How to use "had" correctly in a past perfect paragraph?

Question

Consider the following paragraph:

My account was suspended after I used what I believe was an expired confirmation code for changing my payment details. I had not received a confirmation email immediately after switching to Payoneer from PayPal on the website. When it arrived 2-3 hours later, I had clicked on the link in it and had entered the confirmation code but was told that the confirmation code was incorrect. I had tried a couple of times more thinking maybe I had done something wrong the first time around but the error message persisted. Immediately after that, an email had arrived saying that my account was going to be suspended for security reasons.

The first sentence of the paragraph describes what happened to my account (it was suspended), and the rest of the paragraph details what led to the suspension. So, if the first sentence is in simple past tense, then the rest of the paragraph has to be in past perfect tense. Have I used "had" and "was" correctly here? If not, could you please point out the mistakes?

Answer 1

There is no need to use the past perfect in this situation. The best way to structure this is use the past tense throughout and use a paragraph break to indicate the shift in time:

My account was suspended after I used what I believe was an expired confirmation code for changing my payment details.

I did not receive a confirmation email immediately after switching to Payoneer from PayPal on the website. When it arrived 2-3 hours later, I clicked on the link...

The rest of the paragraph is chronological. Use of the past perfect is sometimes (but rarely) useful when temporarily referring back to an earlier time, but in most situations, you should try to use past tense and chronological order. When you switch to a new time frame, you start a new paragraph.

It would be possible to write:

I clicked on the link that I had received in a confirmation email, but was told that the confirmation code was incorrect.

Here you can see a correct use of the past perfect to indicate an earlier time, but the paragraph switches back to past tense right after. You should not try to write whole blocks of text in the past perfect.

Answer 2

Past perfect grammar in nutshell is to define an event that happened before another one in the past as @James K described and I am just adding to his... consider an action A and B in a Timeline

========A==========B=====>

see A happened before B

Example: like I had eaten dinner when the door bell rang, See the first part (Action A) happened before B

Now back to yours.... suspension of the account takes place in the past (Action A) and the rest of the paragraph is just and action that can be called as Action B u need to simply use "Simple Past Tense" Example :

1. I didn't receive...
2. I clicked...
3. I tried...