EBay, PayPal Face Criticism Over Robocall Policies

New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is raising concerns over new policies from eBay and its payments subsidiary PayPal that may give the firms leeway to blast users with so-called robocalls. In separate letters on June 10, the attorney general’s office sought more information about the policies, which are part of eBay and PayPal’s new user agreements, set to take effect on June 15 and July 1, respectively. The companies revised their policies ahead of a separation in 2015’s third quarter.

The agreements would give eBay and PayPal the right to use “autodialed or prerecorded calls and text messages” to collect debts, or send surveys or promotions. As is customary with user agreements, there is no obvious way to opt out of that provision. A PayPal spokeswoman said customers can choose not to receive autodialed or prerecorded messages, pointing to a June 5 blog post that says users can contact customer service by email or phone to opt out.