PayPal - Could not charge account?

I'm getting this message:

We are unable to complete your request.
• Could not charge account.
• The system encountered an error while processing your order, please try again.


when I try to buy lindens using my paypal account. I've only just set up the account, I thought it might be wise to stop using my credit card (too easy to overspend ).

I've looked at the FAQs and have followed all the instructions. The message sort of implies that it's a technical thingy causing it. I've been trying for two days now.

Any ideas anyone? And if not, any idea if I can email someone to help?

p.s. I still have a basic account - I was just about to upgrade when the VAT thing came in, now I'm not sure whether I'll go premium or not..... but that's another story.

i`ve ran into this not so long ago aswel and found a pain in the ass solution

logout of the website
log back in
update payment info with paypal
increase credit with max: $200

this will work 1 time, if u want to add more, logout again, back in, updatepayment and increase balance with max $200, stupid but works

Thanks Alicia. I tried this, it hasn't worked yet, but I may have done it in the wrong order.... will keep trying.

I had that problem with paypal before I "verified" my paypal account.

This is an option within paypal where you give your paypal account 2 funding sources of your bank account and debit card, and involves paypal sending 2 micropayments to your bank account to ensure its really you. Check the paypal website for that.

I already did this and it is verified now. I had to do that before I could use the bank account as a funding source. but thanks anyway

I wonder how much money SL loses by making it so hard to pay with paypal.

LL could have bought a simple internet shop program for under 100$ able to handle paypal transactions more efficiently without all this verifying paypal or error messages that dont tell you why it didn't work.

I hope you manage to get it working.

Try canceling your billing agreement on the PayPal site, then reestablishing a new one on the SL site. It's under Profile>Pay List on PayPal's site.

I'm not much of a complainer about SL usually, but this really irritates me, too. Every month I have to jump through so many unbelievable hoops to pay tier, I ask the same thing: For every die-hard who perseveres like me, are there maybe 10 or 20 or 100 people who surely give up?

And the greedy side of me gets irritated thinking about all the potential shoppers and renters who are getting turned away.

still haven't got this working - rang billing support but they said it wasn't something they could do anything about apparently, they said to get in touch with Paypal. I've emailed them but have heard nothing

Looks like I might have to get out the credit card again, boy my rl hubby will be pleased.....

don`t bother, it isn`t on paypal`s end as every other company doesn`t gives any problems with it but LL

Actually that is how I fix it -- just use a different payment method every time. It's almost like the payment info just expires or something. It usually won't accept re-entering of the same payment method, though. So from my perspective, it looks like they expect every single paying SL user to have 5 credit cards and Paypal in order to get through this.

Did you try canceling and reestablishing the billing agreement? It's a little bit of a pain, but seems to correct a lot of PayPal issues.

Yes, I've tried it loads of times by now , but thanks. I'm going to delete it all for 24 hours and start again i think.

harrumph

I have the same problems. for days. corrected some errors and missing data.
And still can pay the premium account. and the say call paypal. i did that before the say it.
paypal says everything is fine. only one thing is wrong.
Paypal says that linden labs must in the Recurring Payments section and not in then pay list section.

Geuss where linden lanbs is listed, in the pay list section !
I told linden labs 2 or 3 times today that i have contacted paypal
and told them what paypal says. but i thinks still that i get the
some stupid answheres. call paypal. recreat the link.

and the days are tikking and linden labs cannot get the money.
This drives me really crazy. its paypal with premium or
the can cancel the premium before i could use it complete. (the get the 300L$ back)

can someone help. its a european paypal.

Mine is in the Pay List section and it works fine.

Probably a whole bunch.

This kinda irritates me because when a firm has customers bending over backwards for the chance to throw money at them *and* has chronic staffing shortages it is the customers who wind up suffering twice: once on the payment side, next on the reduced services side (by contrast, LL only gets hit once for lost revenue).

I've yet to figure if it is rank incompetence by LL that they can't get a grip on this new-fangled PayPal thingy, or if it is PayPal's revenge for a lot of credit card fraud that had previously been facilitated by LL's ignorance. Either way it's a pretty damn moronic situation.

Maybe they are trying to communicate that they don't want any customer money and are doing this all for fun. That could explain a lot, actually.

Ok, then im really out of options and answeres

I so sympathise with you, it's starting to make me crazy. I even tried upgrading to premium (which is partly why this whole thing started, wanted to be able to upgrade without it appearing on my credit card statement - I have a joint credit card) but it still wouldn't let me pay.

So basically, I've tried everything I can, Linden labs won't help, paypal won't help, i'm at a loss. It's hard to believe Linden Labs would rather lose a premium account holder than try and do something about this isn't it?

Oh bye the way, the woman on the phone said I could try using a "private" email address, I was using a gmail address, so changed to another that isn't hotmail or gmail or yahoo or whatever, but it's made absolutely no difference. I'm also not entirely sure why this would make a difference or why they suggested it. Weird.

Agree wholeheartedly, I run my own business, and if someone was trying to buy something from me I'd be mad to make it as hard as this. They'd just go away. Which begs the question why am I still here...?