Absolute failure to protect me in a phishing incident
On July 13, 2026 I unfortunately opened an invitation in my gmail account from my sister that turned out to be phishing. The one resulting problem I encountered was significant – my PayPal account was compromised and someone ordered thousands of dollars of cell phones from the a store and charged my bank account. Unfortunately, my first call was to PayPal. I had assumed that as a technology company PayPal would provide great support for its platform. I had no idea how mistaken I would be. PayPal would not hold or stop the transactions and someone in another state received the telephones. Within several weeks, not only had PayPal taken an unacceptable amount of time to review the transactions, they would not say that they were fraudulent. Fortunately, I learned that my bank was, in contrast, genuinely helpful and immediately responsive. They should have been my first call! During this process, I removed my bank account and all my cards from PayPal. For an unexplained reason (and I'm still not sure how they got access), after a couple of weeks PayPal deposited money in my bank account. Then they immediately wanted it back and began sending me debt collection emails. I was forced to reconnect a debit card to PayPal in order to return the money. That was extremely disconcerting, considering how deeply I now distrust their services.