So here’s the situation:
I do not, nor have I ever had Pay Pal or any other fund transfer service, only credit cards. I don’t even use ATMs, debit cards or do online banking.
So today, I went to a local organization’s web site to make a donation. They have a link, “Donate Here”, you click on the link, choose whether you’re paying through PayPal or credit card (I chose credit card) fill in the info, double check the form, which I did, and then hit “Send.” After it’s sent, a “thank you” appears stating the amount of the donation, which was 20x what I had donated. A HUGE error. I immediately called the card company, which could do nothing except tell me to talk to the local organization. Which I did. In the mean time, I get a “confirmation” e-mail from PayPal confirming my “donation.” I reply by outlining the error, speak to the credit card co again, this time, they tell me to call PayPal, bring up their customer service number and read it off to me. So I call the number they gave me and it is a “hot line” all right, but not exactly what I was looking for and frankly, I wasn’t in the mood, if you get my drift.
So I call the CC company again this time talk to a guy in the fraud department, who tells me that he doesn’t know why I was given a customer service number for PP, since their customer service department has been shut down because of the virus, and I should just wait to see if the HUGE amount is posted to my account and then I could file a claim.
Meanwhile, the local organization calls me back and tells me it’s all resolved, they immediately put in a return of the donation.
The whole experience left me feeling very reluctant to ever donate by way of a online form again, something I’d done pretty often in the past. Meanwhile, DH is on the fence about whether it was a scam or an honest mistake, DS is in the “scam” camp.
