Blogging For Money

My PayPal is restored. Again. It was rather quick too, just a few hours after the faxed documents were sent.

Dear Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi,

We have completed our review and have restored your account.

Thank you for your patience during this process and for helping to make PayPal the safest and most trusted online payment solution.

Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department

Thank God.

I’ve learnt a long time ago to never argue with PayPal (since they literally hold you by the balls…depending on how much remain in your PayPal account) and comply with whatever they requested of you. So far my experience with them have been smooth, save for the faxing part which is a bit troublesome for me since I don’t have IDD. Fortunately I have millionaire-to-be to thank in helping me getting the documents sent.

Dude, I owe you one!

Fortunately I can still receive payments. But I am unable to send payments or withdraw from my account until they lift the restricted access. Here is the notice I got from PayPal:

Dear Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi,

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system. During a recent screening, we noticed an issue regarding your account.

We have reason to believe that your account was accessed by a third party. We have limited access to sensitive PayPal account features in case your account has been accessed by an unauthorized third party. We understand that having limited access can be an inconvenience, but protecting your account is our primary concern.

Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department

The “third party” access was because I am accessing PayPal via cybercafes and obviously they have different IP addresses. Sigh, its time to fax the documents again (they requested a utility bill to prove that “me” is “me”).

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• paypal limited restricted access

PayPal is registering itself as a bank and moving their headquarters to Luxembourg in order to position itself as a strong competitor against Google. I am not sure whether this means that PayPal will still be governed by US laws or otherwise.

PayPal said it was moving its headquarters to Luxembourg, where it has been awarded a banking licence. This means it will no longer be authorised by the Financial Services Authority, which has overseen PayPal since it became an Electronic Money Issuer in 2004.

PayPal has 35m customers in Europe, including 15m in Britain, which is the region’s biggest online shopper. More than half of Britain’s population is now online and more than half of British internet users have a PayPal account.

PayPal allows users to pay for goods and services online, without having to key in their card details for each purchase. The service also hides account details from retailers, for extra security.

I hope that this move would mean that PayPal will recognise Malaysian banks. If they can offer a EFT transfer to Malaysian banks, I would certainly most welcome it. I will probably retain VMI only for overseas travel.

I just noticed that PayPal had changed the interface of their accounts menu with lighter colours and tabs that tell you what the feature links mean. I like the change as the information is now less cluttered and the presentation certainly looks much better than the previous look, which made PayPal look archaic. Here is a screenshot of the new PayPal interface.

I like the colours of this interface, I think I should ask my designer to incorporate this colour for a proposed new theme for my blog. I wonder why they did not inform their account holders about the new change….but I guess it doesn’t matter, as long as they continue to provide uninterrupted service.

Incoming search terms:

• paypal interface
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• interface Paypal

I was really worried that they would think that my transactions are invalid or anything of the sort but it looks like PayPal has accepted the fact that I am not a fraudster and that I conduct honest transactions online. I received this email in my inbox a few minutes ago.

Dear Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi,

Our review is complete and we have restored your account.

We appreciate your patience and thank you for your help in making PayPal the safest and most trusted online payment solution.

Sincerely,
PayPal

I am going to do the isthikaraah prayers thanking God Almighty for this.

I managed to fax the earlier list of documents requested by PayPal, courtesy of a little bird who happens to be the CEO as well. Anyway, PayPal confirmed acceptance of the documents after the fax was sent but a few hours later they sent the following message to me.

Dear Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi,

We’re sorry, but your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this
time. We need more information about your account before we can restore
full access to your account. Please complete the steps below so that we may
review your account further

They want my bank statement and proof of service for the disputed transactions they listed. Somehow I managed to collect them together and print them out. Now all I need to do is to get it faxed. Again. This is getting really tiresome. I understand why they had to do it the first time around but why do they have to ask for other privy information as well? I really do not see the point. Is it not enough that they already have copies of my IC, driver’s licence and utility bills?

Sheesh.

So I went ahead and made a copy of my documentation, sealed it in an envelope and posted it to PayPal. Total was RM7.50, inclusive of postage and envelope, courtesy of Pos Malaysia.

I’m still going to get my documentation faxed though, just in case the documentation do not arrive as expected. Probably next week.