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Show HN: PayPal emailed me today about 2001 request

16 points by paulkrush ↗ HN
So I sold something on eBay 19 years and PayPal is let me know today the person is not going to pay via PayPal. They must have sent a check... Anyone out there getting older updates that this from ancient systems? 90's 80's?

Auction Money Request Cancelled

Hello Gemhunt.com ,

Peek-A-Boo 4-U cancelled the following auction money request:

Seller: Gemhunt.com (sales@gemhunt.com)

---------------------------------------------------------------------- Money Request Details ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Seller's User ID:

Amount:$1.99 USD

Shipping & Handling:$2.90 USD

Insurance:

Total Amount:12.85 USD

--------- Item Information ---------

Item #:1613176702

Item Headline:400 Rough Diamonds * No Reserve!!!

Item Quantity: 0

Item Unit Value: $1.99 USD

Item Number:1613176702

Auction User ID:

Item URL:http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1613176702

End Date:Jul 11, 2001

Item Title:400 Rough Diamonds No Reserve!!! Here is a message from Peek-A-Boo 4-U: Thanks for bidding, My eBay ID is Gemhunt. com, My address for checks or money orders is: Mosaical Memories Inc, 2319 Fairview Ave, Fox River Grove, IL 60021, I ship the day after I receive payment, Thanks again, Paul Krush

To view updated details of this auction money request, click on the following link or copy and paste the link into your web browser:

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_prp&id=T2W67WUZYG-a-b6NaJekbs

Sincerely,

PayPal

PROTECT YOUR PASSWORD

NEVER give your password to anyone, including PayPal employees. Protect yourself against fraudulent websites by opening a new web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Firefox) and typing in the PayPal URL every time you log in to your account.

Copyright © 1999-2020 PayPal, Inc. All rights reserved. PayPal is located at 2211 N. First St., San Jose, CA 95131.

15 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 42.8 ms ] thread
otterlicious
Peek-A-Boo 4-U cancelled the following...

There is a pending payment requests section in PayPal. The buyer finally noticed it and cancelled it.

You would think they would expire these after some time. Imagine if the buyer completed the payment 19 years later??

mcraiha
That beats Duke Nukem Forever pre-orders receipts.
JaceLightning
This seems like spam and not a real request. The amounts don't even add up to the total.
paulkrush
Oh it's real, I've gotten 3 of them in the past year. I sold 1000's of items back then. At this point I think it's kind of cool. I wish you could view your eBay history back to the beginning. You can go way back on Amazon.
nitro_luke
I wouldn't trust the numbers paypal provides as far as i could throw them. My wife had to stop using PayPal for a whole host of reasons, namely could not figure how much money she made because the information displayed on the webpage was inaccurate and the reports were too confusing.
zxcvbn4038
After I left high school I signed up with a temp agency, filled out all the paperwork, never heard anything. Twelve years later, I received a phone call. I explained I had been employed full time for over a decade. They said that if I refused the assignment I might not be eligible for future opportunities. I told them I was ok with that. ;)

Along the same vein, a few years ago I had an employer that wanted proof I graduated high school. Blink. "You realize that I graduated almost forty years ago?" Didn't matter. Believe it or not I actually found the school system and they were able to produce a copy. I'm sure they had to climb over Jimmy Hoffa's cryotube and the Ark of the Covenant to get to it.

lolpython
My father had the same experience recently, with needing to prove he went to high school. He has an undergraduate degree and a graduate degree in creative writing, but he needed to have his old high school print out his diploma. In order for him to get a medical caretaker job.
knolax
Was this an automated system he was dealing with? I can't imagine the type of person who would with a straight face demand a high school diploma after seeing a graduate degree.
perl4ever
Well, if you don't have any advanced degree, it's still pretty obnoxious to insist on documentation a few decades on, when maybe the high school or school district doesn't even exist any more. More painful and humiliating when a high school diploma is all you've got and you've been working for like 30+ years. I know a hospital that did this and remember an applicant loudly complaining.
lolpython
A human insisted to his face that he provide a high school degree. As part of the hiring process. It must have been a hard requirement. Yeah, pretty strange. My Dad eventually got a copy of his diploma from the 70s and got the job.
aiyodev
There’s a software company in Seattle that won’t let you fill out their online application without entering your high school GPA. I suspect they do this to discriminate against older applicants.
zxcvbn4038
Another likely explanation is the online application was done by an intern fresh out of college and GPA is the only metric they had ever known. Like not being able to enter a birth date before 1970 (time_t), or not allowing more then one John Smith to register an account.
csunbird
Would you mind removing any kind of personal information?
the_resistence
20 years ago I used to work for a private investment fund which had an arrangement with a foreign custodian bank. Although the fund closed 2 years later, I still get monthly statements with zero balance even after we begged them to stop sending.