I have become very frustrated as I am unable to log into my PayPal account and there seems to be no way to contact them without being able to login. The trouble started when they found an unauthorized access and asked me to validate my account. I went to log in and entered a continuous spiral where I changed my password and saved it and it took me back to the original screen. I tried ringing them as a guest, but I needed to log in to get an access code. I contacted them on their Facebook page and explained the situation, but they just told me to ring up and closed the conversation. Today I received an email saying because I had not validated the account, it was now permanently closed. There are topics on their User Forum with people in the same boat of a continuous cycle of trying to log in going back some time and there has been no fix to the problem. Needless to say, I am very frustrated and angry and don’t know which way to turn.
Welcome to the community. Sorry to hear about your plight.
First question - Who asked you to validate your account? How sure are you it was legitimately Paypal?
Second question - when you went to validate your account, did you type in Paypal’s address, or did you follow a link?
It sounds awfully like you were scammed, and lost control of your account.
Paypal Australia’s phone number is 1800 054 378. They should be open to 8pm NSW. Give them a call and explain the situation, and ask if it was them, or were you hacked?
Alternatively, go to their help centre and either use the resolution centre window or the message centre window to contact them.
Hi @carljh, welcome to the community.
Further to what @meltam has indicated, PayPal has also been asking some of its account holders to validate their account to verify who the account holder is. This is to comply with Australian Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing laws…
I understand that if validation wasn’t carried out the required date, PayPal may have taken action to prevent the account being used. If you didn’t validate the account in time, you may have found that the account may have been subject to such processes.
If your account can’t be reopened, it might worth seeing if you can re-establish a new account with PayPal.
Unfortunately the processes PayPal used to request account holders to validate their identity looked straight out of a scam handbook, and many account holders may have ignored the emails thinking it was a scam. This may have resulted in PayPal taking action in relation to such accounts.
Thank you for the quick replies and yes, the first thing I thought was that it was a scam, but checked out the address and was legitimate. I did not click on any links and typed the address in. My main issue is that if you can’t log in, there is no way to contact PayPal which is ridiculous. Even when I did manage to get a chat on Facebook (which I hate using), after explaining the situation, they did nothing to help me. I have tried opening a new account, but as soon as I type in my email address, it rejects it. As you say phb, it would seem that there must be a lot of people in my predicament, so there has to be a way to make contact somehow. Also, as I have said, the problem with trying to validate and going round in circles seems to be a long standing bug which they have done nothing about.
Something also worth noting is PayPal generally closes an account after a minimum of three years of inactivity (no logins or payments received/sent). They are supposed to send out a notification that the account is to be closed and one has 60 days to keep an account active. If the email is caught in spam folders, thought of as a scam or left too late, the account will be closed making it impossible to log into.
I have been a regular user of PayPal for years and have had no issues of any sort before now.
Sadly not only PayPal are these sort of things happening. Just had a massive run around with Telstra. Ended up going to the TIO (Telephone Industry Ombudsman). The e-mails Telstra sent back the URL’s went nowhere, the staff when phoned up didn’t have access to fix the issue. The only language Telstra understand is the TIO. Believe it costs Telstra around a $100 each time a complaint is made to the TIO.
What you describe is a problem with so many big and in particular technology companies.
Interesting, I keep getting emails from Telstra that belong to a complete stranger. No link to me as I havent had a telstra account for many years. Gave them away due to abysmal customer service. I dont know whether to contact Telstra or the account holder (whose email address is clearly displayed). Great account security eh.
I would be contacting Telstra to confirm they sent a text, and secondly if they did, let them know they sent it to the wrong person.
It is also possible the text is from a scammer. We often get texts/emails from scammers which look genuine at first glance, but have giveaways which shows they are scams. The obvious one is we don’t have a relationship with the business the message is claimed to come from.
I had a similar problem when I received an email from PayPal to advise that my email address had been successfully updated - except that I hadn’t updated it. Clicking on the ‘contact us’ link didn’t help because you have to log in. Couldn’t log in because my email address had been changed. I went round and round the website for a bit trying to find out how to contact them.Finally got frustrated and Tweeted to @TwitterSupport. All sorted in about 12 hours. I was really impressed with that element of the service. They do need to improve the ‘contact us’ system though.
Thanks for that but don’t have a Twitter account and only use social media as a last resort. However, I went back into the Contact page and noticed it seems to have been changed (no contact as a guest anymore), so tried calling on the number for landlines only (don’t have a landline) and eventually got through to someone who was actually helpful and got the problem sorted in about 10 minutes. This is one of the problems nowadays as so many companies seem to be only reachable on social media and many people such as myself never or only in desperation use these platforms.
I received what to me was a well presented professional looking but an obvious paypal scam.
Diligently reporting same, ‘valuable feedback’ 2 weeks later.
No wonder so many are not interested in what seems like a time-wasting activity reporting ‘a scam’. Probably true they have had multiple reports of the same one, probably true they cannot do anything about it except publish, and probably true their scam office is in the US and the rest of the world might be beyond their purvey (legalities and regulations), but replying ‘deleted without reading’ is priceless. Sometimes silence can be golden in comparison; their overemployed management must be well paid.
