Closing a PayPal account with a pending payment

Silver_Shark

I have been successfully using PayPal linked to my  Santander current account for years. Last weekend I placed an order with Argos which for some inexplicable reason was unsuccessful, the payment is still pending and I've had no emails from Argos. Thinking it was something to do with my bank I asked if there was a block on my current account as I had paid in a cheque for a large sum of money a few days previously but they said not. There was more than enough money in my current account prior to the cheque going in to cover the £26 sale with Argos. Now that eBay aren't linked with PayPal anymore I see no reason to keep my PayPal account open. Is it safe to close the PayPal account with this pending payment which seems will never be honoured?

Zanderman

I wouldn't, not with a pending payment that might come to life (it's only been a few days?).  And I would query the pending payment with paypal first anyway and ask them to remove it.

But I'm not sure why you want to?  The formal paypal link with ebay is gone but you can still use paypal for lots of payments - such as argos as you've recently done (or rather tried to!) and also ebay still (I don't use anything else for ebay - paypal is generally reliable and safe). 

Why close the account, there's nothing to gain by doing so is there?  You'd just be losing a (fairly safe) payment method. 

born_again

They won't let you close it with a pending payment.

If it was unsuccessful it will drop off within a couple of weeks.

Odds on it was Argos that is the issue with the payment. Their security is really good, or payment system is poor & do decline a lot of payments.

How is PP linked to Santander by card or account details (DD payment) if it's the latter then Santander will never know about it as it takes 3 days for a DD to filter through to them.

Silver_Shark

Thank you both for your replies.

PayPal is linked to Santander by direct debit payment. Based on what you say I reckon it could be the Argos payment system.  They offered me a £5 voucher code for sales over £30 so my purchase was £31 less the £5 discount making a £26 total. When I tried to use a different payment method I could no longer use the discount code. Very annoying at the time.

I agree PayPal is a generally reliable and safe payment method and will think again about closing  the account.

Nebulous2

Argos orders have repeatedly not completed for my wife, and left pending transactions there. Usually they clear themselves, on one occasion she had to call Argos to remove it. I'd be almost certain the fault is with Argos. Their payment system is flaky.