In the EU, if you revoke their SEPA direct debit permission, they are committing a fraud if they try to pull money, and 99.9999% of companies will not even try. If someone still does it, you can revoke the transaction in your online banking interface, and the company will then have to pay an additional fee to the bank.
Netflix' fraud detection is garbage and someone created an account with random letters, some throwaway email and my bank account. I didn't notice until it was like three months in. For the two later transactions, I could reverse them immediately and the money was back in my account on the next business day.
The other one was outside of that window, but my bank filed a request with their bank and it took forever, but eventually they paid it back. I believe this works for something like 13 months. Beyond that, you could still sue the person (and their bank) who fraudulently debited money out of your account, but you don't get a default win.
So at least in Germany you have about a year to notice.
Experian routinely generates unauthorized credit card charges. The banks know, but they rely too heavily on the credit rating industry to stand up to them.
It was weird. They seemed very confused by the request.
If it's a Core SEPA Direct Debit, there is not the concept of a "signed mandate" but according to the rulebook [1] you have up to 13 months [2] to ask for a Return.
[_sigh_] I've spend so much team reading those rulebooks
[1] https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-payme...
[2] "If the request for a Refund concerns an Unauthorised Transaction, a Debtor must present its claim to the Debtor PSP within 13 months of the debit date. [...]"
This is fine for many use cases, but totally different from the paypal experience.
Do they hold assets other than their customer’s deposits? Are they even a bank?
As far as I know, paypal doesn't do fractional reserve banking (because it's not a bank and that would be illegal), it just collects a fee on the seller's side for each transaction, so everyone pulling out all of their money at once would probably not be that disastrous, supposedly they do have that money just sitting in an account. It would be disastrous to paypal as a business, and they would probably use fine print to keep that money, but out of greed, not out of lack of liquidity.
I don't think they do any fractional reserve banking though (at least they didn't two decades ago), so there shouldn't be any liquidity risk. All dollars in deposits should be backed by real dollars.
Just forward them to [email protected]
> After a review, we decided to permanently limit your account as we found potential risk associated with it.
> You'll not be able to conduct any further business using PayPal.
> Based on this decision, if applicable, you are no longer eligible for PayPal Seller Protection as per our User Agreement. You'll also be charged a High Volume Dispute fee based on your activity for all existing and future cases you receive.
> Any bank or credit card information that's linked to your PayPal account cannot be removed nor can it be added to another account. You can still log in and see your account information but you can't send or receive money.
> If you have funds in your PayPal balance, we'll hold it for up to 180 days. After that period, we'll email you with information on how to access your funds.
> We regret any inconvenience this may cause.
No contact address, no escalation path, only vague rumors on internet forums of voodoo to get the ban lifted by the Paypal gods.
They continue to send me daily emails telling me to link my bank account. Okay!
And then a day or two later I get another email
> My name is YYYY and I work on the PayPal Business team. I am more than happy to assist you with your PayPal onboarding journey.
> So I understand the nature of your request. Could you please provide me with some additional insight to your business by answering the below questions.
And a bunch of generic business area questions (what do you sell, what's your volume, etc). Are you kidding? You open by telling a fellow to get stuffed, then talk about journeys and assisting them?
I don't get how people use this thing.
Whatever, I can live without the ability to purchase random crafts from Etsy.
A week later I tried logging in again just to see what would happen, and everything was back to normal. I could once again send and receive money as if nothing had ever happened. Needless to say, I took the opportunity to transfer every last dime out of the account.