Free Miles From Paypal??
 

I just received this e-mail from paypal. If i read it correctly, I can charge an unlimited amount tomorrow at no cost to me and then transfer the funds to my checking account. Earning miles at no cost. Can anyone see a problem with this.


Thank You for Your Business

Dear XXXXXXXXX,

Recently, the PayPal site had technology issues that may have hindered your ability to conduct business using PayPal.

To show our appreciation for your continued business, we're going to credit you for PayPal transaction fees incurred on October 28, 2004, between 12:00:00 AM PDT and 11:59:59 PM PDT.†

You don't need to do anything to receive your credit. We'll add up the transaction fees you accumulate, and send a credit to your PayPal account by November 25, 2004.

Read FAQs to learn more.

Sincerely,

PayPal


†Transaction fees will only be credited to users in certain countries.

Please note: Outside of the U.S. Pacific time zone, this 24-hour period will not match exactly the October 28 calendar day.
We're taking this time to:
Apologize for the recent PayPal site issues.


Express our gratitude for your continued business with PayPal.


Reinforce our commitment to the PayPal community.

Sounds too good to be true, but I would remove your email address from there.

Unless you want lots of SPAM in your mailbox ;)

Thanks, I think I've removed all the identifiers this time.

*whiff*


Sumtin' ain't right...

It's against their policy to advance yourself money:


Your Information and your activities (including your payments and receipt of payments) through our Service shall not: ..... (c) consist of providing yourself a cash advance from your credit card (or helping others to do so),

You will also need another paypal account or least use another e-mail, they won't let you send stuff to yourself.

cordelli states nothing but the truth....but lets say you have a 'friend' who has a seperate email account & checking account, you are golden. Your friend can be a wife, girlfriend, cousin, friend, mom, dad, boss, collegue etc....you get the idea.

I hope I get one of these emails, I can make some serious miles out of it.

Ric

You don't need to receive the e-mail. Look on the Paypal homepage. This offer (and the T&Cs) is up there for everybody to see!!! To take advantage you have to have a Paypal Premier Account or a Paypal Business Account (basically any account that accepts credit cards). I can see some SERIOUS transfers using my UAL MP CC. I'm glad I have 3 of those with over $20k limits each. MILES, MILES, MILES!!! Thanks for posting this, it may just get me a free trip to Europe and ~45 days of no-interest loans!!!!! NICE!!!!!!

I thought it sounded phishy, but like gregorygrady I went straight to PayPal site.

This is exactly what I was planning last week until I learned the fees.

Guess you know what I'll be doing tomorrow.

From the T&C:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
PayPal reserves the right to exclude transaction fees for payments that involve fraud by the recipient or other actions by the recipient in violation of the User Agreement and/or Acceptable Use Policy. Additionally, fees for transactions that are reversed because of refunds, Buyer Complaints or chargebacks may not be credited back.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is paying $20k-$30k to my wife tomorrow for all the cooking she has done for me since we've been married considered fraud?

Is her paying me $20k-$30k for all the times I've taken out the trash since we've been married considered fraud?

I guess I'll have to go back to the Paypal site and dig into that User Agreement and Acceptable Use Policy.

Any lawyers here that can decipher all these T&Cs????

Who here wants to bet the Paypal site crashes again tomorrow just like last week and none of us get our miles? :)

If you ask her she will probably say YES :D

guys,

be careful. Paypal freezes accounts and funds for much less than pingpong-ing 20K back and forth to your wife. they keep your cash, make you fax massive id in, and then in the end just make you wait 6 months for you money.

www.paypalsucks.com

good luck!
rich

I agree. for a few thousands do it, anything over 5k I would becareful.

I made a post in the american express forum here, I had troubles making a payment for $1760, so doing 20-30 grand might be a prob....good luck, keep me posted on the results.

How often does paypal.com ACH money to a checking account? If immediatly (doubtflull. ) Would be worth driving between the bank and Citibank to pay CC bill. Stop by home and do the paypal thing, all day long... :)

ACH transactions don't credit immediately, they take a couple days to transfer.

Wire transfers are the closest thing to immediate, but PayPal doesn't offer them. It does offer an ATM card, but it has a $400/day limit.

I think there are transaction limits on different types of Paypal accounts.

And with AMEX, they have instituted a $2500 maximum per month

..

PayPal, by the way, has really stepped up its patrolling. I'd be wary of sending money to someone with the same last name or address, as they might put a hold on your account and start asking questions.

Paypal cross checking
 

I agree. Earlier today I tried to add my mileage earning credit card to a Paypal account with different last name than mine, and paypal asked for an "Expanded Credit Authorization Code". They would charge $1.95 to the CC and code the transaction with a special code. I would need to get the CC statement and find out the code to enter into Paypal before I can use the CC to send money.

I then tried to add the same CC to my account. This time although everything matches (name, billing address, zip code etc), Paypal gave me error messages in big red letters asking me to call their credit card department. It seems that paypal is very good at patrolling potential CC abuse. I would imagine they are good at finding out self-service cash advance too. For me, I think I am not going to risk having my account frozen with thousands of $ in the middle of transactions.

So much for my big plan to earn tons and tons of miles. I just did a "Phantom" practice bid on Paypal for $25,000. I got a big error message before I could even get to the page that asks what I would like to fund my payment with. The big error message said:

Your transaction exceeds the individual transaction limit of $10,000.00 USD.

So this is obviously a Paypal limit. I then did another Phatom bid for $9,999. This time I was able to get to the screen where you choose how to fund your payment. Unfortunately the only option I was given to fund the payment was with an e-check. My CC was grayed out and not available as a payment option.

I then attempted a 3rd Phantom bid of $4,999. This time the CC card was AGAIN grayed out and unavailable to use for payment. :mad:

I then attempted a 4th Phantom bid of $2,499. This time the CC card was finally available for payment.

BTW, the credit card linked to my Paypal account is a First USA/Bank One Visa.

OK, I've been tinkering around with Phantom Paypal payments for the last hour now trying to figure out what the hell Paypal is doing. It seems that they have made certain dollar limits for certain Paypal users so that the user cannot accept more than that from a credit card. They can accept up to the max of $10,000 per single transaction via a checking acct. transfer, but not with a CC charge. For example, one of my Paypal accts. can receive $4447 in CC charges, but not $4448. And my other Paypal acct. can receive $6706, but not anything more than $6711 ( I didn't try to go down to the exact dollar on this one since it takes too much time figuring out with Phantom bids). The weird thing is that these CC limits only seem to apply to Premier or Business members. Paypal Personal Members can be sent the full $9999 with a CC. Is this because they don't get the transaction fee waived tomorrow? Is that legal? And another weird thing is that not all Premier members have this limit. Since you can pulldown a list of everybody you have ever paid via Paypal, you can use that for phanton bidding and figure out who can accept what. It doesn't even seem consistant either in terms of people with higher "Paypal Feedback #s can receive the full $9999". So I don't know what to make of this. As others have said, Paypal must have a VERY complex method to stop thieves.
BTW, I just made a $2100 CC payment via Paypal a few days ago. It was rejected right off the bat. 20 seconds later my phone rang, it was an automated call from my credit card (First USA) company asking if I had just made a charge for $2050. I verified the charges and the message said to resend the funds and it would go thru. I resent the funds 2 minutes later and indeed it did go thru this time.
So if you plan on making big charges (at least up to the $9999 limit), make sure you notify your CC company first so they expect a big charge to show up from an Internet Company. But I guess so much for my idea of getting enough free miles to get to Europe. I'll be lucky if I get enough miles to get to the state next to me. :td:

ok folks this does work
 

Let me just say I did two very large transactions to the same paypal premier acct from an AMEX card. I was fortunate enough to have a paypal acct in good standing for the last 4 years which has accepted some large payments. So everything went smoothly and the money is on its way back to the bank.
I will be sending more today .

Someone mentioned a free ticket to Europe.3 of more these and I'll have a biz class tickets by COB tomorrow.

As a regular user of PayPal who had actual problems as a result of their system failure last week, I have an issue with this. Then again, no one really seems to care about that around here.

It's going to be crap like this that is going to raise PayPal fees for those of us who use it on a regular basis - in order to pay off the thousands of dollars some people here will save in transaction fees simply because they were trying to make up for problems they had.

Thanks a lot. :rolleyes:

Mike

Probably legal but who wants to risk getting funds tied up for any length of time? One other point. Although fees are waived for you, the "seller", won't fees still be charged to the "buyer" when he/she asks to receive the money from your account? It doesn't say that the person with whom you are doing "business" will have his/her fees waived. I'll pass on this one but thanks for the heads-up.

I'll pass, too. The earlier poster who warned of PayPal's freezing of accounts should be paid lots of heed. I've had thousands of dollars frozen for weeks by PayPal because of their draconian policies. I had roommates at the time (phone/electric bills were in their name) and they insisted I fax in additional proof of address that I didn't have.

I hate them and haven't used them since (and never will again).

I don't think eBay ever thought that PayPal would grow into the monster that it is. They thought it would be this little sleepy service for sellers and buyers to exchange money.

They had $4.5 billion worth of transactions last quarter. They are struggling to prove to regulators that people aren't laundering money or mobbed up.

I think that takes absolute priority and if your money gets tied up along the way--tough luck..

..

please keep us posted with your paypal payment with AMEX. I did a LARGE transfer a month ago and everything seems to be working out like you said. then 3 week later when I tried to deposit the money back into my bank account, paypal decided to reverse the transaction I made. This may happen to you.

Cut off after 3 transactions
 

Managed to send 3 payments via CC before funding was limited to my Bank Acct's. Got all 3 ACH'ed into my acct.

You may have initiated the ACH transfer, but the money isn't there until the money is there.

I received a payment from someone last month and sent it to my bank account. A day or two later PayPal reversed the ACH transaction and put the payment on hold until several phone calls were made, e-mails were sent and the person who paid me faxed in some documentation.

If I had to guess, I would say that credit card payments and their 2.9% fee are not going to be credited by PayPal. The normal checking account transfer fees, yes, but not the credit card ones.

Don't guess, just read the T&C from the Paypal front page. ALL TRANSACTIONS are re-credited by Paypal.

Guess I'll watch rather than join the frenzy, although I thought about making a transfer to daughter's acct. I don't want to get stuck with the 2.9% fee if PP decides not to comp. all fees.

Conservative hesitation has cost me miles before, so it won't be a new feeling if all goes well for others.

I recall words of wisdom from an investment friend when my "risky greedy gene" activates. "Bulls & Bears make money, Pigs don't."

Good luck to all who try.

BTW, I just made a ~$6500 Paypal payment about an hour ago. That was about the max amount Paypal would let me send on my CC to my other Paypal acct (and yes, there are different names + addresses on both Paypal accounts). It went through immediately this time, unlike a few days ago when I made a $2050 payment via Paypal and got rejected and then got a call confirming acct activity from my CC company. I just looked on my second account and the money is there and I am even able to withdraw it, I did a Phantom withdraw up to the very last step. Because of all the posts here however, I am wary of this scheme and will only try it this one time. I actually plan on leaving the money in my Paypal account until Nov. when the fees are cerdited back (heck, why not? I don't have to pay my CC bill for ~ 6 weeks and the money is earning 1.6% in my Paypal acct. which is more than it would be earning in my checking acct. anyway). Just wanted to relay my story. I'll post again later with my outcome. So much for this great deal, looks like it was pretty much a dud, about 1.5 hours worth of work for me to get 6500 miles!!!

I did, and it didn't say anything about waived credit card fees. If those fees aren't waived, then the miles you get will be quite expensive, indeed.

The so-called "credit card fee" for PayPal is actually the transaction fee that is charged to the recipient of the payment for receiving the payment. It does not cost the user of the card anything additional to use their credit card.

(Premier PayPal accounts, which can accept credit card payments, get charged this transaction fee on all transactions - regardless of whether it was funded by a credit card or not.)

This transaction fee is the one that will be refunded in a month.

Mike

I hope everyone knows that you have no excuse if PayPal freezes your funds or does not credit you the fees because you did large transfers that were not labeled as "quasi-cash."

The credit card fess are waived. Paypal is clear about that.

Why anyone would risk ping ponging money back and forth though however is beyond me?

I echo this. People, if you've done this successfully, get the money out N-O-W.

On second thought, that won't help anyway; PayPal can arbitrarily do an ACH out of your account, thereby reversing the transaction. This thread will be a hundred pages if that starts happening. It will make the Goldpoints/Valuemags fiasco look small-time! :D

My opinion (and experience): Don't deal with PayPal.

They are thieves. I cant wait till the IRS hits them up with an audit and the banking police hit them up. Worse kind of company to deal with.