I am utterly unsurprised. Normally, you'd expect a payments company to be one that needs to cultivate trust; however, PayPal seems determined to test out every scummy business practice they can.
Go ahead Paypal! Just try and get past my voice/dtmf Captcha system on my Asterisk PBX with your robocaller. I whitelist friends and family so they don't have to go through the Captcha if they call. So far, I've received no friends and family robocalls, but receiving one eventually would not be surprising.
My wife has a small home business that ships internationally. PayPal is the best method for taking payments from her clients. She generates more revenue through that than from credit cards. Without any alternative, well, this just sucks.
Am I the only one who thinks this is likely for the purpose of additional Know-Your-Customer preverification, rather than for advertising?<p>If Paypal can be sure that fewer of the accounts pumping money through the system are doing so for anonymous multi-identity money-laundering, then the horrifying "we froze your account because started getting Real Money through it and that's suspicious" step can happen less often.<p>Though, thinking about it, even just switching to mandatory phone-based 2FA (with options to either call or text) would technically require a "we can robocall you" clause. The 2FA system is a robot!
The only way to opt out is to cancel your Paypal account before July 1<p>From the BGR article referenced by WaPo (<a href="http://bgr.com/2015/06/02/paypal-user-agreement-robocall-robodial-autotext-text/" rel="nofollow">http://bgr.com/2015/06/02/paypal-user-agreement-robocall-rob...</a>)
It is really convenient to automatically pay my bills through PayPal (or any widely available payment abstraction layer), but I may have to switch back to my debit card if they insist on this policy.<p>(My debit card is much less convenient because some new attack happens at least once a year where they have to send out a new card.)
um, what? Jeeze. I like the convenience of paypal, but I also like it when my phone doesn't ring with nonsense.<p>realllly don't want to have to cancel my account, but looks like no alternatives if they're going to play it that way.<p>So be it!<p>I'm actually really pissed off by this. If it wasn't clear. Are they TRYING to drive customers away? there's literally no way I can accept that shit.<p>Aaaaand canceled! had a paypal since I got on the internet, crazy that it's gone now.<p>Guess I'll have to keep my wallet by the computer now.
The "National Do Not Call List" can be useful in Canada.<p>Paypal may only contact you if you've requested info in the past 6 months or used their service in the past 18 months.<p>If they call, you can demand that you be put onto their internal Do Not Call list. They must honour that and you can make a complaint if they do not.<p><a href="http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/info_sht/t1031.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/info_sht/t1031.htm</a>