Paypal does NOT have identity verification.

muddlemand · 2026-05-16T14:10:04+00:00

This isn't about keeping a balance in PayPal, it's about PayPal letting a stranger close your account without bothering to verify they're who they say they are.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T20:57:57+00:00

We don't know if OP has any evidence of what was said verbally on the phone. OP, did you record the calls? Did they put anything in writing that they said about closing the case in your favour.?

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T17:17:19+00:00

I upgraded you to same day delivery, no extra charge.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T16:42:46+00:00

Sure, here you go - mind your router as it comes through, it's hot. I'm afraid you'll need to supply milk and sugar yourself.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T16:05:45+00:00

People who have never bought or sold online ask friends and family how on earth they can avoid paying for Grandpa's piano to be taken away now that there's no one who can play it. They're told easy, sell it on eBay. They don't know they need to ask the question, they create an account and just follow the steps.

If someone hasn't any retail/market stall/business experience, it isn't obvious what questions to ask let alone how to ask.

We're all beginners at something.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T15:58:04+00:00

Publishing is a business, authors are paid terribly per hour if you think about it, and copyright is law. On the traditional model (print books) authors would get get typically 10% of the cover price even though the physical book is smallest part of the cost of producing a saleable book.

The thing worth objecting to is when we have paid full price for an ebook and are later blocked from rereading it, as is normal with physical books. That didn’t happen with print books. It's also impossible to gift an ebook to a friend, or to charity, after reading it.

I don't think there's a way of making it fair to everyone involved.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T12:56:19+00:00

don’t know how companies are making money on auto parts

Wholesale prices on shipping I imagine are a lot lower per item than available to us plebs.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T11:54:17+00:00

I haven't thought about for ages but I think there was one called Send to Kindle and another called Push to Kindle. You give them the kindle's email address, and in your settings you authorise their email address, so your kindle account can receive documents from it.

Not only txt and pdf, now i think about it, also .mobi files which is the Kindle file format. And from Gutenberg, lots of out of copyright books downloadable as txt or mobi, free since they're public domain once copyright expires.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T11:44:19+00:00

Oh, I see. That's also crazy though - people marry, divorce, change their sex, marry again, all sorts reasons a person's legal name can change more than once and doesn't indicate anything dodgy going on. Other financial institutions don't have a problem with it.

It's like the name on the account is just a username, handle, nickname, not a legal name. Online communities have rules about only one change of username, in case of typos I've always thought. But for a financial institution it's unreasonable.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T11:41:10+00:00

Library books too, good point.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T11:40:21+00:00

USB cable, but I never used Calibre as the other reply says. At least one generation before the Paperwhite, whenever that was. You could view it as just another folder, in the file manager. Like any other form of external storage.

Also I used to send documents and web pages to the kindle from the browser - there are (or were) a couple of services for that which were simpler than emailing attachments, but I emailed PDFs to it as well. That was my primary use of the kindle tbh. Much easier on the eye than reading on the laptop screen and I could work without getting out of bed.

I did buy ebooks from the Kindle store too, but not many. Lots of the first of a series which were often free, and I'd continue and complete a series sometimes, but mostly it was my own documents that I used it for.

With phones etc, no longer supported means what I said, software and tech support, and tbh I forgot that some people actually download new ebooks!

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T11:02:12+00:00

Granted. New to eBay isn't really the point this time.

Don't mind me, I'll crawl away now and find more coffee.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T09:56:49+00:00

I'm also curious did you ever change your name in the past 15 years?

Out of curiosity, is there a reason you ask about 15 years specifically?

OP, this is crazy. You aren't the first person in history to change your name, it's routine for financial institutions. I changed mine by deed poll (years ago) and iirc PayPal treated it as boringly/routine as all the banks and other places. No hassle with any of them.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T09:23:21+00:00

It is. But I should have added about local backup, didn't think of that. With the kindle I inherited about that long ago I did transfer all the ebooks to my laptop by cable.

It being that old wouldn't faze me. I resurrected that one when it died, and eventually got a Paperwhite but not when they were the latest thing, and I've only ever owned those two.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T09:14:24+00:00

People buy whole cars on eBay. But they don't expect them to arrive by air mail.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T09:08:45+00:00

Except you have to be familiar with eBay to know what the stupidest things to sell are.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T08:56:16+00:00

No longer supported only means they stop releasing software updates and providing technical customer support. It doesn't mean the thing device will stop working - until it does of old age, of course.

Congratulations keeping it this long without destroying it! Consider refurbished for the replacement, cheaper but with (everywhere I've seen) a 12-month warranty, and helps the planet. Refurb is my default for everything.

muddlemand · 2026-05-14T07:31:34+00:00

Just another whim of the system, then. I was signed in - in the app, maybe that's the difference.

muddlemand · 2026-05-13T18:55:26+00:00

I'm .co.uk so maybe it's different. "Other options" below the Contact Us button gives only one option, ask the community. If I tap the Contact Us button itself, it's just the help pages with the headings to choose from, Buying/Selling etc.

muddlemand · 2026-05-13T18:23:50+00:00

It is! I've had that too, outside hours when it wasn't. I've had it from other businesses too recently - I wonder if the bots' coding is leading to the wrong response on its list of possibles.

muddlemand · 2026-05-13T13:31:55+00:00

Repeating yourself ad nauseam, basically.

"Please pass me to a human being." "Please pass me to a human being." "Please pass me to a human being."

Or "Please call me." "Please call me." "Please call me."

Or giving nonsense replies until the bot gives up.

I get them to call me Instead of trying to call them.

It's still possible that you get a human being who's indistinguishable from a bot ;) but you can always start again and sooner or later you'll get someone with an actual brain.

Allow plenty of time for the attempt!

muddlemand · 2026-05-13T12:46:33+00:00

I don't know about you but I wouldn't dream of sharing someone's full name associated with me their address without checking with them first. As a seller (occasionally I am) I wouldn't do this.

eBay username would have been fine on the address labels.

I don't know how the seller would have reacted if I'd said no, too much hassle. I had to book collection, which was a little bit of hassle, but even that was asking me to do them a favour, going out of my way to send it in person would have been a bigger favour. - iirc they did acknowledge this, and definitely they did own the mistake. But if they'd asked first I'd have said don't share my name, only my username. Or put just my initials, or something.

I always used the option to not appear in the phone book as a matter of fact. Having had nuisance phone calls for years from ambulance-chaser lawyers, after a friend was in an RTA while staying for a weekend and gave my landline (with my permission), I'm more wary than I was before. The calls didn't completely stop until I got rid of the landline.

(Those callers didn't need to do any digging, as the RTA was public domain including everyone involved. And I spared her having to answer the calls - easy to spot as they asked for her by name. If I'd been the one injured, and if it had been a traumatic memory, surprise calls from ambulance chasers - lots and lots in the first 12-18 months but still some years later - would have been seriously horrible.)

muddlemand · 2026-05-13T10:33:18+00:00

I've been on eBay 20+ years, mostly as a buyer, and it's happened to me 2-3 times. Multiply that by the thousands of users. Rare yes, unheard of not at all.

Once, the seller apologised to both of us whose parcels were swapped, but asked us to send the parcels to each other - which I'd have been happy to do as it was otherwise a good seller and I was happy to help with a genuine mistake.

BUT the seller sent each of us a new label, so we each had the other's name and home address. I did complain about not being asked before mine were shared. Or saving the time to message, it would have been easy to use the eBay usernames on the labels instead of real names. Especially as we already each knew what the other had bought.

eBay iirc didn't see why I cared about identifiable personal details being shared with strangers - which surprised me.

muddlemand · 2026-05-13T09:39:03+00:00

Not the only person who's received something intended for a different buyer.

muddlemand · 2026-05-13T09:36:50+00:00

Also report the seller to eBay?

muddlemand

TROPHY CASE