PayPal and time to clear money, longer than before

isofa

Previously (probably 12 months ago) using eBay and PayPal to pay for things, via my linked bank account, if there weren't enough funds in the PayPal account for a transaction, PayPal issued an "immediate" bank transfer (adding the funds required from the bank account to the PP account), and the transaction would be completed within a day, but more recently, the transactions are left pending and uncleared for 7-9 working days, anyone else noticed this? It even used to show up as "Instant Bank Transfer".

Was this a change in policy? Considering the recent developments at APACs leading to clearance of days being reduce to hours (coming soon hopefully), I don't really understand why it's gone back in time.

Aiadi

Recently used PayPal transaction through my current account (have always used Credit Card despite paypal encouragement to use bank account) and will never do it again as it took 9 days for the funds to be cleared and this resulted in me waiting for more than 2 weeks to receive the item I bought. Like most of these things the general trend is progressive deterioration in services despite the fact that the service industry should be much more careful in these difficult times when they should really be careful with how to treat their customers and appreciate their business. Rant over.....................

spud17

I've bought a couple of things recently, one requiring a bank transfer,apparently instant, with no problems.

However I'm waiting for a refund, I received a refund pending email from paypal.

After a couple of days I contacted the seller and they contacted paypal, and were told that it was going to be 5 working days because of insufficient funds in the sellers account, requiring a bank transfer.

I'm not too sure from the email if this is paypal or the bank dragging their heels.

isofa

It's a pretty odd situation, maybe it affects some and not others? I think it's PayPal, I tested my banks inter-account transfer at the same time moving a small amount across, it happened instantly.

On the note of refunds I waited a couple of weeks for a similar situation to spud17's too, by the time it was all completely it was nearly 3 weeks since the original purchase (of a totally misadvertised item!)

I have exactly the same experience as Aiadi at the moment, I purchased something, funds are in the account, but now it'll be 9 days until the seller receives the money, I might as well have sent him a cheque!

Considering eBay will soon only allow people to sell on their site if they offer PalPal as a payment method, I'd have thought it would improve not the opposite.

buglawton

If you used a bank account and not a card for payments into your Paypal acct the seller will see an eCheque pending. And it has always been taking 5-7 days to clear (seen from Seller viewpoint).

isofa

buglawton wrote: »

If you used a bank account and not a card for payments into your Paypal acct the seller will see an eCheque pending. And it has always been taking 5-7 days to clear (seen from Seller viewpoint).

I've been using a bank account since day one (never funding from a credit card) and I must have had an account for at least 5 years if not much longer. All previous years the transfer payment happen immediately as with Aiadi's comments above, not in 5-7-9 days. It's only within the past few months I've noticed this new massive delay... Now as you say it's listed as eCheque Pending, but previously it used to show Immediate Bank Transfer, and the entire transaction was paid usually in a matter of hours, showing paid in PP and eBay... Perhaps it is a delay introduce by the bank? I'm not sure, but it's not very satisfactory when the funds are there to be used.

buglawton

Is it possible that in the past your Paypal account happened to be in credit, but not so recently?

spud17

I'm similar to isofa in that my Paypal account is almost never in credit, then only by a couple of pounds.

It is linked to a dedicated bank account and all transfers to Paypal have been immediate, at least up to now.

devils_advocate

Same thing happened to me. I had a bank account backed up by a credit card and it suddenly went on to echeques rather than inastant.

I think thatthe problem was that my credit card expired, and I hadn't updated the details with the new expiry daye, even though all payments were coming out of the bank account.

It went back to instant when I put the new credit card details in.

isofa

Ahhh, that's really interesting, my credit card has expired on there, (not that it was ever used for payments, probably just for address verification when originally setting up the account), I'll update it and see, thanks devil's advocate!