I was sure I posted this initial problem somewhere else but I couldn't find it.

Spammers get more creative, so I was sure I had heard from one. Not so. I kept getting messages purportedly from PayPal saying I had only a limited time to claim my money from Service Check. The amounts seemed real enough. After a while, I realized that I was not getting payments. I contacted Service Check without a real response. I was sick that day, so I'm not sure what happened. Eventually, I called Accounting. The person who returned my call didn't know anything about such a thing happening. She suggested I contact PayPal which I have yet to do because I have been so busy. My bank also suggested I contact them.

It seems that no other company that sends me payments that way has a problem like that. I have gotten several such payments in the last couple of weeks. The Service Check rep wasn't aware of my situation and said they had no way of checking to see if my payments were coming back to them. (?!?) It turns out that I still had one email saying that with a deadline still in the future so I clicked on it, still thinking it was spam. It put the money in my PayPal account. The rep said that I should send her an accounting of what is missing and, if I wish, contact the owner. It was close to payday so she didn't think I would get the rest of the payments for this year until next month's payment. It wasn't exactly her job, apparently, so she was not informed of the ins and outs. I said, "You can't just send out a check?" No, they don't use checks anymore. I would think with this kind of problem they would have some sort of provision of paying me sooner rather than later. Their accounting practices are as primitive as mine! So I am waiting for the rest of the money.

Have any of you had that problem with PayPal? Have you had a company not even know that it is happening, both that they are asking the recipient to click on the email and that the payments are coming back to them? (Maybe the higher ups knew but she didn't.) I have always liked shopping for Service Check. I have never had any other problems with PayPal. Apparently, none of the other MSC's have had this kind of problem, either, at least not the ones that I have recently worked with.

I need to check through my notices from PayPal because I think I got one for another company, too. I need a secretary and a bookkeeper. Come to think of it, I need a housekeeper, too.

Sandra Sue Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
I need a secretary and a bookkeeper. Come
> to think of it, I need a housekeeper, too.

That would be a dream come true!

I have not encountered anything like that with Paypal though.

I want a secretary, a bookkeeper and a housekeeper, too ....... but, no, I haven't had any problems like that with PayPal. I haven't had any problems with Service Check either. Very puzzling problem, keep us posted.

Doesn't make sense to me. I haven't worked for service check for years but I know for the MSC's that I work with I have never had a Paypal problem. I usually get an email saying that xxxx has sent me $yyy; and the money end up in my paypal account.

That's the way the rest of them come.

Anytime you get an email you think is suspicious, you can log in to your paypal account without clicking any links and see if you have any messages.

There are some instances where you must "accept" a paypal payment but I don't know why a shopper payment would ever be one of them.

dspeakes, I was doing that repeatedly. I never saw messages but I was mainly looking to see when the payments would arrive.

I believe when there is a payment to accept, it shows up in your account just like any other payment except with an "accept" link. But it's been a long time since I had one so maybe they're not doing it like that any more.

Bizarre situation. You should never have to click a link in an email to get paid; that's what scammers do. I'm shocked that Paypal would do something like that.

So far my computer hasn't been taken over by aliens, so it must be PayPal.

Paypal will NEVER put a link in the body of the email!

You must sign in and read from Paypal.com

Did you save the email? Can you cut and paste, put here? (removing all personal information)

From Paypal: Attachments – A real email from PayPal will never include an attachment or software. Attachments can contain malware, so you should never open an attachment unless you are 100% sure it's legitimate.

If you are not sure whether a PayPal email is legitimate or not, here is what you do: Do not click on any link in the email. Instead, start a browser, go to PayPal and log in. If there is any urgent message for you, you will see it as you log

One sure method to determine if the message is from PayPal is to look at the address of the sender. I never click on any Email from PayPal anyway, but it will be fake if it especially has an address of:

epaypal.com or some variation of that.

Notice the "e" before paypal; that is the tipoff that it's not Paypal.

Delete it from your computer by highlighting it, holding down the shift button while hitting the delete function on your toolbar. A dialogue box will come up asking you if you want to permanently delete the message. Click yes.

That way, it never sits in your recycle bin.

Nonetheless, you should always log into your Paypal account through the Paypal portal you should have in your saved favourites.

Cheers Tatjana

Sounds like a scam to me. Do not give out any information about yourself. PayPal, never had any problem. I did receive a scam awhile ago. PayPal was mentioned.

"It turns out that I still had one email saying that with a deadline still in the future so I clicked on it, still thinking it was spam. It put the money in my PayPal account. "

This is what I find bizarre -- clicking a link in an email supposedly from Paypal actually had the effect of putting money into the account.

However, I just checked and while Paypal will not send attachments, they do send links:

"Note from sender, Customer Service Profileshopper payment to MYNAME for shop(s) #7262

Get the details
https: // www. paypal. com/ us/cgi -bin/ ?cmd=_view-a-trans&id=49X99999xxxxxxx"

That was a clickable link (before I altered it). So maybe if a payment needed to be claimed they also send a link.

I hadn't really noticed they sent links because I never have reason to click them. I just post the payment to my spreadsheet and a couple times a month I sweep the money into my bank account.

Every message I get from PayPal indicating that I have received a payment includes a link (not an attachment). But I have never had a situation where I had to accept a payment. However, I just checked the PayPal website, and there are indeed situations where it is necessary to accept a payment. Go to PayPal, and click on Help, and then search for "accept a payment"

I learned something from this topic. Initially I was inclined to tell the OP that it was a scam. It could well be real. Just be careful about where the link takes you.

{ have read several of your posts, I am new to Mystery Shopping. So I haven't done any yet. I had signed in a while back and didn't do any thing, as I have had a back operation. Now it will not take my original pass word. So I signed up for s new one and will try again. Thanks for all the posts, they really helped.

Hi all,

Since I make payments through PayPal weekly for AboutFace, I can answer this for you. If your account is NOT confirmed with PayPal, meaning your email, bank account, etc, you will get an email when payment is sent to you telling you to Claim your Payment. What they really mean is to confirm your account. If your account is not confirmed, the funds sent to you will NOT show up in your account until you click the Claim link in the email you received when the payment was sent. This tends to happen mostly with new users of PayPal, users who haven't used it in a while, or those who have recently changed email or bank info in PayPal. Once you click the link in the email, and follow the steps for confirming, the funds will show up in your account. Anyone who uses PayPal to send payments should know this because if the funds are unclaimed for 30 days, the funds get sent back to the sender. So if I send you a payment for $20, and it's showing as unclaimed, you have 30 days to click the link in the email to claim your payment. If you do so, you will have the funds in your PayPal account. If you don't do it, the $20 will be returned back to me. I can't attest to the rest of the issue, but that is how it works. I see these emails all the time from shoppers who "haven't received payment yet" but in actuality, they were paid, they just haven't confirmed their account, so the funds aren't showing yet. Does that make sense?

Thanks, Heather. I have received several PayPal payments from several companies. This company is one of my regulars and has been for several years. Only at the beginning of this year did this begin to happen. I think I was given less than a month to respond. It did look like spam to me since I had never, ever had a response like that from PayPal. In addition, none of the payments from any of the other companies that I don't work with as regularly have ever turned out this way. Another surprise was that the company rep was unaware of where the money went if it was "returned" by PayPal. I am now awaiting payment for the rest of this year's work with that company, which should come with their next PayPal deposit.

Thanks Heather for the information. I personally never had a problem with paypal.

Lo and behold, I just checked and do not have record of my April or May payments from Service Check!

Curiouser and Curiouser. I received another one of those emails but did not click on it. I happened to notice that it was on my gmail. Since several of my companies that pay by PayPal have informed me or have messages on their websites to use the same email for PayPal and their contacts, I wondered if that was the cause. I have had to make gmail my main email because the other one is deteriorating, for some reason, but I was not changing my profile on the websites for the companies that use PayPal. So I went on Service Check's website and went back to the old email. Ok, that was *not* the problem. The amount had already posted to PayPal. Unless I am brain dead today, I did not click on any email to make that happen.

I may just change it back to gmail now.

Well, now I have another problem. The payment was for April. I am still out some money from earlier in the year that I was sure was promised on this payment because it just missed last month's when I was trying to correct the problem. I am getting a little impatient. They say they never write checks. They never send PayPal between regular payment times. I sent an email asking for their own accounting record to verify mine (especially since I did not get a return email in answer to mine telling them what is still owed), and then I want my late payments by Cashier's Check. Isn't that fair?

So what really happened in all this?