Continuing on my trend of posting publicly when I have an issue with a company, this time it’s PayPal in the crosshairs. I’ve been a PayPal member since… forever. I think 2000 is when I opened my PayPal account. And I’ve never had any issues. And this post isn’t about PayPal, but PayPal Credit. Some background, first.
On June 30 I bought a couple coins from a friend and paid her via PayPal through my PayPal Credit account, knowing it would be treated as a cash advance since the friend doesn’t have a business account. Two weeks later, when the statement closed, I made a payment large enough that the cash advance should’ve been taken care of, along with another expiring promotional balance.
Except the payment was credited in a way that it eliminated only part of the promotional balance. And PayPal appears to be bouncing the remaining amount between billing cycles, refusing to credit my payments in such a way to eliminate that.
After noticing my most recent payment was also not credited in a way to eliminate the cash advance (doing some math on the remaining promotional balances), I wrote into PayPal’s customer service basically asking “what the hell is going on”?
I’m trying to figure out something with regard to my PayPal Credit account.
On June 30, I sent a payment from my PayPal Credit account to a friend with the total amount charged to my account being [REDACTED]. The next billing statement on July 15 reflected a minimum payment “to avoid Standard and Deferred Interest” of [REDACTED], which was fully expected given the [REDACTED] and an expiring promotional balance. And under “PayPal Send Money Cash Advances” for the statement ending July 14, it shows the [REDACTED] transaction.
I made a payment for [REDACTED] even. I thought the payment would be credited in such a fashion that the [REDACTED] amount would be cleared out first since it was an interest-bearing balance with the rest applied to promotional balances. That is not what happened.
Looking at the statement for the period ending August 14, I was given a minimum payment “to avoid Standard and Deferred Interest” of [REDACTED], which shows that only [REDACTED] was applied to the cash advance amount of [REDACTED]. I made a payment on August 15 of [REDACTED]. The cash advance balance of [REDACTED] was, again, not eliminated by that payment, as reflected by the statement for the period ending September 14 which again showed the cash advance balance of [REDACTED].
And with the payment I made yesterday, September 15, it appears the payment, once again, was not applied to eliminate the cash advance. It was, instead, applied only to promotional balances.
Why is that [REDACTED] still being held on my account and not being eliminated with any payments? Why was it not eliminated back with the July 15 payment as I originally expected it would be?
Or will that balance instead be bounced around until I bring the PayPal Credit balance down to 0?
I’m hoping the issue is merely a problem in their software and it’s something they can easily adjust. Basically it would require adding the cash advance amount back to a promotional balance that doesn’t expire until November, and then eliminating the cash advance balance from the account. Or advising me on how my next payment can be made in such a way the promotional balance is eliminated and not just bounced between billing cycles, always hanging over my head.
The interesting thing about this as well is that PayPal, thankfully, is not assessing interest on that outstanding cash advance. I would’ve written in with the next billing statement if they did that. But that also tells me it’s a glitch in their system since all of this is automated with virtually no manual review unless an issue comes up.
