PayPal
Word to the wise: Don't use PayPal if you can help it.
I just found out that when you make purchases on there, your credit card billing address "may be" (translation: is) sent to the seller. It's in the privacy policy, but the information was not presented to me when I added a credit card to my account as a backup funding source. I'm furious at PayPal, both because they're sharing my address without my consent and because this resulted in two packages I paid good money for being sent to the wrong address. (I had an outdated address marked as "Home" on PayPal. My actual credit card billing address was the new one, but somehow it was the "Home" address that got sent to the people I bought from.)
Furthermore, right now, PayPal's not letting me remove the credit card from my account because it's supposedly still processing an instant transfer, even though the last payment I made is listed as having been processed Oct. 24. WTF? I'm not even sure whether PayPal will LET me go without a credit card on my account--and if they don't, that means they're basically forcing me to reveal my address to third parties if I want to make purchases on the site. I don't feel a need to keep my credit card there as a backup funding source because, as I learned the hard way a couple of years ago, when your bank account doesn't have enough money to make a payment (which happened because PayPal waited to actually take out the money), they don't actually use your backup funding source. They just overdraw your bank account.
I'd like to delete my PayPal account, but I'm not sure if there's really any alternative way for me to send money online. I sometimes buy yarn from other users on Ravelry, a knitting and crochet site, and I'm still in the process of scrounging up enough yarn from Ravelry users to finish a knitting project that needs more yarn than it was supposed to. I want to be able to make purchases online without revealing bank or credit card information. Does anyone know of any other services that would let me do that?
ETA: PayPal just called me. Supposedly, whenever you make a purchase, PayPal provides a shipping address. I was NEVER aware of that, and I'm not okay with it. The only way to make a payment without providing your address to the seller is to make it a personal payment rather than a purchase, and that doesn't have a process for disputing charges, so I doubt most sellers would be happy with that.
I do NOT want to send my address to whatever random person I buy an electronic item, such as a knitting pattern PDF, from, and I do not appreciate that it was never made clear to me by the site in my several years of PayPal use that anyone I make purchases from can see my address. If someone is going to get my address, I want to be the one to give it to them. I asked the person I spoke with to raise the issue with his superior, but somehow I doubt that's going to happen, and of course there's no way in hell it'll change anything.
PayPal has a monopoly. If I want to send money online without revealing my bank account or credit card number, as far as I know, I have to use them. If another company started up and tried to provide the same service, they probably wouldn't be able to make a go of it because PayPal already has a monopoly. This means that I am not free to choose how I send money online. I am not okay with that.
I just found out that when you make purchases on there, your credit card billing address "may be" (translation: is) sent to the seller. It's in the privacy policy, but the information was not presented to me when I added a credit card to my account as a backup funding source. I'm furious at PayPal, both because they're sharing my address without my consent and because this resulted in two packages I paid good money for being sent to the wrong address. (I had an outdated address marked as "Home" on PayPal. My actual credit card billing address was the new one, but somehow it was the "Home" address that got sent to the people I bought from.)
Furthermore, right now, PayPal's not letting me remove the credit card from my account because it's supposedly still processing an instant transfer, even though the last payment I made is listed as having been processed Oct. 24. WTF? I'm not even sure whether PayPal will LET me go without a credit card on my account--and if they don't, that means they're basically forcing me to reveal my address to third parties if I want to make purchases on the site. I don't feel a need to keep my credit card there as a backup funding source because, as I learned the hard way a couple of years ago, when your bank account doesn't have enough money to make a payment (which happened because PayPal waited to actually take out the money), they don't actually use your backup funding source. They just overdraw your bank account.
I'd like to delete my PayPal account, but I'm not sure if there's really any alternative way for me to send money online. I sometimes buy yarn from other users on Ravelry, a knitting and crochet site, and I'm still in the process of scrounging up enough yarn from Ravelry users to finish a knitting project that needs more yarn than it was supposed to. I want to be able to make purchases online without revealing bank or credit card information. Does anyone know of any other services that would let me do that?
ETA: PayPal just called me. Supposedly, whenever you make a purchase, PayPal provides a shipping address. I was NEVER aware of that, and I'm not okay with it. The only way to make a payment without providing your address to the seller is to make it a personal payment rather than a purchase, and that doesn't have a process for disputing charges, so I doubt most sellers would be happy with that.
I do NOT want to send my address to whatever random person I buy an electronic item, such as a knitting pattern PDF, from, and I do not appreciate that it was never made clear to me by the site in my several years of PayPal use that anyone I make purchases from can see my address. If someone is going to get my address, I want to be the one to give it to them. I asked the person I spoke with to raise the issue with his superior, but somehow I doubt that's going to happen, and of course there's no way in hell it'll change anything.
PayPal has a monopoly. If I want to send money online without revealing my bank account or credit card number, as far as I know, I have to use them. If another company started up and tried to provide the same service, they probably wouldn't be able to make a go of it because PayPal already has a monopoly. This means that I am not free to choose how I send money online. I am not okay with that.