It seems like there is something missing in this story. Most businesses will bend over backward to take your money.
Could it be someone with a similar name being the cause of the problem?
Maybe the "several purchases" raised a red flag or one of the vendors was suspicious.
Paypal has worked fine for me. The bank my account is linked to was absorbed by another bank over a decade ago. We ordered 800 checks just before Washington Mutual was closed by the Feds. Just after we received the new checks, almost everything changed to electronic payment. The checks have our old California address on them. We have no problems using them when a check is needed. We still have about 400 old checks left. We used to write maybe 30+ checks a month. Now we might not write that many in a year. One of the last cash or check only payees has recently set up online payments.
jtk