Reclaiming My Time

14:39 Wednesday, 11 February 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 28.92°F Pressure: 1010hPa Humidity: 76% Wind: 17.09mph
Words: 222

I've been trying to close my PayPal account, and I'm stuck in one of those Catch-22 situations where I need some human intervention, so I'm waiting for an email that will somehow facilitate allowing me to speak to a human being.

I received an email from PayPal that they'd detected "suspicious activity" on my account and had place "restrictions" on it. I checked it out to make sure it wasn't some sort of phishing attack and it's legit. To resolve the "issue" PayPal wanted me to upload a photo ID, which I don't want to do.

I have a couple recurring payments through PayPal, so I went to those accounts and changed the payment methods to a credit card so I could go ahead and just close the account. The recurring payments were current, and there were no pending payments. So I returned to the PayPal site to close my account.

Well, I can't close my account unless I upload a photo ID!

I explained to the chatbot that I wished to resolve the "issue," by closing my account. The chatbot was unable to do anything to permit me to close my account, so I asked if I could speak to a human and so now I'm supposed to receive an email "in a few hours."

Let's see how this goes.