Charged 140 for 4 bucks in insufficient funds

He takes most of it out in cash when it gets there, and pays his insurance and gives me rent in cash.  Since I sell stuff on ebay, I have a PayPal linked to my checking account, but I am VERY careful and consider that PayPal is part of my checking account at my credit union.  I use PayPal if I pay for something that might try and set up recurring charges, since it is extremely easy to stop that in PayPal, but very difficult to stop in a checking account.  Magazine subscription, stuff like that.  I don’t think I have ever had PalPal try and take money when my checking account was not able to cover it, though – I am going to call my credit union and ask if that will generate the $35 fee.  If yours is $20, that is actually pretty low – but then the whole inflated overdrawn  fee is pretty low.  You should check what recurring charge is coming out of PayPal, though.  Yikes!  I have Netflix and my son’s WOW coming out of Paypal, so I can cancel at any time if I need to.  Like when I am totally broke.

Scamming the powerless is a proven revenue generator, and they won’t readily abandon it.

states if you complete a fraud affidavit at the bank they will at least waive their fees. You should also contact Pay Pal and tell them the transactions were fraudulent. They’ll probably refund any money they actually took. Of course, if they didn’t take anything from your account, they won’t.

Banks are blood sucking leaches.

Like ohio barbarian said, contest this. There is SO much of this crap happening over the past 5-10 years. My wife and I talk often about the latest scan we heard about…lots of phone scams, lots of $5 or $10 ‘errors’ on bills. Taking advantage of boomers, some of who have a hard time wading thru pages of fine-print disclaimers. GRRRRR.

$5 here, $5 there a thousand times over and the bank or the online retailer of the electric company is looking at real money.

Get it back!!

.

if you can’t pay cash, use checks sparingly and keep good records.

the option may not be around for much longer, but as long as it is….

pay pal and all the rest nickel & dime people to death.  starting with the fee for just transferring the funds in the first place.  add their bad record keeping, lack of warning, and lack of easy contact with the business and whatever else you got, + the fact that they’re all run by tech oligarchs.

nice racket if you can get it.

I’ve used a credit union for decades and even they are getting pretty banky.  they used to be pretty good.  the whole world appears to be going toward the leech/vampire model of capitalism.

It sucks.  Stop that recurring charge right away. 20$ overdraft fee is pretty low though, may want to stay at that bank.

1. The worst credit union is better than the best bank.

2. Keep a paypal balance, think of it as a separate checking account.

3. Avoid recurring payments, and/or use a separate account for recurring payments only.

cancel your paypal account, your bank account and your card(s) then you can reopen them. They will have different numbers. that should be enough. Make sure to explain that someone, probably several someones, have been buying stuff with your accounts. And do it NOW – this will only continue unti you do.

You can tell the bank not to allow any transaction there is no money for, most will allow overdrafts up to a certain amount unless you opt out. It won’t matter how many times paypal or anyone bangs on your account…. no overdraft charges.

…when a single overdraft cascaded into 4 overdrafts totalling $140, (and almost got my auto insurance cancelled for non-payment).

What was especially frustrating was that the initial overdraft was a BANK ERROR- the entire thing was their fault.

After attempting unsuccessfully to resolve the matter by phone, I closed the account and found a new bank.

I never attempted to resolve the problem in person, as I had become so outraged that I feared any face-to-face interaction would end with my arrest. It was better for my blood pressure to simply walk away and remain unjailed.

It does seem very odd that they didn’t tell you about your overdrafts when you specifically asked- you might want to discuss that with a manager (and mention that you’re considering taking your business elsewhere).

It’s always possible that you could get some of those fees refunded- it’s been known to happen. Assuming, of course, that you have more self control than I. I rather suspect you do.

And BTW: congrats on finally getting your SSI.

Based on your description someone has gotten your account number or your card number (a device that can steal your card number from out of your pocket costs like $30)

The average American conducts a couple dozen card transactions a month – most do not even check their bank statements, as long as the balance sounds reasonable – they wouldn’t even notice say 0ne $20 charge in a list of 15 $5 – $150 transactions.

The bank mis-entered our $1290 mortgage check as $9210. Of course, it bounced. It took us months to get all the overdraft charges refunded. This was US Bank. When they began charging $3 to speak with a human teller, we found a credit union. We have only used credit unions since then. They sometimes do things that annoy us, but the banks are far worse.

I try to avoid PayPal, and I only use them if there’s no other way. I don’t see the benefit of involving them as a third party to my transactions.