Am I fucked?

TheJoshMan

TheJoshMan

New member
Sep 3, 2009
50
1
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Washington
So here is my situation: I am a freelance writer, just turned 18, and have had a PayPal account for about two years. I say “had” because, about a week or so ago, PayPal decided to freeze my account and its funds, claiming that I needed more proof of my identity. I of course sent in all the proof they requested, but then saw that parts of it were being denied regardless. I contacted the customer service department and was greeted by some of the rudest and most unintelligent people I have ever dealt with, but I held my cool and tried to be as careful as possible in getting my account restored. After a grueling consecutive 5 hours on the phone with various individuals, PayPal's response to my situation could not have been clearer: “fuck you Joshua, you will never use us again.” As for the reason, what I was repeatedly told was that because I had applied for a PayPal debit card, a credit-check was initiated by PayPal, through their third-party affiliate, Experian, and according to Experian, I do not exist. I can't believe how crazy that sounds even as I am typing it, but that is word-for-word what I was told multiple times by PayPal employees. Because Experian failed to verify me as someone with a pulse, this also somehow meant that I was no longer entitled to my PayPal account, or any future ones.


At this point, after dealing with so much shit both in my life and now from PayPal, I basically have given up fighting them and have decided to look for another payment gateway. I have explored multiple services and spent a while searching the “interwebs”, but one of the issues that I am running into is that many of my clients insist on paying me with PayPal, and PayPal only. Most likely because of PayPal's chargebacks and shitty system, very few payment gateways seem to accept PayPal as a valid form of payment; in fact I have only found two legit ones so far; Plimus and Moneybookers. However, Plimus has an insane fraud-protection system in which it actually calls to verify many of its orders, creating huge time-delays and shit that I frankly could live without. Moneybookers also makes me wary, based on the negative things I have read about it on WF and various other forums.


So, what is the verdict? Am I totally fucked, or are there legitimate payment gateways that accept PayPal?


Oh, and don't be one of those pompous douchebags who posts right away, “Why don't you just google it”, because believe me I have, and there is practically nothing.
 


Get a LLC.

Get a small credit card in name of LLC. Doesn't even matter if you get one of the ones you actually put the funds in as security.

Wait 30 days.

Apply for Paypal.

Done.
 
If you don't exist to Experian you've got bigger problems than just paypal.

You need to get your shit straight with the credit reporting agencies if you ever want to buy a car, get a cell phone, or own a house.

This paypal shit is small time.
 
So I'm going to guess that you're going to have to change your sig to something more like:

Cheap, original, intelligent content - now with a really complicated ordering method.
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Have your parents sign up for an account. Get your e-mail added or somehow piggyback on their account for a bit. Then have them delete their info and basically give it to you?

Since Paypal is in Omaha, I might be able to find someone that you can call. I'll ask the wife.
 
Hav3n said:
If you don't exist to Experian you've got bigger problems than just paypal.

You need to get your shit straight with the credit reporting agencies unless you never want to buy a car, get a cell phone, or own a house.

This paypal shit is small time.
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Yeah, I realize that, but considering that my Social works for everything else, I am not all that worried. I am still looking into it of course, but it's getting hard to find legit resources for help with credit reports with the amount of rebills that you guys are pushing out.

In addition, a female employee at PayPal said that the reason for the mix-up with Experian was probably based on my lack of credit history, not a negative one. She said that she has actually seen this happen multiple times with users who are just above 18, as at that point most people are lacking a solid credit history.
 
jdomaha said:
Have your parents sign up for an account. Get your e-mail added or somehow piggyback on their account for a bit. Then have them delete their info and basically give it to you?
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Thank you for actually giving reasonable and intelligent advice; it seems so rare these days. I will talk to the folks later tonight and see what they think about it.

jdomaha said:
Since Paypal is in Omaha, I might be able to find someone that you can call. I'll ask the wife.
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That would be awesome! Even if you can't find anything, thank you so much for just taking the time to look into it!
 
I think what they mean by "doesn't exist" means he has no file since he hasn't opened any credit lines (AKA "no credit").

If you don't want to go the LLC route, you can do the same by going somewhere like Target or other dept store and buying some things; at the checkout they'll often ask you something like "do you want to save 10% on this purchase?" to try to get you to sign up for a store credit card. Young people w/ no credit usually can get one with about a $200 limit. When you get the card a few weeks later, go back and use it to buy about $30 worth of stuff. When your monthly statement arrives, pay it in full then shred the card.

This may not help you get your Paypal Acct back, but after the next billing cycle, at least Experian will know who you are.
 
jryan21 said:
I think what they mean by "doesn't exist" means he has no file since he hasn't opened any credit lines (AKA "no credit").

If you don't want to go the LLC route, you can do the same by going somewhere like Target or other dept store and buying some things; at the checkout they'll often ask you something like "do you want to save 10% on this purchase?" to try to get you to sign up for a store credit card. Young people w/ no credit usually can get one with about a $200 limit. When you get the card a few weeks later, go back and use it to buy about $30 worth of stuff. When your monthly statement arrives, pay it in full then shred the card.

This may not help you get your Paypal Acct back, but after the next billing cycle, at least Experian will know who you are.
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Hmm. That does sound nice and easy, especially in comparison with the LLC route. Plus, eventually other services are going to be checking my Social for a credit history, and like you said, this would at least make them aware that I exist. Thanks for the advice - I'll look into it and probably give it a try sometime this week.
 
Don't even bother with PayPal. Shut down once, shut down twice. And if you go for more they can get extremely fucking nasty.

You have a shit ton of options.

1) Use 3RD party processor such as 2checkout which accepts PayPal too. They charge more but handle all refunds and chargebacks which is handy when you do volume.

2) Set up a Google checkout account. Easy to do and works almost like a merchant account. Has name recognition too.

3) Get that LLC and then go to PowerPay (not my link or an aff link that I am aware of) and get a real merchant account. Payments hit your bank within 2-3 days of processing the payments.

There's many more like this... but you're far from permanently fucked and the sooner you learn that using PayPal as your sole processor is stupid, the better for you.
 
Hav3n said:
If you don't exist to Experian you've got bigger problems than just paypal.

You need to get your shit straight with the credit reporting agencies if you ever want to buy a car, get a cell phone, or own a house.

This paypal shit is small time.
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Not entirely true. I bought an iphone when I was 16 on my own plan but because I didn't exist with the credit agencies yet, I had to fork out a $500 down payment. I bought a car with no credit when I was 16, put $5k down on a $20k car. If you have enough cash, you can get what you want. I would still work on building up credit as I am now, just saying things can be done without it if you ya dem cold hard dolla billz
 
When I was 18, I did not exist to Experian either. I had money but could not get fully approved for a mortgage at the time because of that. No worries, open a couple lines of credit and within a couple months you'll 'appear'.
 
Hey Joshman whats the story with my articles ;)
 
I am really anxiously waiting for the well funding class-action lawsuit against the credit agencies for defamation of character.

It happens all the time...
 
TheJoshMan said:
In addition, a female employee at PayPal said that the reason for the mix-up with Experian was probably based on my lack of credit history, not a negative one. She said that she has actually seen this happen multiple times with users who are just above 18, as at that point most people are lacking a solid credit history.
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This happened quite often back when I was in the car business. For younger people with limited or no credit history, it would often come up with basically no information when we ran the credit. We had all three, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion and normally something would show up on at least one of the bureau's, even if it was just your name and address, but occasionally if they truly were a "ghost", then it made it appear that nothing was even attached to that social sec. #. Sucks, but it's just the way the credit bureau's report.

I agree with the notion of getting your own LLC and running it through that. Probably the easiest way to continue using Paypal.
 
Walk into Macy's and apply for a store credit card. Make some purchases and pay them off in full as soon as the bill arrives. Stay on top of this bitch--like if a bill is lost in the mail. Wait about 9 months than hit up Visa. Now this method worked before the credit markets fell apart soo you may have to tweak this shit, but it will still work (I believe) if you have some money in the bank. Hey they (creditors) still need business.
 
If you have absolutely NO credit profile Target and Sears will give you a $200 limit store card. Also try Capital One credit cards they're usually pretty lenient. Everyone here says charge $30, I say max it out and pay it off twice and you're set.
 
Contact the three credit agencies and request a free report, You can get them free directly from the agencies, don't go through free credit report . com or some other shit site, go directly to the agencies, by law they have to give you a copy every 12 months if you request it.

See if anything shows up on any of the agencies , if it does you can sometimes get it transferred to the other ones.

If you have no credit at all then follow some of the other advise here and get some store cards.
 
^^ is right. You need to reach out to the Credit Agencies and see what's up. Do you have a checking account? I think that might help you out. Worst case if you really have to use paypal, stmadeveloper is right, form an LLC and then open an account under that.
Also maybe consider keep fighting paypal. Maybe you can fax them a copy of your state id and birth certificate? Or mail it and have everything notarized.
 
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