You do not need a phone number to do business through PayPal. I have one but it is an old unused number and have never been asked to provide a working number. So I assume that if people do away with their PayPal account it is because of principle and not because they will be doing robocalls or text. There are so many ways around this (adding the number to spam numbers, blocking, giving a fake number or even a number at all. My old number on file was never even confirmed) for me to want to give up my account. If I did not need PayPal it would be one thing but I do a lot of online shopping. Some sites there are other options to pay but with Ebay its not that easy unless you can work something out with the seller. Do away with your account if you feel the need but I don't feel the need yet. Do I like the new Policy? no, but there are a lot of things I do not like about many companies, sites and even people but I make it work and still interact with them because sometimes there is no other choice.

Now let the ....... replies begin.

They won't be contacting me because I did not supply a phony number. If you read again what I wrote I said it was an old number or to be more specific a sim card I no longer use. As to providing a phony number it may be a violation but were are the examples of anything being done about it. Besides that was only one option that I listed and there are many others for the ethically or morally conscious. I will deal with it if they out right tell me that I need to provide a working number and I am willing to bet that they won't.

Lets be clear on one thing, there is a difference between members and non members. "When a non-paypal member wishes to make a purchase they are presented with mandatory fields to enter their telephone number. For paypal members this option may be turned off (indeed there is a warning that turning it on may have a negative effect on conversion to sale - ie people don't always want to give their number.)

Look I know you will talk about intent again with this response but if it concerns you that much here is what you do. Go buy yourself a cheap pay as you go phone or purchase a new sim card and designate these as your PayPal only phones. use them to call PayPal or to receive text or calls from PayPal. Yes they are still making contact with you but they are doing so on a phone that is not your daily user. I would have no problem doing this with a clear conscience and it would be worth it to me because of the amount of PayPal transactions that I do.

I guess time will tell what approach I will need to take.

Consider Square Cash as an alternative, for person-to-person payments, anyway.  Haven't looked at their TOU but I don't receive calls from them.  We use PayPal for a fair number of online purchases as a convenience, but it's hardly necessary and certainly not worth intrusive marketing harassment.  If it happens, I'll close the account for them.

This is the sort of thing that I don't care about being in a ToC. When they start doing it, I'll react. Until then it's not important to me.

Square Cash currently links only to a debit card, not directly to your bank account the way PayPal can.  So, yes, that's currently PayPal's leverage/advantage.  Pushback to the TOU changes may change that, however, and encourage Square (&/or others) to expand into the online payment processing market.

I doubt very much that will happen seeing how the number they have on file will be the number that they will use to contact you. If I have a dedicated paypal number (which may sound silly to some) that will be the number they use to make contact, not the number they don't have on file. Like NGC7000 says this is a non issue for me because there are many options. I also do not believe that they will be flooding anyone's phone with text or calls, more likely only if there is a problem with your account such as not enough funds in your account and so on.

I actually have a question regarding the above...

I've also noticed that ebay is also changing its TOS in the same way:

Oh, and there's this:

So everyone's cancelling their paypal accounts, but not their ebay accounts?

So long as i don't get charged for the call or text it won't bother me ,unless it's at night when i'm sleeping.I haven't received anything yet ! stands to reason i spose as it'll be quite an expensive bill i would think to phone a cell phone in NZ,unless a skype call is free to cells

Sadly, that's the way of the corporate world... finding any which way to get in your face with advertising and peddle shit you'd rather not know about,  So glad I told PayPal to piss off years ago.  I meant that using E-bay to purchase items was difficult to impossible, but I've managed quite okay without it.  It also means I miss out on some of the best prices out there, but I've purchased several great bargains through other online sellers and I'm not about to change my mind to maybe save a few bucks here and there.... and given this latest advertising/privacy debacle [or should I say travesty] the less I have to do with it the better.

For mine, what they're doing is illegal and would infringe on privacy laws somewhere, it's just getting a government and/or a prosecutor to tackle it head on and make them pay for such brazen behaviour.

Next to bankers and politicians, advertising execs are the next worst parasite on the planet.

Dear Kenneth Crooks,

Hello! My name is Mia, a PayPal Product and Site Support specialist. Thank you for writing us back. I'm here to address your inquiry about the amended user agreement.

We appreciate you contacting us about this for clarification. Please be advised that the amended User Agreement doesn't mean that you will be opted into receiving unwanted autodialed or prerecorded message calls from PayPal, with no opportunity to opt out. 

Please follow the simple steps below.

 
1. Log into their PayPal account
2. Click on the profile icon
3. Select "Notifications"
4. Under "News and Updates".

If for some reason you're unable to do it online, please respond to this email so that we can submit a request for you to be opted out from this. Just to give you a heads up, you will not be opted out immediately after the request was submitted. Please advise that while we will take steps to process the request quickly, the request will not be processed immediately. If in case you'll be adding new phone numbers to the account profile later, it's a must to contact us if you want those numbers opted out as well.

The reason why we use these technologies is for us reach out to you in a more efficient way than other methods may provide. Our goal is to enhance your experience with PayPal by providing you important information about your account. Before we use this approach, we seek your permission through our User Agreement.

This does not mean that you'll be receiving a lot of automated calls from PayPal if you have accepted the User Agreement. We value our relationship with you and have no intention of harassing you with excessive autodialed or prerecorded message calls.

We honor your requests not to be contacted through these channels, and this is the reason why I outlined the steps to opt out at any time. This will not result in your PayPal account being closed.

For further assistance, we can also be reached at 1-877-569-1116 during these hours:

4:00 am PT to 10:00 pm PT, Monday-Friday
6:00 am PT to 8:00 pm PT, Saturday-Sunday

We appreciate your time. Thank you for choosing PayPal!

Sincerely,

Mia
PayPal Consumer Support
PayPal, an eBay Company
Copyright © 2015 PayPal Inc. All rights reserved.

I've gotten a lot of those claiming to be from Facebook and various other "places" that I've never signed up with.  I'm not sure if people are using bogus emails or if it's pfishing spam.  Anyway I spam-zap it unopened.

Thing is, I'm using a different email account to the one I initally signed up with, so I should not be getting anything from Facebook.... period.   I no longer use that email after several attemps to block Facebook failed and its crap continued to arrive.  I am at the same IP address, however, and using the same personal details [name, DOB] for Hotmail, so maybe that's how they found me, the persitent and unwelcome bastards.

And to think, I only ever went to Facebook just the once to sign up.... then thinking better of ever returning..... and I think this bullshit with Paypal is no different.  They say there is an opt out, but I believe it will be alot easier said than done.  I mean, why would the go to the trouble of changing the terms and conditions to let potential sales and customers off the hook that easily.  Nope, it's a fechen lie AFAIC.