Paypal Echeques? 9 working days to clear??

turbobob

Hi there. First post here Hope it is in the right place :A

I was wondering if many people have had experience of Paypal, without warning, sending your payments by "Echeque" instead of the normal instant money transfers. I recently made a purchase through Ebay and paid as normal. No warning of anything out of the ordinary was given.

I today look on the Paypal website to see status is "payment pending" and an estimated time for the payment to clear as 17 days. I presume this is longer due to the upcoming bank holidays. Paypal cannot cancel an Echeque..

Does anyone else think its shocking in this day and age that a glorified electronic money transfer can take this length of time to clear? Surely this is just an excuse to earn interest on the funds?

Any thoughts on this?

Cheers

soolin

You might want to come and look over on the ebay and other auction forum.(see my signature)

Sometimes for no reason paypal convert a payment to an echeque, it happens and there is nothing sensible that can be done about it.

Soo

turbobob

Thanks for the reply Soolin.

So does anyone have an explanation for why these should take so long to go through? Its a longer process than clearing a paper cheque!

I made a mistake in the first post and it was 14 days not 17. Still, a pretty long time.

I note they are regulated by the FSA so I don't think they are untouchable.

nedkelly_2

This eCheque thing happened to me with an order I placed on Thurs - I also couldn't figure out why this happened to me.

I finally found out what had happened when I came across the answer this morning when searching Google. A forum claimed the most likely explanation for the appearance of the eCheque is due to the credit card you have assigned in paypal had expired - sure enough, when I checked my paypal account my card had expired 3/2007.

I updated this accordingly but I reckon I'll just let the eCheque clear (around 18th April I think). From what I've read so far, you can't really clear an eCheque - it has to be refunded. So this would mean I would need to contact the seller, ask him him if I could pay him now but then expect him to refund the eCheque once it had cleared - this is just too much of a shenanigan to carry out.

daniel435

Strange... This is the first time i hear something like this. I have been using Paypal for a few years now and hadn't experienced a problem like this. Did you try calling their customer service?

Repo

daniel435 wrote: »

Strange... This is the first time i hear something like this. I have been using Paypal for a few years now and hadn't experienced a problem like this. Did you try calling their customer service?

PayPal... customer service... :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Have you ever tried to find a phone number for PayPal? Most of the time they don't even answer emails...

fundy

had this problem and was due to expired credit card (even tho they use my bank account not the credit card for payments!!!), registering a new card solved the problem

dreams_R_free

Hi Turbobob.

I really sympathise as this happened to me the other way round. I sold a high-price item on eBay and my buyer 'paid' via Paypal within minutes of the auction ending. I have hundreds of positive feedbacks myself but the buyer was new and only had 2.

I kept checking my Paypal account but his payment had been sent as an eCheque which he seemed to know nothing about. He said he'd paid by regular Paypal and he was emailing me a few times daily to see if I'd mailed his goods yet. If he'd had loads of feedback I might have risked sending before the payment cleared but as it was for over £170 I wasn't prepared to risk it:eek:. I tried emailing Paypal several times and only received automated responses. They have made it as difficult as possible to get hold of anyone who can help:mad: . My buyer thought I was holding things up on purpose. It was a very fraught time. The only reason I was selling the item in the first place was to raise some urgently-needed cash. My opinion of Paypal is pretty low. They charge exorbitant fees and change the rules to suit themselves. Since eBay took them over they have got worse.

Luckily my problem was solved after a wait of about 14 days but I'm always very wary that transactions won't go through quickly nowadays, especially as I'm only selling because I'm strapped for cash.

digerati

Impomdasp wrote: »

I sold a high-price item on eBay and my buyer 'paid' via Paypal within minutes of the auction ending. I have hundreds of positive feedbacks myself but the buyer was new and only had 2... I kept checking my Paypal account but his payment had been sent as an eCheque... he was emailing me a few times daily to see if I'd mailed his goods yet... but as it was for over £170 I wasn't prepared to risk it. I tried emailing Paypal several times and only received automated responses... My buyer thought I was holding things up on purpose. It was a very fraught time. The only reason I was selling the item in the first place was to raise some urgently-needed cash... Luckily my problem was solved after a wait of about 14 days but I'm always very wary that transactions won't go through quickly nowadays, especially as I'm only selling because I'm strapped for cash.

You have the patience of Job! I would have refunded the PayPal eCheque and requested they send it again backed by a card. Or given them my bank details and requested a bank transfer. (Even after you finally receive the funds from a PayPal eCheque you still have to transfer it out to a bank account to access the cash.)

Given your decent feedback you might to consider accepting bank transfers for future listing where you want to be paid faster and safer than via PayPal. Almost forgot - bank transfers are normally free of fees so you'd save around £6.30 versus a £170 PayPal transfer.