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Well Hello,

Incase you haven't read the many PayPal horror stories, I will tell you mine.

First, I started to remove my limits on my verified business account about 6 months ago; all was good until they needed a tax document and photo ID. I send them a tax document and sent them my "permament residence of Canada card" that has my photo, and other info on it. However, because it isn't British, it got rejected. Fair enough.

Now, I got an email 4-5 days ago saying this.

Quote:Hello Conor Calby,

We're writing to let you know about a change to your PayPal account.

Starting 18/08/2011, money from payments you receive will be placed in a pending balance for up to 21days. By doing this, we're making sure that there's enough money in your account to cover potential refunds or claims.

Even though you can't access the money right away, please send orders quickly and communicate with your customers. After 21 days, you can withdraw money from each payment as long as the customer hasn't filed a dispute, chargeback, claim, return, or reversal.
The money may be available sooner if:

1. We can confirm that the item was delivered.
2. Your buyer leaves positive feedback. (Applies only to eBay items)

This change isn't necessarily permanent. We'll review your account every 35 days and re-evaluate if we should continue to hold your payments. If we decide to stop holding payments, we'll email you to let you know.

Why are my payments being held?
We reviewed your account and determined that there's a relatively higher than average risk of future transaction issues (such as claims, or chargebacks, or payment reversals). We understand that it may be inconvenient to have your payments temporarily held but please know that we didn't make this decision lightly.

Before deciding to hold payments, we consider many factors. These factors include account and transaction activity, the rate of customer disputes, the type of business a seller runs, average delivery timeframes, customer satisfaction, performance and history.

So, I replied with this:

Quote:Ermmm... Why are you doing this? There has been no recent disputes on my account to lead you to doing this. All of the 4 over 12 months that have been opened were solved by me, without your need as those that were opened, I took responsibility for. Please forward this email to a member of your supervisor team, or give me a direct number to call them.

I am not happy at all about this; PayPal isn't exactly the best gateway anyway according to others; doing stuff like this makes it obvious why.
Regards,

Today, still no reply to the email so I shall be calling them and having a conversation with them.

Over the past 12 months, there has been 4 disputes opened on my account. 3 of them I myself refunded and resolved without PayPal needing to get involved the other PayPal took my side on.

My eBay account that isn't used alot has a feedback score of 34 (low I know ) but they are all positive, there isn't a single negative on there.

Anyone in/have been in a similar situation with PayPal? Any recommendations how to solve it?

Thanks,

I always make zero balance by withdrawing all money from Paypal to avoid such incidents.

Oh man that's terrible, I'm very sorry to hear this. Luckily I've never had this happen to me. Best of luck.

Much better than our (Indians) case. We can only receive money, we can't send money, unless we use a credit card directly.

I let them get on with it. It's a new policy from PayPal, and to be honest, it's fair enough for me. Take a look at it from a consumer point of view.

If you bought a product and paid via PayPal, but you never received it, PayPal will (more than likely) refund the cost to you. Before, they had to chase the original seller - and more often than not - just had to write off the lost debt. With this new policy, they're insuring that the original seller is completely and wholly responsible for the refund.

No brainer.

My girlfriend recently started selling stuff on eBay and got hit by this policy - it has since stopped and she can withdraw anything straight away. Chances are, within a month or so, you'll be out of the programme.

I have a credit card attached to my PayPal and all payments come directly from that. I don't have funds in the account at any point unless someone offers a refund. This ensures I have no issues. To be honest, I try to avoid using PayPal when possible.

At least you're not "forbidden" from using PayPal forever.
Seriously I feel like a westerner in 14th century China.

(2011-08-19, 01:27 PM)Tomm M Wrote: [ -> ]I let them get on with it. It's a new policy from PayPal, and to be honest, it's fair enough for me. Take a look at it from a consumer point of view.

The feature isn't new. It's been around for ages.

PayPal have, through the verification process, calculated risk on your account like an insurance company would. This factors down to your country of residence, age, location etc. Insurers will, for example, charge more to insure a property in one area than another due to crime rates. That's simply because they're protecting themselves against increased risk.

Unfortunately, PayPal does this as with banks and insurers via a dumb computer - you've been categorised, simply due to the information they have on you, with a group of higher risk customers. Therefore, as a way of protecting themselves against losses/chargeback risk/transaction disputes, they've made an annoying decision. At the end of the day, they are a business and they need to protect their revenues for their stockholders.

Basically, I'm saying that they are acting like most other financial businesses. Although their procedures may not have worked for you, it isn't the end of the world. They've got a rational reason for doing what they did -- unfortunately, you just have to accept that and work to build trust with their computer.

I've never had this issue, possibly because I have bank funding through a Direct Debit set up and always have a positive account balance with a chunky reserve to cover any payment disputes/fraud claims. Following a similar practice may help. As with a Credit Card & the company that provides it, with your new (ish?) account you have to prove your responsible manner and they'll reward you by removing the limits

In the case of UK accounts, I've been able to get through to decent reps before to sort out disputes. I'm sure if you call them up after a few more months of having a dispute-free record they may be able to do something too. Just make sure you get a rep that can help with account limits/fraud and not one that robotically answers questions using a script.

Quote:Ermmm... Why are you doing this?

Sorry if I come across as rude here: as someone with experience as a CSR, if I get a message/call from someone taking a colloquial tone, it's difficult to understand their anger and frustration. In future when you write to them, avoid the above and instead be stern as if you were writing a job application cover letter or something else that should be construed formally. The rest of your message was good though.

Today I also had problems with PayPal

Quote:This payment has been selected to be screened and we have opened an investigation of this transaction.

We have reason to suspect that this transaction has not been authorized by the owner of the PayPal account.

We have temporarily blocked the funds until the investigation is completed.

Provide more information on this transaction.

Deadline for response: 27 August 2011

This for only 2$ a friend sent me as a donation on my forum, PayPal is asking me for proofs of the shipment, but IS A DONATION! What should I have sent? A little heart with a thankyou message?

Quote:How do you solve this problem?
-I have not made ​​the expedition and would like to refund the payment.
-I have already shipped the item and can provide proof of shipping address shown on the Transaction Details page.
-I refunded the payment associated with this transaction.
-None of the options listed.

I selected "None of the options listed" and....

Quote:One of the ways to get more information about a transaction is to compare the shipping address with the address associated with your PayPal account holder. Send us the information about the destination address of the object and any communication exchanged with the buyer.

Whaaaaat? It's a D O N A T I O N... They're making me crazy, I sent an email to PayPal trying to explain my situation.

E-mailing with them is impossible, your best luck is calling them.
Of course, it's human representatives, but they read word for word (I've spoke with 4+ different reps who stated the SAME EXACT thing).

(2011-08-19, 11:57 PM)danysalva Wrote: [ -> ]Today I also had problems with PayPal

Quote:This payment has been selected to be screened and we have opened an investigation of this transaction.

We have reason to suspect that this transaction has not been authorized by the owner of the PayPal account.

We have temporarily blocked the funds until the investigation is completed.

Provide more information on this transaction.

Deadline for response: 27 August 2011

This for only 2$ a friend sent me as a donation on my forum, PayPal is asking me for proofs of the shipment, but IS A DONATION! What should I have sent? A little heart with a thankyou message?

Quote:How do you solve this problem?
-I have not made ​​the expedition and would like to refund the payment.
-I have already shipped the item and can provide proof of shipping address shown on the Transaction Details page.
-I refunded the payment associated with this transaction.
-None of the options listed.

I selected "None of the options listed" and....

Quote:One of the ways to get more information about a transaction is to compare the shipping address with the address associated with your PayPal account holder. Send us the information about the destination address of the object and any communication exchanged with the buyer.

Whaaaaat? It's a D O N A T I O N... They're making me crazy, I sent an email to PayPal trying to explain my situation.