I logged on to my PC this morning just in time to see seven emails from PayPal saying they had paid Skype for seven different charges.
"This email confirms that you have paid Skype ([email protected]) 100.00 EUR using PayPal. The exchange rate for this purchase is 1 USD = 0.771576EUR."
I had never even heard of Skype. So I signed in to my PayPal account and called them at the same time. After 40 minutes and three transfers, I finally spoke to someone in the "Resolution Department" who said that their software had determined that the charges were fraudulent and that they had refunded all the money to my PayPal account. In other words, I had a credit of approximately $30 before the charges hit, and I had a $30 credit after they refunded. But charges of approximately $750 had been passed on to my bank account, and they said there was no way they could stop those charges from going through. They also said that even though their own software had detected the fraud and made the "refund," it was not a real refund, which would occur over the following 3-5 days. I asked that my account be closed (which is something you would think they would suggest), but they said they could not do that because I now had "transactions pending." So much for "help."
I then had to call my bank, and the bank suggested that I would not be secure unless I closed my checking account and opened a new one. I have had that checking account for thirty years. Now I am faced with having to contact everyone who is currently direct depositing into my account. I have to re-enter all the information in the "direct pay" for every bill that I pay. I also lost all the online data, i.e., transaction data and check data, that was connected to that account. And since it takes approximately 3-5 days for a new account to get set up, I lost access to the money in my old account.
Fraud is ugly. I hope that if it happens to you, PayPal will not be on the other side.
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