A few days ago, I received notice of a payment from a company I mystery shop for every two months. There is only one account that I do two shops for. Today, I received a notice from PayPal that if I didn't respond to a notice of a payment from this company, it would be sent back to the company. It named the company. I looked on my records and I did record a payment from them last week. There is no record of it reaching my bank. The company name and the amount look authentic.
The only thing about the email that looks strange is that it says "all January payments" will be made on a specific day. I always transfer PayPal to my bank account.
Recently, because my original email account began deteriorating, I got a new one. The old email account won't recognize my password. Instructions from the company say I have to have a pin, which wasn't asked when I got the account ten years ago. The odd thing is that the email will start working again in a day or two. I just click on favorites or I put in my password, and it works, while a day or two before, it wouldn't accept my password no matter what I do. I still have the old one linked to PayPay because I haven't notified all companies yet, but PayPal notifies me of something that came in through my new email address.
I looked on PayPal's records and there is no record whatsoever of the payment in question, which makes me think that my account has been hacked. The strange payment date and the fact that they would send the money back if I didn't respond in a day or two makes it seem like there is something going on. I have forgotten about a payment for a whole month before and nothing happened. Of course, PayPal could have changed their policy.
In the meantime, my new MSC-awarded smartphone through a mystery shop is having problems. Gmail unlinked itself. My original email did that when it started having problems on the computer. Two days ago, the phone stopped sending some texts, significantly to the two people I text the most, my husband and my sister. I already had sent the original mystery shop phone back to the factory last summer and got this one, same model, as a replacement. My phone also will not access Gigwalk nor will it access the news or weather. In some places, it says to tap Refresh, but I can't even find that anymore. I am not proficient on a smartphone yet, but I was getting there.
I was going to go back to the cell phone company to have them fix it. I may go today.