PSA: Be very careful sending Paypal Gift payments on a desktop.

Heartfeltdawn

This happened to me a couple of weeks ago, saw it happen over at KVR leading to a huge argument between three people, and it's actually happened tonight to a forumite paying me for some software. 

You'll see that Paypal now has a more 'tablet' style interface on the main website. When it comes to sending a payment, most of us will copy and paste the email address of the person we are paying from a message they have sent. This can be done quickly and easily. However the tablet interface site autoloads previous email addresses you have sent money to. It is very easy and possible to accidentally click on one of these address, overwriting the address you want to send it to. You then go to the next screen, click away and bang, the money is sent. 

In my case, I accidentally sent £120 to someone via PPG. They accepted it, meaning I had no chance to recall it. I was very lucky that the person I had sent it to was a forumite. I had a panic for two days and then got an email from him saying he'd been away from home and had refunded the lot. Thanks to him! (and I still owe him a tenner in thanks for that). 

I tried replicating this mistake and did it successfully more than once (without sending cash obviously). It's simply poor web design. 

@PolarityMan has just had the same experience paying me tonight. 

If you use the Classic Paypal site (the link is at the bottom of every Paypal page), the autoloading of previous used email addresses does not happen. It's much safer to do it this way. I would strongly recommend that you use the Classic interface when sending Paypal Gift payments as it's a lot harder recalling those if mistakes do happen. 

PolarityMan

I realized that i dont even read the email address im copying...wouldn't even have realised what hat happened if @Hearfeltdawn and figured it out from the fact the transfer hadn't arrived.

In my case quick enough to cancel thankfully.

Wazmeister

Good advice mate...

Teetonetal

Yup it's stupidly poor design.

roundthebend

have you told PayPal? They have a good IT setup, I believe, and would get that resolved pretty quick

boogieman

I couldn't get a payment to go through to a new seller the other day on my laptop. On the updated version of the site, it simply wouldn't accept the new email address, either typed in or copy & pasted, it only offered a choice of people I'd dealt with before. Switched to the classic version and it all worked fine. Think I'll just stick to classic view in the future.

axisus

Hmmnnn ...... I'll have to watch out for that.

martinw

Heartfeltdawn;60679" said:

@PolarityMan has just had the same experience paying me tonight. 

 

I think that came to me. Don't worry, I wouldn't have kept it!

PolarityMan

Cant even remember what I bought off you in the past..must have been ages ago. 

PolarityMan

Ahh zoom recorder in june last year. My guess is that your email is first alphabetically in people I have ever paid.

DesVegas

Nice PSA but just in case - my email address is lesvegas5@hotmail.com please send all monies this way as a test or something .. papa needs some new shoes

Heartfeltdawn

PolarityMan said:

Ahh zoom recorder in june last year. My guess is that your email is first alphabetically in people I have ever paid.

Paypal makes up an email database that's actually quite fiddly to find. From my experience, I don't think it does it alphabetically as my erroneous payment went to a chap with JJ initials. You can erase every email on that database but you can't do a block delete, only one by one. 

Heartfeltdawn

DesVegas said:

Nice PSA but just in case - my email address is lesvegas5@hotmail.com please send all monies this way as a test or something .. papa needs some new shoes

I misread that and thought it said 'Please sign me up to as many daily porn mailing lists as possible'. No shoes for papa, just nudes. 

DesVegas

Heartfeltdawn said:

DesVegas said:

Nice PSA but just in case - my email address is lesvegas5@hotmail.com please send all monies this way as a test or something .. papa needs some new shoes

I misread that and thought it said 'Please sign me up to as many daily porn mailing lists as possible'. No shoes for papa, just nudes. 

Whoo Hoo!!

Gassage

I have almost done this- a useful thing is to use the 'classic site' icon bottom left which doesn't auto 'guess'

octatonic

This should be stickied.

martinw

PolarityMan said:

Ahh zoom recorder in june last year. My guess is that your email is first alphabetically in people I have ever paid.

Sheesh, that was ages ago. You'd think they would expire or something, unless you specifically want to retain them. Typical PP weirdness.

Heartfeltdawn

martinw said:

Sheesh, that was ages ago. You'd think they would expire or something, unless you specifically want to retain them. Typical PP weirdness.

Nope. They all get dumped into a little address book that is fiddly to access and to delete. It's such a bad design that you wonder if they did it on purpose.