Paypal Holding funds

Paragonfighter34

Hi Guys, Im at the end of my tether with Ebay/Paypal. Im a seller and I have to wait upto 21days and according to Paypal this is because they have certain criteria

Minimum 100 feedbacks
Over 6 months trading
over 4.5 DSR,s

Well I have taken them to task LEGALLY, as the sign up process does not tell you of these terms as these are Paypals terms and the sign up procedure is 1st Ebay then as you start selling you have to open a paypal account 2nd, the terms and conditions on holding payment then are so vague a 5 year old could have written them see below....

10.5 Payment Hold

1. a. You agree that if either:
   1. you receive a payment that involves Transaction Risk; or
   2. there may be a higher than acceptable level of risk or exposure associated with your Account (based on the information available to PayPal at the relevant time and what in its sole discretion it regards as an acceptable level of risk or exposure to PayPal under all the circumstances),
   PayPal may in its sole discretion (acting reasonably) place a hold on that or any payment. If PayPal places a hold on funds in your Account, we will notify you about it (including, without limitation, how long the hold may last) - the funds will be held in your Reserve Account and those funds will be shown as “pending” in your PayPal Balance.
2. b. PayPal will release the hold made on your payment under this provision when PayPal determines that the Transaction Risk; or risk or exposure associated with your Account, no longer exists. For example, for a hold made on a payment for an item purchased on eBay, PayPal may release the hold when the buyer leaves positive feedback. Please note that, notwithstanding the above, if you receive a Dispute, Claim, Chargeback, or Reversal on the transaction payment subject to the hold, the funds (or an amount equal to the relevant payment) may be held in your Reserve Account until the matter is resolved pursuant to this Agreement.
3. c. You agree to provide to PayPal any information as PayPal may reasonably request to allow PayPal to determine whether the Transaction Risk or risk or exposure to your Account has passed. You may close your Account if you object to the hold under this provision. If your Account is closed for any reason, PayPal has the right to hold a payment under this provision for a period of up to 180 days from the date the complete obligations under the contract for sale (to which the payment in question relates) have been discharged.

Nowhere in these terms does it mention criteria, so as my grandma used to say there using "gasboard" rules, they can basically hold for ANY reason.

However my arguement is that this is PAYPALs t&c's and came after the ebay registration. THESE TERMs are not worth the paper there written on, no court in the land will allow them to HOLD onto your money, as we are losing cashflow and interest.

I have challenged there staff at least 30 times over this as it crops up everytime we sell something and guess what they always duck the issue and usually put the phone down.

I urge you all to bombard there freephone line 0800 358 3229 and complain profusely this will annoy the living hell out of them and maybe they will see it from the sellers point of view rather than the buyer who pays nothing in fee's for this service.........

soolin

I've moved your post to a new thread as it might not have been seen on a very old thread.

Yes paypal can hold funds for any reason they want on the basis that if you don't wish to use their service then you don't have to, obviously though you need it for ebay. The terms are there if you look for them, they don't only appear when you start the sign up process- it is all a part of setting up a business on ebay.

The quicker you build up a good reputation on ebay and paypal the faster the hold will disappear, you might only be subject to it for a few transactions if you use the system, rather than work against it. Get your items shipped quickly, get good high feedback (forget the 4.6 stars you need to aim realistically at maintaining 4.8 to look good. It is rare th ehold applies for very long unless paypal have additional concerns.

If you are running a business as I believe from yoor post this is not unusual, a merchant account elsewhere would also hold funds, potentially for longer, you need to build the delay into your business model.

As for bombarding paypal with phone calls, I think not. Paypal is already a little slow delaing with issues, I would not want people who are in the process of being scammed to not be able to get through to paypal due to a one off campaign by an unhappy punter. Leave paypal to deal with scams and seller protection. All you will do is make yourself look dodgy and it could end up with your hold being longer than anyone elses. This hold is for the protection of buyers and as such I support it, anything that makes our buyers happy is good for a seller.

trebor21

Paypal are a joke. Many business's have suffered because of their policys of holding money for no great reason, this freeze often stays in place for 6 months!

Crowqueen

trebor21 wrote: »

Paypal are a joke. Many business's have suffered because of their policys of holding money for no great reason, this freeze often stays in place for 6 months!

Do you have evidence of that?

soolin

trebor21 wrote: »

Paypal are a joke. Many business's have suffered because of their policys of holding money for no great reason, this freeze often stays in place for 6 months!

This isn't the freeze though for suspected fraud, this is the 21 day hold which is normal for all new or high risk accounts.

Oliver14

trebor21 wrote: »

Paypal are a joke. Many business's have suffered because of their policys of holding money for no great reason, this freeze often stays in place for 6 months!

Stop scaremongering its the standard 21 day hold.

soolin

Also of course while we are all referring to it as a 21 day hold, that is the maximum time. The actual hold is either 21 days or until positive feedback is left , so all a seller needs to do s ship quickly and assuming buyer leaves feedback promptly, they won;t even notice a couple of days delay in receiving their funds.

Think of it like this, as a business I assume there is shipping every day therefore at most the package will go the next day. If seller leaves feedback immediately and buyer receives it say 2-4 days after paying and leaves feedback it hasn't even delayed the funds by a week. If a business cannot set up their model to cope with a weeks delay in getting funds then maybe the business model needs looking at. This can be achieved many ways, if the business has huge amounts of turnover, merely limit sales for a couple of weeks until themoney starts to flow, or of the profit margin is very low sell more just to increase the chance of getting your funds released within a very short period.

It can be worked through with very little inconvenience. The only issue would arise is if goods were not likely to result in a positive feedback quickly enough, ie if they needed to be tested before feedback was left.

andyedge

All very good advice soolin.
However, what about the buyers who just don't leave any feedback even when prompted with reminders? As a regular seller you will know some buyers just don't bother. Then the seller is forced to wait the full 21 day period through no fault of their own to get their funds (plus the 3-5 day transfer period).

soolin

andyedge wrote: »

All very good advice soolin.
However, what about the buyers who just don't leave any feedback even when prompted with reminders? As a regular seller you will know some buyers just don't bother. Then the seller is forced to wait the full 21 day period through no fault of their own to get their funds (plus the 3-5 day transfer period).

That's the longest it can be though, 21 days. I get about a 80-85% success rate with feedback so as long as a business keeps a steady turnover the odd one that has to go for a full 21 days shouldn't be an issue. Businesses need to be extremely careful with their business model, if a business cannot afford to wait 21 days for a small number of their payments how are they going to cope with returns and losses?

Also, if a business is using a tracked service there have been many threads on the community board that suggests proving an item was dleivered was enough to get paypal to release the funds.