Month: January 2009

It’s good to finally be on-board with WordPress.  I am liking the freedom and easily molded interfaces and options.  I have also been on the phone for a fair amount of time with a good friend, Tarky7, who is walking me through many of the features, which, for the most part, are unbreakable.  This is all good news for me.

I finally finished my last paper for the ‘U.S. Cold War Foreign Policy in the Caribbean’ class.  A month late and well over the page requirement, but then again, most of my work usually is.  I still have a few short assignments for the other class I received an extension for, and that will be finished eventually. Grades? Who knows…The two courses I am taking this semester are fun already.  The first is my Senior Thesis, which will deal with the two power vacuums that occurred in the Balkans after 1918 and then following the death of Marshal Tito in 1980.  I have a pretty good bibliography built up already and have received good news from my friends in Serbia who are willing to be interviewed for use as primary sources.  The other class is called ‘From Page to Stage’ and concerns itself with dramaturgy, direction, and set design.  I will be seeing and reading a lot of plays this semester.  All fun.

My tickets for the Balkan trip have been accentuated by my hotel reservation in Vienna…”Ah, yes, Vienna”, as Jean Reno said in ‘Ronin’…

Today at breakfast Mom asked what had happened to the man who used to be our neighbor.  He moved away over ten years ago.  The woman who bought his home was very nice, but she moved last fall.  They were both good friends.  Mom used to know this, but it seems today as if this  has slipped away into the world of memory loss and dementia.  Perhaps she’ll remember tomorrow.  Sadness can be all around me and effect me terribly, but I am keeping my head above water and working towards something better for myself.  I wish sometimes that she could comprehend the direction I am going and appreciate it as much as I.  I suppose she appreciates that I appreciate it.

I am off to a local meeting tonight.  There are at least 5 celebrants, ranging from 4 years of sobriety to 24.  Pretty amazing.

Johnnyboy

So I have used EBay for a few years now and have never had a problem. I have also used Paypal for the same amount of time and, also, no problems. A few weeks ago that changed.

Just for fun I tried to apply for a PayPal Credit Card. After a short credit check, I was denied–big surprise there. In my mind and experience, that was the end of the matter, and I went on my merry way. Then I began to receive statements from PayPal stating that I owed them a monthly payment for charges to my PayPal Buyer Credit account. Thinking that this was a phishing scam, I disregarded the notice. The next month I received the same statement, but with a higher minimum payment. So I began to call PayPal. What they wanted to pay the account were the routing and checking account numbers of my own bank. I spoke to my bank. They advised me to not give them the numbers.

In the end, after formally disputing the charges*, I made the payment using my checking account. I now have a zero balance. I wanted to close my account, but PayPal would not let me. The letter I received from them regarding my dispute was a form letter sent to buyers/sellers and had nothing to do with me. This morning I called PayPal and was able to close the account.

PayPal is not a financially secure way to build credit. Although they are affiliated with a bank, they do not seem to be governed by the FDIC, as the bank is actually in Luxembourg. Now, my facts may be incorrect, but on-line research has shown me that I am not the only one to have gone through this and there have been far worse scenarios. Some people have had their entire bank accounts frozen by PayPal and it has taken months to thaw them out. It all seems pretty shady to me. Plus, the unofficial rumor is that EBay trying to discourage any seller who does not accept PayPal, which seems discriminatory to me. Perhaps it is not.

So…I am no longer using PayPal. No worries for me. Good riddance.

On more positive notes…I am currently beginning a move from this blog to a WordPress site. I hope to have my actual whole website up soon, before I head off to Europe, at least. It will be a basic page with links to my gallery page as well as others, including the blog. When the times comes, I’ll set up a re-direct for everyone.

Johnnyboy

*I withdrew the dispute before paying the balance. The letter arrived a few days later, and, like I said, did not address the subject of my dispute.