Consumer complaint received 2021-09-09
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: CA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Other banking product or service
Issue: Problem with a lender or other company charging your account
Sub-issue: Transaction was not authorized

Complaint:
SUBJECT : UPDATE TO ORIGINAL COMPLAINT -- THEY ARE STILL ALLOWING THE MERCHANT TO TAKE MY MONEY IN SPITE OF RECEIVING MY REPEATED INSTRUCTIONS NOT TO AND RELATED WRITTEN DOCUMENTATION FROM THE MERCHANT. 
___________________ After I submitted a complaint earlier today, I discovered I'm forced to add this addendum to it. 
___________________ COMPLAINT ID XXXX SUBMITTED ON XX/XX/XXXX ___________________ As I was working on the complaint I submitted earlier today, number XXXX, I received additional email messages from XXXX that shows that they STILL CAN and ARE TAKING MONEY OUT OF MY PAYPAL ACCOUNT. 
___________________ This is in spite of my long text-chat directly with XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX, in which they promised to both stop doing this and to refund previous unauthorized charges. 
___________________ And this is also in spite of my long telephone conversation with PayPal on XX/XX/XXXX, in which I told PayPal that the charges were not authorized, and that I did not want XXXX 's services, and that XXXX did not and does not have my permission to take my money. In that conversation, I drew the PayPal rep 's attention to PayPal 's responsibility for XXXX 's ability to take my money without my permission by means of the automatic-billing permission-setting that PAYPAL created in my account independently of me and without my permission or knowledge. 
___________________ In my ongoing efforts to get these thefts to permanently stop, I have disconnected my bank account from PayPal. But the past unauthorized charges -- which XXXX promised IN WRITING via text-chat to refund -- and the additional charge that XXXX made after promising to both refund past charges and to never make another charge again -- have not been refunded. 
___________________ Thank you in advance very much for your help with solving this very frightening problem! 
___________________ I forgot to mention in the text of my CFPB complaint XXXX that the setting in XXXX for automatic recurring billing in my XXXX account WAS NEVER ENABLED. I informed XXXX and PayPal of this, and provided a screenshot of the page with the ENABLE button that had never been activated. I didn't know about it, or where it was, until XX/XX/XXXX. 
___________________ I AM GOING TO PASTE BELOW THE TEXT OF THE COMPLAINT XXXX THAT I SUBMITTED EARLIER TODAY. 
___________________ I recently discovered the hard, expensive way that -- without my knowledge or permission -- PayPal had set my account settings so that XXXX merchants I had made SINGLE transactions with years ago -- subsequently had the ability to pull money out of my account on a recurring basis without my authorization. PayPal refers to this as a " billing agreement '' with these merchants. Two merchants took money this way. The first was the billing service for a radio-show archive, and PayPal was helpful in getting this money refunded. 
____________________ The other one was XXXX. Although I had been a customer of XXXX since XXXX, I knew that XXXX had cancelled the only phone number I'd ever used with XXXX because I had not paid for a renewal. I didn't renew because I stopped using XXXX around XXXX and didn't need the number. On that basis, I knew XXXX services XXXX when payment is not made. ( The phone number was XXXX. ) ____________________ But I didn't know until XX/XX/XXXX, that PayPal gives merchants the ability to automatically take money out of accounts, even if you didn't authorize a payment, and even if you have cancelled a subscription directly with the merchant exactly according to the merchant 's rules. Since I didn't yet know PayPal was allowing merchants to take money out of my account without my permission, I had a long text-chat with XXXX about the unauthorized payments XXXX had received from my PayPal account XXXX In that text-chat, XXXX promised XXXX refund one of the " annual fee '' charges as well as " monthly fee '' charges going back just six months. This was only a partial solution, but I accepted it and I thought the problem was solved. 
____________________ But when yet another payment was taken by XXXX out of my account about a month later, I discovered the promised refunds were never made. This led me to the discovery of the list in my PayPal account that PAYPAL created that gave merchants I'd made transactions with in the past the ongoing ability to withdraw money automatically. This setting is some automatic procedure that PAYPAL did independently of me and without my knowledge. I didn't participate in setting this up. I didn't want it. I didn't know about it until XX/XX/XXXX. 
____________________ For an example that fortunately did NOT lead to unauthorized taking of my money, such as happened with XXXX, I paid XXXX for a background check in XXXX. So that they wouldn't ever bill me again, I followed XXXX 's rules for cancelling the ongoing monthly subscription they force you to sign up for in order to get a single report. XXXX processed my cancellation and, unlike XXXX, the company was honorable thereafter. I didn't think about XXXX again. But, to my astonishment, I found on XX/XX/XXXX, that XXXX had permission from PayPal to take money out of my account because PayPal had added them to this list in my PayPal account. 
____________________ Some merchants in this list, such as XXXX and XXXX, had been listed numerous times. ( And I don't remember ever making even one purchase directly from XXXX. ) On the day I discovered that XXXX not only had not honored their written promise to refund the unauthorized charges but had also removed money from my account yet again AFTER also promising in writing not to, I also discovered for the first time the existence of the list in PayPal that made the additional unauthorized payment possible. I immediately removed all the merchants from the PayPal list. 
____________________ I also opened a dispute over the XXXX charges via PayPal, rather than go back to XXXX again, because my effort to solve the problem with XXXX had failed, and because PayPal had solved a similar problem earlier in the year with the radio-archive company. 
____________________ In the dispute via PayPal, I provided PayPal with a copy of the text-chat that includes XXXX 's XXXX promises to refund and to never make the unauthorized charges again. 
My conversation with PayPal 's dispute department was extremely, extremely frustrating and went on for about an hour and a half. And a day later, I was informed that my dispute has been denied. This is even though XXXX themselves promised in writing to make the refund and didn't. And even though PayPal received a copy of the written statements XXXX made in the text-chat. And even though it was PAYPAL -- without my knowledge or permission -- who was responsible for XXXX having the ability to take money out of my account -- also without my knowledge or permission. ( By the way, I've been a PayPal customer since the XXXX. I don't have a history of being a problem customer. And I have excellent credit. And I'm going to the extensive time and trouble of correcting these problems because it's honorable and needs to be investigated by people with the ability to hold those we trust with money services to be honorable. ) ____________________ Other consumers might be as surprised as I was to find merchants they made ONE SINGLE transaction with -- years prior -- may have been given permission BY PAYPAL to continue to take money out of your account automatically. EVEN IF YOU CANCEL A SUBSCRIPTION BY INFORMING THE MERCHANT DIRECTLY AND ABIDE ENTIRELY BY THE MERCHANT 'S CANCELLATION RULES, PAYPAL PRESERVES THE MERCHANT 'S -- -ABILITY -- - TO TAKE MONEY OUT OF YOUR ACCOUNT. XXXX is one company that's an example of this, in my case. I had no idea PayPal does this. Until I had to figure out how XXXX was able to keep taking my money without my permission. 
____________________ It isn't easy to find the list of merchants PayPal has given permission to automatically take money. So I hope this helps somebody out there : Go to the Help section in PayPal and do a search for " What is an automatic payment and how do I cancel or update one? '' Here are PayPal 's instructions about that, so you can stop merchants from being able to take money out of your account automatically : ____________________ ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..... 
Finding your automatic payments on the app : ____________________ Tap Settings. 
Tap Automatic Payments. 
Tap the merchant. 
On this page, you can Remove PayPal as your payment method and select a backup funding source. 
____________________ Finding your automatic payments on the website : Go to Account Settings. 
Click Money, Banks and Cards. 
Click Set Automatic Payments. 
Select the merchant. 
On this page, you can Cancel the automatic payment and Change the backup funding source. 
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .... 
____________________ On this same Help page, PayPal also has instructions for merchants who need to cancel a subscription for a customer. I mention this because in the text-chat I provided a copy of to PayPal, XXXX promised XXXX they would make sure I was never billed again. But they did bill me again. Even though, according to these PayPal instructions, it appears XXXX had the ability to cancel the recurring taking of my money not just on their end, but also within PayPal. 
____________________

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation