize such a low amount.
What would happen if you tried this with a regular bank debit card? I assume the bank would bounce the gas charge when it finally came through, and presumably paypal would do the same thing.
posted on September 1, 2001 08:58:12 AM new
The same thing happens to me when I use the card at the gas station. I just wait for it to clear, takes about 3 days. Always keep your receipts.
