Last year, K bought me a £25 3V Paypal gift voucher. I have just had a closer look at the small print - after all, one doesn't generally do that on a gift voucher, does one? It is, quite frankly, a complete rip-off pile of shit. First, it doesn't top up one's Paypal account: it has to be activated as a Visa number and selected as the methot of payment. This seems OK until one discovers that Paypal doesn't automatically make up the difference from another account if the funds exceed whatever's in the visa account. Not that surprising in retrospect, I suppose. What this means though is that to make full use of the voucher, you have to buy goods - including postage - that exactly match the value ot the voucher. I suppose one could do a deal with a seller but it's a bit late for that now in my case: there's only £1.00 left in the account. This also assumes that emptying the account actually deactivates it. Here's the next sting though: the account expires after 12 months and any outstanding cretit is forfeit. Now here's the /real/ sting: the last three months the account is open, a charge of £2.00 is levied per month. To cancel the account and redeem the outstanding balance is charged at £3.50. Ok, it's only a few quid, but it is a complete, utter rip-off: out of the 25 quid gift, if I cancel the account then the total value of the gift ends up as only 90% of the paid-for value. If I do nothing then I'll effectively only receive 18 quid - the con artists get even more of the gift value (unless I can find something worth exactly one pound inc. postage!) *and* in both cases the money is pre-paid, so fuck knows how much they make on top of the charges. Avoid like the plague.
