Ebay item sold "On hold post now" for 21 days!

Cappuccino

Hi all,

Just come a cropper of PayPal with an item I sold for £93 yesterday, but the funds are "on hold - post now". Apparently when (if??) the user leaves positive feedback or 21 days pass without dispute they will then think about letting me have my money.

Personally I do not remember agreeing to anything when I signed up to PayPal allowing them to keep my money for 21 days, making interest for them rather than me.

I wonder how much money they are scamming off people in interest by applying this policy? Anyway I have drafted an email of complaint to them and wonder what people think?.....

Dear Sirs,

It is with regret I must complain about a recent policy which seems to have applied to my PayPal account where £93.48 of my funds are currently "On hold - post now" from an Ebay sale of a Tascam Audio Interface yesterday.
I understand having read the details that I will not be credited my money until either the user leaves positive feedback, or 21 days have elapsed without complaint or dispute.

Given that users are not required to leave any feedback, positive or otherwise, no matter how quickly the item was posted or in what condition, it now seems I may have to wait 21 days to receive the money that I should already have, from circumstances completely beyond my control. A quick look around the Internet indicates that some users have had to wait a lot longer than 21 days before finally getting their funds.

I posted this item to my buyer today by 1st class recorded delivery less than 24 hours after receiving payment. Or rather, after PayPal received the payment.

During the 21 days this money is in your account it is earning interest for you, and not for me. Multiply this by the number of transactions you are applying this policy to and I imagine this adds up to a very large amount of interest for PayPal. None of which, I might add, has been done with the permission of those whose money it actually is and who did not agree to this when they signed up for an account with you.

I understand that buyers feel they want protection, but this is the idea of having a feedback scoring system in Ebay. I have been a member of ebay since 2004 and so far have 100% positive feedback, and have been selling regularly for the past few months. I find it insulting that I am not given the benefit of the doubt and I am treated as untrustworthy by default.
It seems very much a system of guilty until proven innocent.

Please note that I believe this new policy of yours is at best on very tenious legal grounds, and possibly illegal, and I would be very interested to see if it would stand up in a court of law.

At no point did I sign any agreement giving PayPal permission to hold my money for 21 days.

I would therefore respectfully ask you to please credit my funds with immediate effect, and furthermore desist from applying this policy to any future Ebay sales.

I look forward to receiving your urgent reply by return.
Best wishes,
Wayne.

StaffsSW

they will then think about letting me have my money

No "think" about it - they WILL let you have the money.

Personally I do not remember agreeing to anything when I signed up to PayPal allowing them to keep my money for 21 days, making interest for them rather than me

Depends when you signed up - the T&C's were revised to include this about a year ago, and the option was there that if you did not like them, then you could close your account. No interest is earned on the money, as it is not for Paypal to use whilst it is held.


I wonder how much money they are scamming off people in interest by applying this policy?

Absolutely £0. However, there are a LOT of buyers that are not losing their money to scammers since this policy was introduced. Happy buyers + more sales for the rest of us.

Anyway I have drafted an email of complaint to them and wonder what people think?.....

Straight to File 13, maybe an auto-reply if you are lucky.

Put simply, if you do not like it, then do not use Paypal... you are not forced to use ebay/paypal to sell items.

catmiaow

You can refund 1p to the buyer which releases the held funds. You do however have to have available funds, I just got my partner to pay me £1 so I can do it. I have done it 3 times and nothing bad has happened afterwards.

durham_girl

Cappuccino wrote: »

I posted this item to my buyer today by 1st class recorded delivery less than 24 hours after receiving payment. Or rather, after PayPal received the payment.

You should have used Special Delivery for an item worth £93. Recorded delivery only insures for up to £36

soolin

durham_girl wrote: »

You should have used Special Delivery for an item worth £93. Recorded delivery only insures for up to £36

Well spotted.

Oh dear, with recorded as poor as it is at the moment this mistake could prove costly.

olias

Almost all my payments for sellers have been held like this as unfortunately most of what I am selling are considered 'high fraud risk items' (watches).

As you say - if you don't like it, don't sell on ebay.

Personally, I find it a pain, but I'm not overly bothered, as with interest rates as they are I'm not losing out by waiting 21 days for funds to be released

Olias

StaffsSW

catmiaow wrote: »

You can refund 1p to the buyer which releases the held funds. You do however have to have available funds, I just got my partner to pay me £1 so I can do it. I have done it 3 times and nothing bad has happened afterwards.

When was the last time you did this? There was a long thread on the Q&A board last month about somebody who lost their ebay account, and their partners eBay account, and has all funds frozen in their paypal account for 180 days.

It was a loophole that was being abused, and quite rightly it was closed up.

soolin

Thanks Steve I tried finding the other thread where I had posted this but I struggle with the search on here sometimes!

I read that thread as well and it certainly looked like paypal took the 1p idea as misuse of an account and started to get very tough.

StaffsSW

I think the button pushers have got to it before us - yet another mysterious shrinking/vanishing thread on the ebay board

A genuinely useful one, but there was so much bad advice being given on it, it figures it got BP'd to oblivion.

durham_girl

olias wrote: »

Almost all my payments for sellers have been held like this as unfortunately most of what I am selling are considered 'high fraud risk items' (watches).

As you say - if you don't like it, don't sell on ebay.

Personally, I find it a pain, but I'm not overly bothered, as with interest rates as they are I'm not losing out by waiting 21 days for funds to be released

Olias

As far as I remember, they stop holding funds once you have a score of 50 feedbacks or more

EDIT - See Soolin's post below

soolin

That has always been the problem with the forums some very useful advice gets buried in a sea of nonsense and then the whole lot just gets pulled.

Very often it is dependent on the time of day, you see the established sellers giving up their time to offer real advice but then overnight you get the chancers in completely misunderstanding some of the major ebay rules and saying the most extraordinary things.

Personally, whether or not the loophole has finally been closed, I think there was enough doubt cast on that thread to suggest that the 1p trick is a very bad idea.