Every now and then, an experience comes along that is so irritating that it needs to be shared. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to update to a pro Flickr.com account. Being a 21st century consumer, I elected to pay with PayPal. Unlike other PayPal purchases that I’ve made, the flickr process would not let me change the PayPal funding source. I was informed that PayPal would charge my primary account. I have a dedicated bank account for my primary funding source and it had one dollar and some change. No worries, I thought. I really wanted the award points so I thought I would just let PayPal try my primary account then fail over to my credit card, which is my backup funding source. This is something that I had never done before.
Ha. Couldn’t be that simple. Before PayPal will charge a backup funding source, it will try to collect the money from the primary account twice. Since I only had a dollar and change in my account, Bank of America found it reasonable to charge me $35 to tell PayPal that I don’t have any money. Twice. For a total of $70.
In the end, my two-year value pack Flickr.com pro account cost me $117.99 after NSF charges from the bank. Nice job PayPal, Bank of America, and Yahoo (who owns Flickr.com). Yes, I did call PayPal and I was told that any nsf charges would be my responsibility. So much for convenience at a reasonable cost.
