Imagine my surprise today, when I discovered that I had pre-authorized Woot.com to take up to $15,000 dollars per month from my paypal account without any further authorization from me. (Don’t panic – they haven’t actually done anything bad). The PANIC item is that I was completely unaware that I was party to this agreement, along with a dozen others from such well known sites as Itunes, Ebay and Skype.
I previously thought that Paypal was a haven from sleazy credit card billing practices. Apparently not. I recommend you check your paypal account – look in your “profile” page, under “my pre-approved payments”.
I have to admit, that when I am using paypal to buy a $20 memory stick, I don’t read all the gobs of fine print that might be on the forms I blink through on the way to authorizing the payment, but it’s obviously way too easy to pre-approve a major financial relationship as an accidental by-product.
