My Paypal payment is 'unclaimed'..why?

s@sha

I won an item last night on Ebay & paid straightaway by Paypal, as it was one of the sellers stated options.

Just been looking at 'My Ebay' and noticed that a little egg-timer symbol is showing next to the item, where it normally just shows as 'paid'. Apparently this timer means that payment is 'pending' via Paypal...something I've never had before when paying by Paypal.

So I checked my Paypal account, and the status for the payment for this item is showing as 'unclaimed'.

What does this mean exactly? Does the seller have to manually do something at his end to accept my payment? I've never seen this before, as normally when I pay by Paypal, the payments just go through automatically & the status shows up as 'completed' straightaway. Also, when I accept Paypal payments, I don't do anything, they just go straight into my account.

Should I contact the seller to tell him I have paid but that he needs to somehow accept my payment?...he is a new seller (this is his first sale).

skylight

The sellers paypal account is not able to accept payments. He has a basic account by the sounds of things and he need to have a merchant account to accept payments.

He can get a merchant account, but this takes time.

Personally, I would email him to check this is the case. If so, I would recall the payment (you can do that through Paypal by clicking on the details of the transaction)

Once the money is back safely in your account, pay him another way.

Ms-Money-Penny

This happened to a payment i made yesterday. Paypal payment was showing as pending. So i went into Paypal to check details and found seller was not registered. Emailed the seller last night to ask if he could sort out his paypal account and seller emailed me back this morning saying the account had been sorted and payment accepted.


So email the seller and ask him to sort out the paypal account - Most users of this board would recommend paying by paypal in case of problems and you can then do a charge back.

s@sha

Thanks both, I have emailed the seller & hopefully I'll hear something soon. I haven't heard from him personally since the auction ended, but he did reply to a question I asked about the item a few days ago, so hopefully this isn't a bad sign, and that he's just having a few 'newbie' hiccups...

pinkonion

On occasion I've mentioned Paypal in the payment section with specific instructions. If you have a free personal account and the person pays directly from their credit or debit card rather than from a credit balance in their Paypal account Paypal insist you upgrade to a professional account and charges suddenly appear for everything especially for taking cc payments.

Despite my careful instructions I've had payment made directly from cc and rejected payment to avoid having to change my account type. This is allowed as 1) I didn't ask for extra for using Paypal and 2) had the Paypal option in the small print rather than a selected option which puts the Paypal logo on the auction page.

s@sha

Had nice reply from seller this morning apologising for the delay in contacting me after the auction & he has now accepted the payment, so all's well.
He also apologised for not posting item today since he is working, and promised to post on Monday...I think I might have given him the impression I'm a bit impatient! I'm not normally, was just a bit concerned about the 'unclaimed' thing, combined with the fact he's a new seller.

Have emailed him a nice reply to him.

soolin

pinkonion wrote:

On occasion I've mentioned Paypal in the payment section with specific instructions. If you have a free personal account and the person pays directly from their credit or debit card rather than from a credit balance in their Paypal account Paypal insist you upgrade to a professional account and charges suddenly appear for everything especially for taking cc payments.

Despite my careful instructions I've had payment made directly from cc and rejected payment to avoid having to change my account type. This is allowed as 1) I didn't ask for extra for using Paypal and 2) had the Paypal option in the small print rather than a selected option which puts the Paypal logo on the auction page.

The bit about this being allowed as you do not charge extra for paypal payments is a red herring, you really need to check the terms and conditions carefully as any form of surcharge was disallowed over a year ago. I've always wondered why people still claim they don't charge extra when they are not allowed to anyway.

Soo