uaru
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posted on October 11, 2000 02:26:36 PM new
"...they need to devise a system that lets the buyer know when they input the email address whether it is a valid account or not. Pop up a little screen saying: You are about to send money to (account holder's name) or You are about to send money to a non registered email address. Would you like to continue? This would give anyone with close to average intelligence a clue where the money is going.
Try sending payment to a fictious PayPal account. For me the confirmaton text they supply works, I'll see if they are verified, unverified, or this...
This recipient is not yet registered or verified. He or she will receive the money after opening an account with this email address.
[ edited by uaru on Oct 11, 2000 02:27 PM ]
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outoftheblue
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posted on October 11, 2000 02:29:50 PM new
mrpotatoheadd
I was unaware that they had a verification page which shows the amount of money and to whom it is being sent. I haven't personally sent any money through PayPal. I just assumed that they didn't have it because it should give people a clue, if that is the case. We've had a lot of people send payments to the wrong or a non existant address.
[ edited by outoftheblue on Oct 11, 2000 02:32 PM ]
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mrpotatoheadd
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posted on October 11, 2000 02:33:18 PM new
I know you can enter the last name to make sure it matches up, but doing that is optional.
Even making it mandatory wouldn't solve the problem, if both users happened to have the same last name.
Ultimately, it comes down to the issue of how much effort you're willing to put into making the system foolproof, and how much responsibility the user is going to have to assume for their actions.
Good luck if you think that it is possible to get everybody to agree on one system.
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mrpotatoheadd
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posted on October 11, 2000 02:47:56 PM new
outoftheblue-
After you enter the information to send money through PayPal and click the "Continue" button, you get a confirmation page like this:
*****
Send Money - Check the details of your payment
Secure Transaction
Recipient:
[email protected]
Recipient Status:
Verified Personal Account
Amount:
$xx.xx
yada yada yada
-Send Money button
-Edit button
-Cancel button
*****
They do provide an opportunity to verify that the correct information has been entered, but the sender has to do the proofreading. Could it be more foolproof? Probably, but to what extent?
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amalgamated2000
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posted on October 11, 2000 03:47:26 PM new
I just heard back from Damon and my problem was indeed caused by a period at the end of the email address.
I am amazed that they have knowingly allowed such a simple problem to persist.
I'm not a programmer, but I do know a bit about it, and I know that any competent programmer could write the code to remove an unnecessary period at the end of a field in about 30 minutes, tops.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed.
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paypaldamon
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posted on October 11, 2000 03:49:01 PM new
HI amalgamated2000,
Emails are notification only. Transactions occur at the account level (or the registered email addresses).
Email providers/ISP's will scrub the error when it goes through their servers (allowing for email delivery). The actual mechanisms to move money are done through the system and it has to be an exact match.
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abingdoncomputers
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posted on October 11, 2000 04:27:07 PM new
Damon:
Email providers/ISP's will scrub the error when it goes through their servers (allowing for email delivery). The actual mechanisms to move money are done through the system and it has to be an exact match.
This has been rehashed so many times before that is rediculous. If the ISPs can "scrub" the trailing period, why can't PayPal? Surely your engineering department is up to the task! Or is he still on vacation?
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paypaldamon
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posted on October 11, 2000 05:21:37 PM new
Hi pickersangel,
You are correct in that regard (dual domain name acceptance).
One of the most common problems:
MSN users have two email addresses (@msn.com and @email.msn.com). Both email addresses would need to be registered if you were not specific to your user as to which address it was to go to.
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mcjane
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posted on October 11, 2000 09:14:58 PM new
uaru
Your suggestion made a lot of sense. I went to PP & added my same email address but, this time with .com
An email from PP was sent in less than a minute with an address to click on & when you get there you give your password. I just checked my account & the 21.55 is
there !!! Can you believe it, so easy & such a simple solution & it didn't take but two miutes. A good thing too because the buyer has yet to answer my email
& I'm tired of emailing her. I can't figure her out, I know if I sent someone money via PP & they said they didn't receive it I would sure want to know why.
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booksbooksbooks
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posted on October 11, 2000 09:49:12 PM new
Depending on the ISP(s) involved, it is possible -- indeed likely -- that [email protected] is a different person from [email protected]. Paypal can't assume that they are the same, and it can't survey a million domains to see if the same entity owns both domains, *and* makes them interchangeable.
I'd guess that there are very few situations where [email protected] and [email protected] are not the same person. But there is (AFAIK) no guarantee of this; and an ISP/domain owner could treat them as separate identities. Again, it's unreasonable for Paypal to investigate to make sure that every domain treats them as the ssame person.
BUT......There are no situations when [email protected] will be a different user than [email protected]. (with the dot afterwards), since there is no such thing as an e-mail address with a dot at the end of it. The only person that mail to the incorrect address could be forwarded to is the user who has the e-mail address without a dot. So there is no reason for Paypal not to remove *one* cause of this confusion, by programming its software to ignore dots at the end of e-mail addresses.
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haddo
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posted on October 11, 2000 10:04:12 PM new
The title of this thread is so ironic - Pay Pal is a risky scheme - you are at risk!
The fact that the email address has to be exact for the funds to transfer is a good and secure thing.
What if you wanted to send money to [email protected] and you mistakenly sent it to [email protected], who is also a PayPal user. How can you get [email protected] to return the money that was sent to him in error? If this situation happened, many people would blame PayPal saying that they should have a system that the money will only go to the email that was intended. It does not matter what PayPal does, people are going to find reason to complain.
There is a confirmation page that allows the sender to check and verify all the information before the money is sent. The fault is not PayPal; it is the sender who needs to verify the information before sending the money.
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nomorefees
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posted on October 11, 2000 10:33:33 PM new
The title of this thread is so ironic - Pay Pal is a risky scheme - you are at risk!
The fact that the email address has to be exact for the funds to transfer is a good and secure thing.
The point is that if paypal would just change the rules and not allow payments to unregistered users then most of the sent to incorrect email address problems would go away.
You are at risk of getting neg'd when a nuby can't type the email address correctly.
But the main point of the thread was that I'm concerned with the increasing number of accounts that are frozen. What we read about here is just the tip of the iceburg. All that has to happen is that a person that fly's off the over a minor dispute and they claim fraud and your toast. Or what if someone buy's somthing with a stolen CC! I'm begining to think it is not safe to use this service.
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thedewey
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posted on October 11, 2000 11:05:24 PM new
nomorefees -- I'm already wearing a neg from a newbie who typed in my address wrong. The auction ended on Friday night, she e-mailed me to say she was sending payment (no mention of how: check, money order, PayPal, etc.), then Monday a.m. ... one business day later ... I woke up and found a negative saying that I didn't "claim" her payment. 
I did a little research, and found that she'd also negged a Canadian seller ... and PayPal wasn't even available in Canada at that time. The other seller negged her back.
We did go ahead and successfully complete the transaction, and she did leave a follow-up positive for explaining what happened, but it doesn't take the neg away. 
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KateArtist
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posted on October 12, 2000 12:19:56 AM new
I believe if you go through Paypal's TOS you will find that PayPal will take no responsibility for a mis-typed email address.
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nufsaid
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posted on October 12, 2000 07:26:43 AM new
I think it is risky to use Paypal for all the above mentioned reasons. I too have a neg from a newbie who typed the email address wrong. Paypal needs to not let this happen. They could do that by only letting payments go to a registered account. I'm also worried about getting my account frozen. Seems like a high price to pay if you're the victim of a fraud. Seems to me they have a long way to go from a customer service stand point.
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abingdoncomputers
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posted on October 12, 2000 08:25:10 AM new
What if you wanted to send money to [email protected] and you mistakenly sent it to [email protected], who is also a PayPal user. How can you get [email protected] to return the money that was sent to him in error?
This is precisely why PayPal is playing with fire (or encouraging their users to) when they suggest adding an erroneous email address to your account in order to collect a payment sent to the wrong email address.
Let's say a buyer sends a payment to [email protected] when my actual email address is [email protected]. If there is already a PayPal user with the [email protected] address, the wrong account will receive the payment. This is bad enough as it is.
But... Let's say that there is no one who currently has that email address. I add it to my PayPal account and collect the payment. All seems well.
But... What happens down the road when someone signs up for the email account [email protected]? This user can NEVER use his/her own email address with PayPal. Kinda stupid and poor planning on PayPal's part.
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pickersangel
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posted on October 12, 2000 08:33:41 AM new
That is covered in the user agreement....something about PayPal not being liable for loss of misdirected funds, if I remember correctly. While I didn't read it closely, I took it to mean that if money is sent to the wrong person and they claim the payment, then it's between you and that person to settle the problem. PayPal is not liable for the $$$$.
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nufsaid
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posted on October 12, 2000 09:03:06 AM new
Doesn't it seem like there are a lot of posts about frozen accounts these days?
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amalgamated2000
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posted on October 12, 2000 09:15:25 AM new
The .com/.net is one problem, and Paypal is handling it correctly, I think.
This period thing is ridiculous though. It's simply a matter of form validation and it's very easy to do.
The point is that an email address with a period at the end is not a valid email address.
I'm sure Paypal currently has some mechanisms to insure that people are entering valid email address. For example, I'm sure that they check to see if there is an "@" sign in the email field, and if not, it tells the user there is an error.
They should do the same thing for the period at the end of an email address.
That, or just set up the form to filter out periods at the end of email addresses, since they are always erroneous.
Any competent programmer would be able to set this up in a matter of minutes.
It is absolutely ridiculous that Paypal doesn't do something about this.
I still have $100 in limbo because of this.
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All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed.
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abingdoncomputers
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posted on October 12, 2000 09:39:00 AM new
amalgamated2000:
I agree with your post except for this statement:
The .com/.net is one problem, and Paypal is handling it correctly, I think.
When PayPal recommends that a user add an erroneous email address to their account (net/com), this opens up a huge can of worms. And it will most definitely come back to bite them in the @ss.
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amalgamated2000
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posted on October 12, 2000 11:21:34 AM new
abingdoncomputers,
Thanks for your post. It led indirectly to solving my problem!
I was composing a post stating that with Paypal, you can only add an email address that does exist and that you do have access to. This is because they send a confirmation to that address, and you must click on a link in the email. So it's not possible to add an address that you don't actually own.
Then I realized that there was an exception to this. It is possible to add an address that you don't actually own IF you are able to receive the confirmation email that Paypal sends out.
In the case of the period at the end, this is a perfect solution. Paypal thinks [email protected] is different from [email protected]. (with a period) and has an account for [email protected]. with money waiting in it.
So, I just went in and added the email address [email protected]. even though [email protected] (no period) was already there.
Sure enough, the confirmation email went through and I was able to add this invalid email address to my Paypal account.
The money is now on its way to my checking account....
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All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed.
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abingdoncomputers
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posted on October 12, 2000 11:42:08 AM new
amalgamated2000:
Glad I could help, even if it was by accident...
This period on the end of an email address glitch would be so easy to fix that it's rediculous. I guess customer satisfaction means nothing to PlayPal. They would rather have their engineering department working on "enhancements" rather than fixing known bugs. Sort of reminds me of a couple of other companies.
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HJW
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posted on October 12, 2000 12:58:32 PM new
After I cancelled PayPal, I received a note from a buyer that she
was sending over 400.00 by PayPal to me for the "earrings". Well, I only sell
books...no jewelry. So, I looked up what she had bid on and found
another seller with an email address very similar to mine. After I
let him know what had happened, he was able to straighten it out.
If PayPal would stop accepting payments for unregistered users it
would solve a lot of problems such as this.
Helen
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Meya
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posted on October 19, 2000 11:30:49 AM new
Wow Jimhaber, was it really necessary to post to each and every thread here that has to do with PP? We get it, they messed with you too, but geez.
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