Today I was sitting at the computer looking at YouTube videos and my email program told me I had email. So I went to look and here is this one email from a business called RapidShare AG showing me my account information. Then a 2nd email which came at the exact same time from PayPal showing that I had been charged €29.99 EUR.
At first I thought it was just another email phishing scam asking me to click a link and give up my password so I just opened a new browser and manually typed www.paypal.com. I entered my password and sure enough there was that euro dollar charge and they did the exhcange rate thing so the total that will come out of my checking account in 3 business days is $37.34.
So without hesitation I searched for the PayPal phone number and called them and told them "I DID NOT AUTHORIZE THIS!!!!" I told the guy on the phone that I don't even know what RapidShare is and he said it's a file sharing website. How did he know that? Perhaps PayPal knows about this yet they are still allowing people to be charged for this? I don't know. He walked me through the process of disputing the claim but said it could take 10 days.
10 Days? It only takes 3 days for them to take the money directly out of my checking account. I only have $18 available until my next check. So I called Bank of America and told them what happened and I told them that I talked to PayPal about it and I wanted to make sure that they don't get their money from me through my checking account which should be in 3 days. Well, that costs $20 and like I said, I have $18 available so now I gotta put $2 in the bank to cover my ass because if they take $20 and I have $18 they're going to charge me $20 insufficient fund fee lol. That's $40.
Why should I end up having to pay $40 when I'm the one being scammed?
OK so I went to the Google search engine and found out that this is indeed a scam. Someone didn't just sign me up for this website or service, this company somehow got my PayPal password and they charged me for an account that I never asked for.
I was going to call them because PayPal has all the details but they are in Switzerland. I can't call Switzerland! First of all they would probably put me on hold for 20 minutes and my phone bill would skyrocket. I could use my PSP with Skype but then I'd have to pay Skype more money to make a international call. The details also provide the company email address so I emailed them telling them that I disputed the claim with PayPal so they might as well just reverse their charge because they are not getting any money from me.
So now with all that out in the open, I have to go to the ATM machine to deposit $2.
UPDATE: This transaction did go through to the bank on that Monday which means the stop payment thing through Bank of America didn't take. In fact when I called them they said that it wouldn't have worked anyway because that is supposed to be for a monthly stop payment, not for a 1 time stop payment. I don't know why they were going to use that then if that wasn't for what I needed. Gawd!
Our dog Flower had a medical emergency so Chip had to call his brother to ask him to NOT cash my rent check which means that since it did go through to my banking account I didn't go in the negative so I don't have to worry about insufficient funds fee... for now.
The refund did go through with PayPal and the money is back in my PayPal account. However, they didn't put it back in my checking account. I wish they just put it back where they got it from. But, I think I'm going to just leave it in there just in case something happens like this again. Also it's good to save money right?
So everything worked out in the end.
