I wanted to try to bust some myths about major financial institutions or suggest some alternative news stories.

There was a huge hoo haa about how if you don’t use your PayPal account for ages, you lose your credit balance. But it doesn’t cover the insurance you effectively get on payments by using it.

PayPal offers some really great advantages as a payment method, including a 6 month ‘escalation’ guarantee on payments.

So if I brought an iPhone, let’s say a refurbished one, on eBay and after the month eBay money back guarantee ends. Well if I paid by PayPal then I have five more months to query my order. PayPal can literally place the money you sent to the supplier on hold from their account. And that’s going to be an incentive to sort the problem out with you e.g. battery failure after 3 months.

So quickly Topshop…. if you don’t use your gift cards its been commonplace for them to expire after two years. This is a fairly standard concept within retail.

Lastly HMRC…. I keep seeing these news article saying that the HRMC are bullying poor carers over tax owed.

So many carer jobs are full time around £13,000-14,0000.

That’s not going to create a big tax bill is it? So whoever is being chased up must have been in a managerial role or perhaps double that salary to be in trouble for unpaid tax.

I feel I need to write these things as there are some stories which I believe people want to believe, so when I see news articles giving examples reinforcing these narratives, I think it is really key to remember there are billions of people and scenarios. And even a coin has two sides.

So what do these three names have in common? They are all in the news and particular types of views on them are published more frequently than others. I don’t really mind what conclusion you make but it would be good to have a choice of viewpoints.