[b112]

Wait you need a smartphone to login?! How bizarre.

Paypal has recently locked me out of my account, because I don't have a mobile phone number. Why would I?

I have a landline phone, and, I have terrestrial high speed internet.

So I have an Android tablet with wifi. It works at home, and worked when I used to goto office. I have voip too.

However, there is no mobile service in my area. I'm very rural, so it's fine a few miles from my home, but not anywhere on my land.

Paypal has my landline number, but recently insists I add a mobile phone for SMS auth.

It is unclear to me how this could possibly help.

Should I decide to spend cash on a mobile phone, just and only just for paypal, I'd have to try to login, drive a few kms to town, get the SMS code, then return.

Surely, a timeout would happen by then. Not to mention the entire idea is absurd and smacks of ineptness on Paypal's part.

Talking to paypal results in support personalle who literally do nothing but search a database and respond with circular, broken logic. I was even told repeatedly to login, to open a ticket, about not being able to login.

And this was not just one support person either.

Any push to speak to a supervisor results in a disconnect on transfer.

I have been with paypal almost 20 years. It appears that will soon end.

Bah.

[bombcar]

As an aside some (most? All?) iPhones and carriers seem to support "WIFI calling" which lets you get calls and texts when you're on WIFI (and even outside of cell signal) - I get Ting calls and texts when I'm deep in my basement where no cell signal is available, as long as I have WIFI on.

I assume something similar exists for other carriers and phones (Republic Wireless is build around it).

There are also some land-lines that can get texts, but I don't know how they do it (I suspect they're actually a cell line disguised as one).