“Many of you asked us to make tracking your PayPal Debit Card cash back simpler. You got it.
Starting August 1, 2009, the cash back earned on your PayPal Debit Card transactions will be combined into a single deposit and paid monthly, rather than after each transaction, making your record keeping easier.
Your cash back rate won’t change.”

What this means is that Paypal will now keep your cash back money and not release it till the end of the month. You are in fact making Paypal a interest free loan of your money till the end of the month. Now this only means a few dollars kept back per person till the end of the month but multiply that by the millions of people that use it and Paypal is holding back Millions of Dollars till the end of the month.

You could always try to go to their headquarters in San Jose, CA.

Good Luck

So…october 1st. I wanted to go groccerie shopping, and remembered, oh, my card just expired, so I better go activate that new one. There still was no option to activate. So, I then called paypal, and after going through their long voice activated menus— ( say “agent” to help bypass it and get to a menu designed to actually send you to a live person) I was disconnected twice. I finally reached someone with such a thick accent I could not understand anything he was saying, but after asking him to repeat several times, he told me my NEW card had expired because I had not activated it BEFORE my previous card had expired. What? No where does it say anything of the sort, not on the site, not on the paper with instructions that comes with the card—no warning to activate it immediately or it will be void and cancelled. Even despite that, I had tried and it had not shown up. I then requested to speak to a manager—this time a woman, again with a thick accent….call center out-sourcing. She was cold, spoke in automatic prepared phrases. She repeated off to me that it had needed to be activated earlier, and I told her that was just great to know now, but no where does it say anything like that to give us prior warning….” I’m sorry mam.” I was sitting there, holding a brand new card that I was told was worthless. I was told I had been sent an email as a reminder to activate. I had never seen that email….later I discovered it had been sent to my junk folder because the subject line was just a jumble of mixed up garbled script. Inside was a message to activate, but no warning that the ability to do so would expire. If I had known that, I would have called to ask why the activation option was not showing shortly after I received it. ( and I only had it for like two weeks).
So, what does this mean? I had $5 in my wallet, and that is it. I had to transfer all my funds to my bank, and wait…..while I am out of grocceries and have bills that need paid. I am due to get my monthly payment from the company….and again, will have to wait and transfer it, which means my rent will be late. The “manager” told me it would be 7-10 days to get my new card, but according to the site, it will be 2-4 weeks. It made me literally apply as if I have never had a card before, and it still lists my status as waiting for approval now, two days later. Who knows when I will get a card again—and for me this is something very scary and inconvienent given that is where my primary source of income is sent through. This was a horrible time for this to happen.

Paypal, if you read this—please at least inform people of activation deadlines, and hire agents who are not so difficult to understand and who sound like programed anamatrons in their responses.

if you ever found yourself in an unfair situation and need their help, (as with a normal bank), then PayPal are not there for you. you cant complain, its very difficult, they dont really take care of your problem like a local bank. they even have very unfair regulations (which would be completely unheard of among normal banks).

I do use them out of necessity. (for me, they are a necessary evil), sooner or later I am sure that google financial service will come forth and get a large enough market share that all the people that have problems with paypal and they nasty service can make the swap-over.

I am sure their credit or debit card is fine, (at first glance), but if you run into any problems along the way and need their assistance, then you will know the extent of their rubbishness.

I didn’t do anything wrong and nothing was compromised on my account.

I think it was just a mistake on their part.