Babylon
The paypal web is not world wide
Not allowed to move abroad
I live in Europe, that's the strange place where the buildings are old and the countries are small. Luckily crossing borders is not a big deal in real life. However this does not hold true for the so-called world wide web and paypal.
I was going to order Zaurus accessoires from the PDAir online shop because it was cheaper than my favourite European reseller. (Don't worry, Christoph, next time I'll shop at Pulster again.) They require paypal for payments.
It seems simple, you "proceed to checkout", where you are asked for credit card details. For no obvious reason they require billing adress and email as well. (Paypal advertises their service as safe because the shop won't know your card number. That's true – as long as paypal doesn't tell them – but the price is paypal (=ebay) learns your address and knows what you are buying.) However it's not that easy if email address or card number "belongs" to an existing paypal account (i.e. was used with paypal before). Then, you have to login; i.e. you need to remember the password chosen years ago and so on.
Trying a different email is trivial (I'm using Spammotel email forwarders), using a different card is not. OK, I'm logging into my "German – verified" account but changing the billing address to my current Austrian address is impossible, I can change everything but the country. Hmm, OK, I don't care about what (paypal thinks) my billing address is, they don't mail bills anyways and they allow specifying a different address to deliever to but – guess what – only within Germany.
Ouch, once German – always German. Once you're registered you can never leave that country (and keep your account). However you can't simply forget about your old account, too. if you want to continue using your credit card or email address. The only way out is to free the card from the old account (by removing this card from your profile). That's what I did and it worked.
Please don't tell me, this behaviour is for fraud protection. Paypal is (sometimes) convinient but I don't feel it's safe. It's interesting to note that while there are quite some anti paypal sites the most popular ones are associated with the same "paypal alternative" company and it's more than a simple ad.
I was going to order Zaurus accessoires from the PDAir online shop because it was cheaper than my favourite European reseller. (Don't worry, Christoph, next time I'll shop at Pulster again.) They require paypal for payments.
It seems simple, you "proceed to checkout", where you are asked for credit card details. For no obvious reason they require billing adress and email as well. (Paypal advertises their service as safe because the shop won't know your card number. That's true – as long as paypal doesn't tell them – but the price is paypal (=ebay) learns your address and knows what you are buying.) However it's not that easy if email address or card number "belongs" to an existing paypal account (i.e. was used with paypal before). Then, you have to login; i.e. you need to remember the password chosen years ago and so on.
Trying a different email is trivial (I'm using Spammotel email forwarders), using a different card is not. OK, I'm logging into my "German – verified" account but changing the billing address to my current Austrian address is impossible, I can change everything but the country. Hmm, OK, I don't care about what (paypal thinks) my billing address is, they don't mail bills anyways and they allow specifying a different address to deliever to but – guess what – only within Germany.
Ouch, once German – always German. Once you're registered you can never leave that country (and keep your account). However you can't simply forget about your old account, too. if you want to continue using your credit card or email address. The only way out is to free the card from the old account (by removing this card from your profile). That's what I did and it worked.
Please don't tell me, this behaviour is for fraud protection. Paypal is (sometimes) convinient but I don't feel it's safe. It's interesting to note that while there are quite some anti paypal sites the most popular ones are associated with the same "paypal alternative" company and it's more than a simple ad.