Paypal Weirdness

I have a contractor doing a small job for me. He accepts payment via PayPal, so I went ahead and sent payment via PayPal for $200.

My business card was declined. I tried it a few times, verified the card number, etc...

Finally I called my credit card number. They said that they needed "verification" that I (the owner) was authorizing the charge, but the PayPal interface was not "advanced" enough to give me those details, just that it was declined and should contact them.

I guess since PayPal is used in a lot of eBay scams, I should be happy that they needed verification. It is a minor inconvenience.

I verbally verified the charge and then sent it through. Everything looked fine. The $200 (I said it was small) charge was approved and my PayPal account shows the $200 dollars leaving my account.

Whenever I send a payment via PayPal, I get a confirmation e-mail. That confirmation e-mail came today, just like all the other times. Unfortunately, this time it shows that I sent $24,200. Yep, that is right, there is a 24K difference between what I intended to send and what the confirmation e-mail says I sent. That's a huge discrepancy, and about 5 times more than the limit on my card.

I guess I'll watch to see what is actually charged to my card. Scary stuff no matter how you slice it.