More Awesome Than You!

So Paypal is suddenly claiming nonsense about some "unauthorized third party" allegedly accessing the account and is attempting to steal our money.

All parties interested in assisting in the recovery effort report to the #warroom.

More information and recommended course of action as it breaks.

If it came in an email, open it up with "View Source."  I'll bet real money that I don't have that the "link to PayPal" is really some other crap where they're trying to steal your info.

I get them all the time.  If they look real, I switch to a browser not affiliated with my email program and visit PayPal myself.

You can also forward suspect emails to spoof@paypal.com

Also, any true Paypal URL will be on a secure server, so if the link doesn't begin with 'https' then it is a bogus link.

It's definitely not a fake-mail, I hand-punched to Paypal itself to verify this. If they do not resolve the matter and unfreeze my account, I will be forced to authorize more drastic responses.

What a headfuck...after 2 days I finally get back here and was looking into donating.  Forget the fact that I can't work the paypal thing out for the life of me, but they have frozen the account anyway?? 
It's too early in the morning for this sort of shit..  :P

Anything we can do to help?

I'll not #grah cos I haven't a clue.. but my moolah best have made it into your sweaty hands esp. since I sent enough to insure that PP got it's cut and I got a title ;-)

Grrrr!!! I've never had trouble with PP before.. but have heard Ebay/PP horror stories.

Please let us know if you need addies/receipts to insure you get all what we wanted you to have.

This really cheeses me.. I'm one of those who never would consider paying for any CC .. but to support a site that keeps my game running and has cool mods.. hell yeah!  MTS2 is my next choice to send a little mad money to..  which will have to wait a few months to allow me to build up my mad money again.. feeding extra cats and paying for WoW for my boyz eats that green stuff.

Okay, here's the deal:

Anyone who sent payments to tokenhoarder@victoryismine.org should immediately file for a refund. I will attempt to issue any refund requests received so the money can be retried. If I can't, escalate the matter to a dispute. Let's see how they like being pelted in 20-30 claims.

Whew! I''m a "allvirgal" etc donator... PP best have a good explanation for this!  Guess  they're not used to generosity.  Go fishy!

That may end up as a problem at some later date, we're trying to flush out of Paypal as fast as possible and hopefully onto a server. Right now, 1.1K of emergency slush fund has been transferred over to Bobblehead, of which all AVS donators as of 01/09 were included. If we can raise another 1K on the Bobblehead, we can still get the server and slug this out with Paypal at a more leisurely pace.

Also the following people:
GayJohnScarritt
Cwykes
Sloppyhousewife
Twain
Random Person Who The Bobblehead is Emailing

Should all complain immediately to their credit card companies.

So is the credit card money being withheld as well?  There's no point me phoning my credit card company call centre.  I know they are useless even when their systems are up and at the moment they aren't - two international calls about something stupid today already.  I have put in a polite request for info on paypal's European complaint form.  Always start by being nice ;D  If you want to talk to me direct, use my e-mail address for mail or msn.  I never figured out the IRC stuff.

Umm I wouldn't complain to the credit card company - this is not a credit card issue.  I would still put a dispute through Paypal, and then immediately escalate to a claim.  This forces Paypal to get involved and if Pescado doesn't respond within 7 days (and he won't), then they are forced to issue a refund.  If he no longer has the money in that account to cover it, that's their problem.  They're the ones holding the money.

Is anyone else having issues with PayPal? I try to do a dispute and it wants to automatically escalate it to a claim. When I try to do that, I keep getting an error 3005.

I checked my account and it shows the payment was completed, sent to allvirgalissuck - so I am going on the premise I don't have to raise hell at PayEnemy.

Blue, you can ignore the email I sent you (if you even go it) since I managed to get on here.  Harvested your address from PMBD, even though I've never registered there.

my payment was completed too.  That's the problem, we've paid and pescado can't get the money.  So if you want your money back, you have to claim it.

So where do we make a new payment to?

Same question here

blearg

File a claim anyway, apparently if I fail to respond in 10 days, they automatically decide in your favor. Since I can't actually respond, and I'm not going to, they should autosettle in your favor.

makes it wonder wonder why my sister never uses paypal..
http://www.aboutpaypal.org/

I used the allvirgalis address, my paypal shows the transaction completed on 14.01.
Should I file a claim? Or could you retrieve the money from that account?

snowyrat, you're fine. :)

Thanks for a nice compliment...  ::)
Is it my looks you like the best, or is it rather the personality? ;)

This is the first time I have been able to access the site since last Wednesday, so I'm late in responding.  I sent a donation using the virgali email address, and want to verify that the funds were received as I intended.  Please let me know whether I need to pursue the issue with Paypal, or you received the donation.

I can provide you the transaction # if that would help.  Paypal shows that the transaction was completed.

Hrm... As per BlueSoup's email, I have filed a dispute. However, it will not let me escalate the claim!
ESCALATE!!!!!! FOR THE HORDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dammit. :P

Anyhew, I will keep trying to click the retry link and hopefully it will eventually go through. Stupid PayPal. >:(

Ste

EDIT: Hrm... I started from scratch and it worked this time.  Apparently, it didn't like the fact that I mentioned you were a dumbass in the message as BlueSoup suggested. Heh. :D

I did not suggest any such thing.  You guys are just spreading lies and propaganda. :P

If you donated to the Virgalissuck address, and you didn't get either an email from me, or weren't listed in the post that Pescado made in this thread, then you don't need to dispute.

Remember PayPal is Ebay.  I have a claim at my bank outstanding at this time due to debits from PayPal. 

Here is some advice from my bank:

When one closes an account with Ebay/PayPal only the username/password is terminated all bank information, credit card numbers, checking account numbers are retained by Ebay/Paypal UNLESS you have it in writing from Ebay/PayPal that when your membership is closed all bank information will be deleted.  Any information given to Ebay/PayPal should be changed after closing your membership. 
Bottom Line:  Open a specific bank account especially for use on Ebay/PayPal and close said account when membership with Ebay/PayPal is terminated.

Hope this helps someone in the future. 

Later,

Pcgeekri

Pescado, I'll send you a list of the donators this afternoon so you can work out their titles.

Any money that was left over, by the way, is going towards booty (http://paysites.mustbedestroyed.org/booty).

Does that mean I can still make a donation and be a Baronette?  Or do you want me to go over to PMBD and be fleeced without any kind of reward?

No, don't make any other donations for the server.  That's over now.  People are always free to send me money for booty (rather than donating directly so there's no unnecessary overlap), but at this moment we have enough for the next several months so it's unnecessary.

Did the allvirgalissuck  account we donated to have problem's as well with paypal? are those funds frozen?

No, those funds are fine.  And all gone too, they went towards the new server.

Here, too!

New donations are not needed - the server is covered for the next year.  I don't think that Pescado has a place to put new donations to, considering he doesn't want my help in the future.  ::)

Today is the first day I've been able to get to the site since the 14th.  ::) Paypal is a PITA, but I'm glad we got the new server, regardless, since my ability to connect has been spotty for a month, it just had never gone away for a week straight.

Now it's just a matter of waiting a couple more days for the claim to go through. I'm glad the hordes were cooperative about donating toward the cause, even if Paypal wasn't cooperating.

I'm sorry I didn't know about the donations until now.  I don't spend a lot of time at MATY, but depend heavily on its existence.  I tend to open the site and search for whatever issue I am having and then leave with my answer.  I don't know if I could play Sims without the hacks/mods found here!  Since I don't have Pets, I'm kind of out of touch.

I suppose there are others who wouldn't like this idea, but could an email be sent to members when you are looking for donations?  Maybe start a thread and then subscribe everyone?  I would certainly have supported MATY, but didn't know about the need. 

Just a thought, and maybe a lousy one.

I've been to many different sites over the years that used paypal for donations, and almost 70% of them had paypal lock down their accounts (with donations still pending) for either no reason or completely bogus ones. As the others did, finding an alternative is your best bet. They never did see a penny of what was withheld from them, which is also why I stopped using paypal a long while ago.

Yeah, I know one site/egroup whose account was closed down for "selling adult materials" because they had nude Sim skins on the site.  They actually did get their account "reopened" so they could withdraw funds, but there was only 75c in there at the time!

At MATY, you're not required to enter a real email address.