Purchased two Green Dot MoneyPak cards on October 27, 2009 in order to fund my PayPal account as advertised. I was charged $4.95 for each card and loaded $100 on one card, $600 on the other card. I have the receipt from the merchant (CVS) showing that they activated the cards.
I returned home and followed the directions for funding my PayPal account with the MoneyPak cards. I was asked to enter my name, social security number and some other information. I scratched off the silver spot on the back of the first card and entered the number as requested by the PayPal site. The amount of the card came up, which was correct. But when I click “fund”, I get an error saying “Paypal has declined this transaction. Please contact Paypal for assistance”. This happened with the second card as well.
So I called Paypal and was asked to go through the entire procedure again while on the phone with them. Same error message. Transferred to a supervisor. Same thing. The supervisor told me this is a “known issue” and that Paypal is working on it and that I should try going through the MoneyPak website and seeing if that worked. Same error message. She then told me that Paypal is “working on the problem” and that it would be resolved at the end of the week. I tried again on Friday, same exact problem, same response from Paypal. Tried again on Monday, same results. Tried again today, same results.
The only way to get my money back from the MoneyPak cards is to request a refund, which takes 10 days and comes in the form of a paper check. I do not have a checking account, so I will have to pay a fee to a check cashing place to cash the checks, which is another loss of money after having paid for the cards in the first place.
No-one seems to care at either place that this is happening and they keep advertising MoneyPak as a way to fund your Paypal account INSTANTLY. Now I owe late fees for the bills I was trying to pay by starting this in the first place. I even tried purchasing a prepaid GreenDot debit card hoping to just transfer the funds (for ANOTHER $4.95) but CVS couldn’t sell me the card without my having MORE cash on hand to fund the card with, they couldn’t use my already purchased and activated MoneyPak cards.
This feels less like a technical issue and more like a scam to me every day since no-one can give me any answers as to why this is happening, what the problem is, why the transaction is continuing to be declined or when it will be resolved. They have my money, what do they care?
Found At: Green Dot – unable to fund paypal