PayPal.me payments going to the wrong recipient (1 Viewer)

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Hi everyone

Recently I've discovered that occasionally, payments sent via PayPal.me links can be directed to the wrong recipient. That is, Alice clicks on Bob's link (e.g. www.paypal.me/Bob) but the PayPal page that opens up will send a payment to Charlie, not Bob.

Of course if Alice has no idea what Bob's real name is, she will proceed and have no idea that anything is wrong! Alice thinks they've paid, Bob just thinks she changed her mind or ghosted, and Charlie has no idea why someone sent him free money.

Thankfully, this hasn't happened directly to me (yet?) but my brother has run into it several times over the past few months. He's been in touch with PayPal customer service, who seemed to be somewhat unaware of the problem, but apparently had also gotten 4-5 other calls the same day about the same problem.

Usually the best/only recourse is to contact Charlie, hope he's not an asshole (!) and politely ask him to send the money back.

Has anyone else here had this happen to them, on either side?
 
This sounds like a URL spoof scam. I can't see how my unique PayPal like would accidentally pay someone else. It's possible someone is sending a link that looks close enough.
 
We thought of that too, but it's not. The links are all correct.
Very interesting. That's why I always send a follow up PM when I send anyone payment for anything from this site whether they give me an email address or .me link.
 
Wow, that's some serious shit on PayPals end then.
Yep! To their credit, the CS rep that my brother spoke to made it very clear several times that this was PayPal's issue, not his, nor the sender's.

I mean, it would be one thing if someone sent you a faked-up link to try to trick you into sending money to the wrong place, but that's not what happened. My brother's links are in a read-only Google form, and the people who actually got the money (that we've been able to track down, anyway) have expressed surprise and confusion about why they got the money in the first place.
 

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