I have a question for anyone using PayPal to accept payments: what do you do with the emails PayPal sends you every time you receive a payment?

- Do you automatically sort these emails into a certain folder?
- Do you open the emails and read them?
- Do you just delete them?

What would happen if changes were made - for example, adding or removing some information from those emails?


Also, do you ever see emails from PayPal that are not payment notifications? (If PayPal sent a notice about a problem with your account, would you notice?)

Thanks in advance for your replies. :)

I have a question for anyone using PayPal to accept payments: what do you do with the emails PayPal sends you every time you receive a payment?

- Do you automatically sort these emails into a certain folder?
- Do you open the emails and read them?
- Do you just delete them?

What would happen if changes were made - for example, adding or removing some information from those emails?

Basically in outlook i have sections for shared clients & reseller clients (amongst others) in each of those sections clients have there own folders.

All emails relating to that client are stored in there relative folder, including any paypal correspondance.

Also, do you ever see emails from PayPal that are not payment notifications? (If PayPal sent a notice about a problem with your account, would you notice?)

I get plenty but 9/10 tend to be scams and so they get treated with a pinch of salt and deleted, i then log in to my paypal account directly and see if there is anything that needs doing, again, 9/10 times there isnt.

I dump 99.99% of all emails from Paypal because 99.99% of them are phishing/fraudulent. Hmm kinda sounds like Paypal themselves!

I dump 99.99% of all emails from Paypal because 99.99% of them are phishing/fraudulent...
I have to agree...

99.99% of all emails with the correct subject lines are actually from PayPal (only received one phishing mail among hundreds that used a real PP receipt subject line).. so it's easy to filter them into a folder.

What would happen if changes were made - for example, adding or removing some information from those emails?


Also, do you ever see emails from PayPal that are not payment notifications? (If PayPal sent a notice about a problem with your account, would you notice?)

Thanks in advance for your replies. :)

To respond to some other questions of yours...

I need the item number of the payment in the subject. I use that to match up payments with orders when I need to find a payment.

I need the link in the mail to the payment details because I use that to refund people. When you do a lot of transactions, your search is far too slow to do to find a payment. I just click the link on the email.

I do notice and read the mails notifying me of chargebacks or other disputes. I wouldn't notice otherwise because I have no reason to log in to my PayPal account directly. I go in through an email to a specific payment, I never see the index page that would tell me there's a dispute open.

"what do you do with the emails PayPal sends you every time you receive a payment?"

I read them and next few days I delete them, to secure the payment otherwise there's something happened and I have no receipt proof. You know what I mean.

I always read them, sort them into relevant folders and keep them as "supporting documents". It sucks when PayPal changes what is included in those messages or in the download files. It means I have to change my processing documents that parse those files.

And yes, I would notice messages about my account and can easily distinguish phishing from real ones.

They go into a department in our helpdesk, and we check them every day. We do the same for Cron output, modernbill output etc.

I always save PayPal receipt e-mails to verify that the transaction was actually processed, just in case PayPal messes up :-)

I have a question for anyone using PayPal to accept payments: what do you do with the emails PayPal sends you every time you receive a payment?

- Do you automatically sort these emails into a certain folder?
- Do you open the emails and read them?
- Do you just delete them?

What would happen if changes were made - for example, adding or removing some information from those emails?


Also, do you ever see emails from PayPal that are not payment notifications? (If PayPal sent a notice about a problem with your account, would you notice?)

Thanks in advance for your replies. :)

90 percent of my emails from paypal are the scam paypal emails. I used to forwards these emails to paypal support - only to be told that it would be a great idea to change my password. Hence stopped.

Yes, the 10 percent I read.

I read them thoroughly: but would login to my paypal account if I need to doublecheck anything.

Payment notifications are great though.

i do not save them because if there is a problem paypal dont believe them as a proof

For payment emails, I read the emails. I put the senders email address in my address book. I click on the link to the transaction and look at the transaction details because I have international customers and PayPal fees tend to vary depending on country and sometimes I need to approve transactions. I also have information that I collect, some manadatory, some voluntary that I collect on sales and showup in the email...some of which I save in a spreadsheet.

I get a bunch of phishing emails supposedly from PayPal. I just delete those.

I get a few advertising type emails from PayPal, I usually glance at them and delete them. As a PayPal developer, I look at the development related emails from PayPal.

I generally do not read them, I just check my account history every other day.

I don't read them, and I just delete them, as many are fradulent. Sometimes I will skim over the ones that state my name in the greeting.

I use a shopping cart so the email that sent from paypal is tittled differently. I read them and check them with paypal account. And then store them somewhere else.
The filter works great so I never had to check for phishing (or maybe because my site is new?)

For last 1,5 year nothing needful from PayPal dont recieve...

No I do not read them. I had purchased the Verisign Payflow gateway because I needed a backup in case Linkpoint went down. Since it has not gone down and now since Paypal sends me annoying emails asking me to switch to their merchant account, I am stopping my Payflow gateway account. It was very annoying. I would have thought a company like Paypal would not need to resort to these types of tactics.

It has actually gotten to the point where I am going to even close down my Paypal account - I only do about $1,000 a week on that one and just delete any emails automatically with the word Paypal in them.

No I do not read them. I had purchased the Verisign Payflow gateway because I needed a backup in case Linkpoint went down. Since it has not gone down and now since Paypal sends me annoying emails asking me to switch to their merchant account, I am stopping my Payflow gateway account. It was very annoying. I would have thought a company like Paypal would not need to resort to these types of tactics.

It has actually gotten to the point where I am going to even close down my Paypal account - I only do about $1,000 a week on that one and just delete any emails automatically with the word Paypal in them.

How does PayPal know that you bought Verisign Payflow?

All my genuine Paypal emails get printed off and sent to my accountant!

I delete them after reading them. If anything looks "funny", then I'll log into our paypal account and check things out.

I don't keep them, because paypal won't accept an email as 'proof' of anything.. so they pretty much just use up space.

How does PayPal know that you bought Verisign Payflow?
I am guessing they have access to those (Verisign's customers') emails since I was a client of Verisign and Paypal needed more marketing. I had not recieved any emails before and I contacted my agent to inquire. He said a few merchants had complained and they all were using / had an account with Verisign Payflow. Maybe it was a coincidence but I am not going to be taking that chance any longer.