Paypal not letting me subscribe to GPA with my balance 0

[herc2000]

Just had an interesting conversation with Paypal. I was doing the monthly subscription with GPA, but thought I would change it to the yearly one and save a few pennies.

But, every time I went to pay, it would not let me, even though I had lots of funds in my paypal, dollars and pounds. So I phoned paypal and they said as it's the first of a yearly subscription, they don't want me to use my balance of $'s or £'s they want me to use my debit or credit card and then next year I can use my balance if I desire!

WTF, this really shocked and annoyed me, just an absolute joke, the only reason they want me to do that, is so they can use my card and charge me their crazy rates converting £'s into $'s, I think it was almost £100 for $119, reason i have dollars in my account is for instances like this to avoid their horrible rates.

Anyone else had this same problem?

[aszumilo]

Who the hell does Paypal think they are telling you that you can't use your balance?  That sounds highly suspicious.

[herc2000]

I just spoke with GPA, very nice people, they enquired about it with paypal and paypal confirmed to them what I said here. 

I just don't get why it matters to paypal as long as they get their cut, guess they want to make a bit more out of you. If I had dollars in paypal, I used to be able to pay those dollars straight into my bank account and let the bank do the conversion, which was current,  but paypal wont let you do that now either, they have to convert it before hand for you, lol, I think last time, out of $2000, they made roughly an extra £60 out of me at the rate they used :-( and I think it's to do with this, it's a way to make that little bit extra out of people.

[FN-2199]

I had to pay with my bank account even though I keep a PayPal balance large enough to cover the $11/month. I think it has something to do with this being a recurring charge until cancelled and PayPal balances fluctuate whereas credit cards or bank accounts are verified.