Recently, I needed to create a Paypal account to receive a reimbursement payment from a conference in Poland. A wire transfer to my credit union wasn’t an option, because my credit union requires an intermediate transfer for international wire transfers (which is just bananas and why I’ve since re-opened my account at Chase). So, my only option was Paypal.
To be clear, I’ve only heard horror stories about people using Paypal. No one has anything good to say about Paypal.
But I didn’t really see any option if I wanted to get my money. I don’t consider myself a greedy bastard, but we’re not talking about an insignificant amount of money.
So Paypal it was.
If you know Paypal, you know they’re deeply creepy. In order to get them to send me a check, I had to give them my credit card information as well as my address. No explanation of why they wanted my credit card details. They just did.
However, even then they would only send me a check for less than $1,000 once per month. Plus they’d charge me $1.50 for the privilege. Of course, I could give them my bank details and they’d deposit the entire amount directly into my account, but I don’t give anyone direct bank access (except my employer, because I trust them). Given Paypal’s shady reputation, there’s absolutely no way I’m going to trust them with the ability to both deposit AND WITHDRAW from my bank account.
As a result it’s taken me two months to get all the money out of my Paypal account and cost me $3.00 for the privilege.
This email made me immensely happy this morning, although I still have no confidence Paypal has really deleted my information.
