Consumer complaint received 2023-07-17
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: CA
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Unauthorized transactions or other transaction problem

Complaint:
PayPal has a number of security issues and outrageously bad customer support. On XX/XX/2023 my PayPal account got hacked. I received emails that somebody added a credit card to my account, simultaneously made 3 identical transactions to a made-up person name in foreign funds on 2 of my credit cards ( there were more transaction attempts but the bank blocked them ), then closed my account. All within 3 minutes. It seems that adding a credit card allowed to bypass account security and the hacking operation was automated. I also received messages from my bank who detected the problem, I confirmed that it was unauthorized activity and asked for replacement cards. PayPal didn't detect those obviously fraudulent transactions, neither did it confirm by email that I authorized closing the account. All I got in the PayPal email was that if I didn't authorize closing my account, I have to go to the site and press " Contact ''. I did so but they required me to log in into the closed account which is impossible. I registered another account with another email and contacted help desk, they opened a case for unauthorized transactions in my deleted account. However, soon after I received a message that the case was closed, they didn't find any suspicious activity! I insisted to the help desk that they reopen the case ( took me 2 days, they assured me a few times they reopened it but it didn't work ), but then they miscalculated the total amount ( lower than it's supposed to be ) and wouldn't correct it. I also kept asking to reopen my account but they refused to do so giving contradictory reasoning ; like they don't have my data any longer as they delete everything except customer email and phone number upon closing an account ; but then I asked how they can overturn transactions if all my financial information was deleted ; and they wanted to collect more private information from me for " verification ''. I'm still not sure if they still have all my information in the database but lie about it or they have a security issue not being able to overturn fraudulent transactions from a closed account, but wouldn't admit it pretending they were working on my problem. I spent 5 ( FIVE ) days trying to resolve the issue but the conversation was going in circles giving me canned answers. Anyway, I ended up contacting my bank since those 3 transactions went through even though the bank was supposed to block them. The bank promised to overturn them. But the reason they went through was because they were charged by PayPal on the new replacement cards issued by the bank, 2 hours after my account was closed! It's the time when I pressed a button to replace my cards. The bank considers PayPal a " trusted '' source, so when it issued the replacement credit cards it immediately sent the numbers to PayPal. But PayPal shouldn't be trusted as it charged the new cards for the same fraudulent transactions, overturning the bank suspending them! And it happened in a closed account, no problem. Now I'm getting new new replacements cards since the new ones were compromised again by PayPal.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation