You Must Be Careful When Buying Through PayPal or Stub Hub!

Follow @mlbreports

Friday March.23, 2012

Travel Blog: #10

Articles @ MLB Reports # 27

Days to GWR Attempt:15

Douglas ‘Chuck’ Booth (Baseball Writer and @chuckbooth3024 on twitter)- This wasn’t my topic that I was going to write about today but I felt it is so necessary to warn travelers on the pitfalls of PayPal and StubHub if they don’t know how to use their financial institutions properly.  First off, I am not bemoaning either of these entities.  Both offer a great service to the public.  This is just a cautionary tale.  When you have done extensive traveling such as I have you pretty much encounter everything, this is a kind of parallelism to the great game of baseball.  I have been overcharged, had entire flight itineraries be cancelled because of a simple date error.  Again I digress off topic, we can pick up on some of those on another day.

For those not familiar with PayPal at all, this is the company that is responsible for billions and billions of dollars that is funneled through E-BAY.  In the last several years they have branched out their services to the travel industry.  You can buy airplane fares and game tickets for baseball road trips.  I used PayPal predominantly for those very items on my upcoming World Record Chase.  I take pride in making sure I have enough funds to cover all items bought on PayPal.  This time around I actually made a rookie mistake.  I forgot to place my credit card as my primary source of funding with my bank account being the backup.

Instead the roles were reversed.  This is the first time that I had used this one-two combination.  Without going too far into it, I had to change my bank account recently to remove a party from it.  So why is having your bank account as your primary source a bad idea if you have enough money combined to pay for anything between the two sources?  I will tell you, if your credit card has non-sufficient funds in the credit limit, PayPal simply receives a declined message before pulling from your 2^nd financial source-(which would be your bank account.)  Nothing lost and nothing ventured there.  When you are spending a lot of money at once it is hard to keep track of every last penny.  If your bank is your primary funding source and the money is not sufficient enough, the bank can serve you with multiple NSF Fees. Trust me, as I just went through this for the tone of $150 worth.  I am man enough to admit I made this mistake.  Had I made one simple role reversal I would not have been charged anything.

So I start my forth-coming trip down a little bit more money than I was originally slated to.  This has prompted me to look at my upcoming budget even more for the 32 minimum games I will attend in 30 different ballparks.  A lot of how you become an expert as a traveler is to make a mistake like this.  I have never sugar-coated any mistake I have made traveling.  There have been plenty of instances where I have given away hard-earned dollars.  Part of me already wishes I was on my record quest because my mindset is so much different.  When you are chasing a World Record you must learn to shake, rattle and roll with the best of them and put the mistakes behind you quickly.

Some quick reminders to save you from making mistakes on a baseball road trip:

1. Double check all dates before buying plane tickets, game tickets or bidding on a hotel night.  If any part of you is not sure at the final click of the transaction hit the back button!!  I quadruple check all purchases now.
2. Develop a calendar on your travel and have it present with you at all times.  Namely, what cities you are in and what dates.
3. Have a secondary email account that deals directly with just trip reservations or bookings.  You can add this to your existing email account by moving it to a different category.
4. Try and use your credit card for most purchases.  The paper trail is easier to find if you are lost on something.  It is also a more secured.
5. Remember in the last few weeks I have mentioned the 15% rule.  Craziness, for such as a minor oversight like this, can come at you at any time and inexplicably you will not see it coming.  Doing a budget also gives you the opportunity to see where you can alter some of your impending financial decisions for the remainder of your trip.

Upcoming stories in future weeks will include:

Plane Fares

Cars

Lost Luggage

Flight Delays or Cancellations

Traffic Violations (unexpected)

Credit Card Transaction Fees (Especially for Canadians)

Traveler insurance limitations for International Passengers.

Declaration limits for both Canadian and US travelers for the days visited to your non-home country.

In the end, this dollar loss just may help me not eat as much ballpark food.

*** Thank you to our Baseball Writer- Douglas “Chuck” Booth for preparing today’s feature on MLB reports.  To learn more about “The Fastest 30 Ballgames” and Chuck Booth, you can follow Chuck on Twitter (@ChuckBooth3024) and you can also follow Chuck’s website for his Guinness Book of World Record Bid to see all 30 MLB Park in 20 days www.fastestthirtyballgames3021.wordpress.com or on the 30 MLB Parks in 20 days GWR tracker here at the Reports http://mlbreports.com/gwr-tracker/ To Purchase or read about “The Fastest 30 Ballgames Book” please click here ***

Please e-mail us at: mlbreports@me.com with any questions and feedback.  You can follow us on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.  To subscribe to our website and have the Daily Reports sent directly to your inbox, click  here and follow the link at the top of our homepage.

Follow @mlbreports