Who's Calling From 402-935-7733?

The phone number 402-935-7733 is registered to PayPal. They’re calling because they believe you owe money on a PayPal Credit account, a Pay in 4 purchase, a negative PayPal balance, or some other financial product associated with their service.

These calls are coming from PayPal’s operations center in La Vista, Nebraska, and have generated tens of thousands of consumer complaints across various reporting platforms.

You’re not being paranoid. You’re not overreacting. And you’re certainly not alone in thinking that these calls never stop.

A History of Aggressive Collection Practices

PayPal’s debt collection practices have attracted federal attention. In 2015, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered PayPal to pay $25 million after determining that the company had illegally enrolled consumers in PayPal Credit without their consent. According to the CFPB, these consumers only discovered the accounts after receiving calls to collect on past-due balances that included late fees and interest charges.

The company has also faced lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act for alleged robocalling campaigns. If you find the calls you’re getting to be aggressive and harassing, you’re not the first person to feel that way. Federal regulators have already taken notice.

Why Is PayPal Calling Me?

Debts That Result in These Calls

There are several lending products that PayPal offers which can put your phone number into their collection queue. PayPal Credit is a revolving credit line issued through Synchrony Bank. Pay in 4 breaks purchases down into four bi-weekly payments. Pay Monthly is an interest-bearing installment loan of up to $10,000 issued through WebBank.

You can also be contacted for a negative PayPal balance, which occurs when a refund, chargeback, or buyer complaint results in an overdraft of your account. PayPal considers that negative balance to be a debt owed to them, and will contact you from their Nebraska call center to collect it.

When the Debt Isn’t Yours

A significant percentage of complaints about this phone number come from people who don’t owe PayPal a dime. One consumer on 800notes reported getting a voicemail on their unpublished work number from someone who claimed they needed a bank statement to approve an application. The consumer had never applied for anything, and was told by a PayPal supervisor to just ignore it.

Another consumer on WhoCallsMe reported getting a call on their daughter’s phone, despite their daughter not having a PayPal account. These aren’t isolated incidents. High-volume collection operations prioritize quantity over quality, and wrong numbers are just the cost of doing business.

What the Calls Actually Sound Like

The Automated Introduction

Consumers who have answered these calls describe a very consistent experience. The call opens with an automated message identifying the caller as PayPal, addressing a specific account holder by name, and directing you to:

“press 1 if you are [account holder’s name], press 2 if [he or she] is not available, or press 3 to place the call on hold.”

That’s it. The script doesn’t explain why PayPal is calling. It doesn’t offer an opportunity to ask questions or dispute the debt. It’s solely designed to get you to acknowledge that you’re the right person.

The Human Interaction

Make no mistake about it: PayPal is a completely legitimate company, not some fly-by-night scam. But legitimate doesn’t necessarily mean friendly. The same phone number they use for fraud alerts and account verifications is the same number they use for debt collection. One consumer on 800notes described calling 402-935-7733 back, only to be immediately prompted by an automated system for the last four digits of their Social Security number.

The consumer hung up, and called PayPal back through another verified channel. A PayPal representative confirmed that it was their fraud department calling, but acknowledged that the approach was a problem because the caller ID came up as unknown and the immediate request for an SSN was suspicious. This is the official PayPal customer experience.

Scammers have learned how to spoof this number, too, which adds an extra layer of complexity to the problem. A consumer on The Internet Patrol described how a friend called the number back, spoke with two individuals identifying themselves as David and Sam, and was informed that a $7,000 charge was going to be made against her checking account unless she purchased gift cards and opened a Bitcoin account. The friend lost more than $3,300 before realizing she’d been scammed.

The point here is that even when the caller is actually from PayPal, the approach is aggressive and the requests for personally identifying information are immediate. When the caller isn’t from PayPal, the potential consequences can be catastrophic. In either event, engaging with an incoming call on their terms puts you at a disadvantage from the outset.

The Relentless Call Volume

How Frequently They Call

RoboKiller has received over 6,167 user reports, and logged more than 259,599 calls from this single phone number. That tells you everything you need to know about how PayPal approaches the collection process. This isn’t a company that’s going to place one call and then patiently wait to hear back from you.

Several consumers have reported fielding between three and seven calls in a single day. One 800notes user said they got roughly seven calls in one day, with no voicemail message left on any of them. Another user tracked calls coming in at around 8 a.m., 11 a.m., 3 p.m., and 6 p.m. — essentially providing a steady stream of harassment throughout the day.

An Everycaller user reported getting a taped message at 6:49 in the morning demanding their PayPal PIN despite not even having a PayPal account. Calls in the early morning, late in the evening, and at all points in between have all been reported. The timing seems deliberately chosen to catch people off guard.

The Pressure is Intentional

This isn’t an accident. The collection industry knows that people experiencing financial difficulties are often vulnerable, and that when your phone rings repeatedly and a voice on the other end of the line is telling you that you owe them money right now, the natural human response is to do whatever it takes to make that problem go away as quickly as possible. That’s exactly what they’re counting on.

Decisions made in a panic rarely work out well for consumers. Payments made to get the calls to stop don’t mean the account is going to be removed from your credit report. Information provided to a caller you didn’t verify can be used against you. The sheer volume of these phone calls is a feature, not a bug.

What Protections You Actually Have

Federal Laws Offer You Leverage

The Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act aren’t just shields for you to defend yourself. They’re actually swords you can use to attack the problem at its source. Under these laws, you have the right to dispute a debt and make the collector (or credit bureau) verify that debt with properly documentation within a specific amount of time. If they can’t, the item has to be removed from your report.

This isn’t a loophole or a technicality. This is exactly how the system is meant to function. Collectors are always supposed to prove their claims. When they can’t, you win.

Most Debts Will Never See the Inside of a Courtroom

If you’re worried that you’re going to get sued, understand this: Before a collector decides to pursue litigation, they have to weigh the costs and benefits. It costs money to file a lawsuit. It costs money to pay an attorney. It costs money to serve papers and pursue a judgment. For most consumer debts — particularly smaller balances — it doesn’t make economic sense for the collector to make that investment.

That’s why they rely on phone campaigns in the first place. It’s cheaper to call someone seven times a day and hope they pay up because they’re tired of the harassment than it is to file a lawsuit and go to court. If the calling is aggressive, that’s a pretty good indication that they’d prefer not to take their chances with a judge.

Additionally, there are both federal and state exemptions that protect a substantial portion of your income and assets from garnishment even if a collector does decide to pursue a lawsuit. Your Social Security benefits are protected under federal law. So are your disability benefits. So are your retirement accounts. Most states also protect a certain amount of your wages from garnishment. Many consumers have far more legal protections available to them than they realize, which is why collectors invest so much in the phone game.

Conclusion

Time to Stop Playing Their Game

If you’re getting calls from 402-935-7733, the absolute worst thing you can do is just keep answering and reacting in the moment. Every call you take under pressure, every piece of information you provide, and every payment you make just to get them to stop calling all serve to strengthen their position.

A much better approach is to push pause, get a handle on your legal rights, and start responding on your own terms through the channels provided to you under federal law. That means pulling copies of your credit reports, identifying any errors or inaccuracies, and filing disputes that will force the other side to prove their claims with documentation rather than phone calls.

Get Professional Help From People Who Understand the System

The technical details of the FCRA and FDCPA matter. Timing matters. The specific language that you use in your disputes matters. None of these are things that the average consumer is going to know off the top of their head unless they’ve been through the process before, and by that point it’s usually too late.

The professionals at FightCollections.com work with consumers who are facing harassing collection calls every day. We understand how first-party creditors like PayPal operate, what kinds of documentation they’re obligated to provide, and what happens when they fail to meet their legal obligations. Get in touch with us today for a free consultation, and let’s talk about your options.