Paypal - 21 Day Hold On Account???

Oliver14

macfly wrote: »

Strange how ebay and paypal have managed to hypnotise rational people. Holding funds for any amount of time is outrageous. If your bank did it with your salary there would be uproar..

Actually banks frequently hold funds back for business's making sure they have a running float.

What would you rather have as a seller less buyer protection so less confident customers higher payapl fees (due to paypal not being able to insure they had all funds available) .

Personally I would rather have more customers and get higher prices because customers are happy that the transactions are secure and they know they can be refunded if there are problems or the seller is dodgy.

macfly

Sounds reasonable. However, the buyer has no reason to worry. If you buy with paypal, you get your money back whether the funds have been held or not. So that's out of the equation. As stated, a byuer doesn't know this happens, so how can any loss of confidence occur?
Banks can only hold funds if you have a loan or debt agreement in place, or you had a business acount with a cheque guarantee card - now defunct. Even then, it was never a frequent thing.
Paypal and ebay made over a billion last year.

RFW

George_Michael wrote: »

Yes they are.
Any company or person that holds funds that belong to their customers is allowed to deposit those funds in a designated "client account" and earn interest on it.
This interest doesn't have to be passed on to the customer unless it exceeds £20 per transaction.

They are a financial institution and not a company as such, so the rules for them are different.

Oliver14

macfly wrote: »

Sounds reasonable. However, the buyer has no reason to worry. If you buy with paypal, you get your money back whether the funds have been held or not. So that's out of the equation. As stated, a byuer doesn't know this happens, so how can any loss of confidence occur?

Because before the 21 day hold the buyer did not have the same amount of protection they do now. SO with the increased protection buyers are more confident in buying

macfly wrote: »

Banks can only hold funds if you have a loan or debt agreement in place, or you had a business acount with a cheque guarantee card - now defunct. Even then, it was never a frequent thing.

Its getting far more frequent now that loans are harder to get. As 99% of business accounts include an Overdraft that counts as a loan agreement so banks can put the holds in place

macfly wrote: »

Paypal and ebay made over a billion last year.

And your problem with companies making a profit is?Paypal and ebay are seperate companies so you can't group their profits together. They may be owned by the same holding compnay yhe same way RBS owns Natwest but they are still seperate companies with seperate staff, policies and business plans. Also before the ebay company bought Paypal, Paypal was unprofitable and in all liklihood would not have survived another couple of years.They're a business the same way banks are and most major banks make far more profit that paypal.

Oliver14

George_Michael wrote: »

Yes they are.
Any company or person that holds funds that belong to their customers is allowed to deposit those funds in a designated "client account" and earn interest on it.
This interest doesn't have to be passed on to the customer unless it exceeds £20 per transaction.

As RFW Paypal are a financial institution so the rules are different the FSA ruled that they were not allowed to earn interest in the UK on those holds. There is an article about it somewhere i'll see if I can find it.

macfly

Buyers have exactly the same protection as before the 21 day hold. How could that help? It's paypal who are better protected.
You can't overdraw on paypal, so the bank comparison is valid. If you don't owe them money, they can't withold yours.
Paypal is a dvision of ebay. Ebay declares it's profits inclusive of the paypal element.
I have no bother with anybody making a profit - my business does. But just imagine the uproar if I decided to put a 21 day hold on sending goods while keeping people's money. Of course I can't do that. But a facility you are forced to use if you want to list on ebay can.
Ebay has become like the Scientologists. Rational people rush to defend the indefensible.
Holding on to a clients money is simply wrong.

sharpy2010

macfly wrote: »

Holding on to a clients money is simply wrong.

As is a lot of stuff PayPal do, we still use them though, unfortunately!

efnewman

I have just received an email from Paypal stating any money I get will be held for 21 days.

I have had my ebay account since 2004, I have never had a charge back and no negative feedback, I don't sell that often, so to state that this only happens to new users is incorrect. I personally find it very underhand, I am glad I don't run a business with them. From now on I think I will be using Gumtree or Amazon!

soolin

efnewman wrote: »

I have just received an email from Paypal stating any money I get will be held for 21 days.

I have had my ebay account since 2004, I have never had a charge back and no negative feedback, I don't sell that often, so to state that this only happens to new users is incorrect. I personally find it very underhand, I am glad I don't run a business with them. From now on I think I will be using Gumtree or Amazon!

occasionally I still get the warning on accounts that I've had for years, I've never actually had the hold though.

Amazon selling wont help much though as they hold for up to 2 weeks and then it often takes 4-5 days to hit your account when they do pay out.

Crowqueen

Amazon are ten times worse - but it's a reasonable trade-off IMO for the money you will make selling on a site with rigid buyer protection policies.

Gumtree is for face-to-face sales, not postal - and you may still find buyers paying at a distance prefer to pay electronically by Paypal (who also hold funds on non-eBay sales), so there's really not much difference between any online site these days which wishes to attract customers and impose controls on third parties the main company can't necessarily trust to behave honourably.

If it wasn't for Play protection recently I would have lost £20 to someone who I believe was trying to scam me. So this applies wherever you sell that has decent buyer traffic - and correspondingly, where these safeguards are not in place, the buyers do not go there at all.

If you want to take my money at a distance, you better be prepared for holds or restrictions on the liquidity of that money because I am sure as heck not paying someone who can just waltz off with it without being held accountable for it.