Has anyone else read about this new Paypal policy or holding received funds for up to 21 days?
A bit ridiculous in my opinion. eBay and Paypal need some competition. :jedi:
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Has anyone else read about this new Paypal policy or holding received funds for up to 21 days?
A bit ridiculous in my opinion. eBay and Paypal need some competition. :jedi:
What do you mean by holding the funds?
There is always the amazon payment system, no fees and instant transfer to bank account.
I got this message in my email:
"Starting 7/25/2011, money from payments you receive will be placed in a pending balance for up to 21 days. By doing this, we're making sure that there's enough money in your account to cover potential refunds or claims.
Even though you can't access the money right away, please ship orders quickly and communicate with your customers. After 21 days, you can withdraw money from each payment as long as the customer hasn't filed a dispute, chargeback, claim, return, or reversal.
The money may be available sooner if:
We can confirm that the item was delivered.
Your buyer leaves positive feedback. (Applies only to eBay items)"
I found it strange since I've never had any customer disputes and my feedback rating is 100%. I'm definitely going to look into this Amazon payment system
As a casual buyer this news scrap worries me as well. If my payments don't go through in good time it will ruin my rep and could cost me auctions.
I have not gotten the message but it is pretty crappy move.
I guess we can revert to old fashioned checks for payment?
They do this to people from time to time.
They claim that:
No one knows for sure why it happens, but if you have a Paypal account, it will happen sooner or later. When they review your account again, they should release it.Quote:
Why are my payments being held?
We reviewed your account and determined that there's a relatively higher than average risk of future transaction issues (such as claims, or chargebacks, or payment reversals). We understand that it may be inconvenient to have your payments temporarily held but please know that we didn't make this decision lightly.
Before deciding to hold payments, we consider many factors. These factors include account and transaction activity, the rate of customer disputes, the type of business a seller runs, average delivery timeframes, customer satisfaction, performance and history.
yeah, the company as a whole has been getting more greedy year over year (which company hasn't, though).
It is my understanding that not EVERY paypal account will have this restriction but they will re-evaluate each account every 35 days and decide whether or not to implement this "feature"
well there are and will be options eventually.
Looks like Visa is going to start personal payment service at some point
Visa Moves Beyond the Point-of-Sale
Chase has Quick Pay , that is supposed to work very well and is free.
Is it possible that they only hold funds when your account is not linked to a bank account?
There are alternatives, ebay only allows paypal or checks/cashier checks though. For "Security reasons"........
I was under the impression that ebay only allowed paypal ? Could be wrong though, I was wrong once before.
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Which, IMO, is total BS. They have the ebay fees, and on top of that go the PayPal fees. But ebay owns PayPal... So they get to charge the seller twice? And the fees for both take a percentage of the sale price plus a flat rate, so they are set up to rake it in no matter the closing costs.
It is like the old one about the guy who says he is going to play poker. His friend tells him the game is crooked, I know, says the guy, but it's the only game in town.
OTOH, it is a great convenience. When I first began selling on ebay, and there was no paypal, waiting to see if a buyer actually paid was a PITA. I look upon the fees as a cost of doing business. Paypal enables virtually instant transactions and $ flow back and forth, to and fro expeditiously. Very stimulating to our economy and worth the price of admission IMHO.
Let us not forget all the interest paypal will make by sitting on everyone's money for 21 days....
Funds coming into my account take up to 45 days to be deposited into my account. It sucks, but what are you gonna do?
I guess I'm a bit spoiled. Until yesterday, I could receive payments and have them in my bank account the very next day for the most part. Sometimes the transfer to the bank would take just a bit longer but from 1 or 2 days to 21 days is no fun
Ebay and Paypal are a law onto themselves. Being virtual monopolists when it comes to online auctioneering they get away with it.
Or you can join the rest of the civilized world and start using bank transfers.
I recently bought a brush, the seller gave me his IBAN (International banking number), I went to an atm, and just sent him the money, which he could see appear next business day. Or I could have done it online, using my card and a challenge based token to validate the transfer.
Using checks is like using horse and cart. Except much less safe and conventient.
I don't think the policy applies across the board. I believe it depends on a person's number of transactions, feedback record and like that. I know that if I sell an item I don't ship until I've got cleared funds, whatever the source.
Haven't gotten any notice from paypal, either.
I've benefited from their claim system twice, when one seller shipped me something that was broken and claimed it wasn't, and another held my money and came up with an excuse not to ship something (broken arm, "sick kids", etc, each story having something conflicting a prior one) for three weeks, and paypal put the screws to them.
But I have had enough hiccups with them that I'm waiting for someone else to come along and knock them out of their seat so that we get something that's like paypal was a bunch of years ago. As soon as something viable comes along, I'll jump ship...
.. but I'll admit I do like printing shipping labels from my sale proceeds, and buying with funds that are the product of selling other things, because they never show up "above the table" in the household finances, if you know what I mean.
We haven't heard anything for sure, on this thread, about whether this really is a new policy, applying to more sellers, or whether it is simply the system of Paypal holds which has applied for a long time. They apply it to particular sellers (not, I think, with particular buyers) for reasons which can include recent registration, a low level of activity or period of dormancy, a high-risk location or type of merchandise, a succession of disputes or bad service, or their being pretty sure someone has got away with something they can't be sure about. There are probably other reasons we don't know about, and they can range from the totally innocent to the totally guilty.
In all cases the eBay policy applies, that a Paypal hold is not a valid reason to delay shipping. If the seller can't pay shipping, his supplier or dropshipper etc., it simply means he hasn't the liquidity to run a business, and the remedy is not to run a business.
eBay motors and a few other categories are exceptions in various ways, but for most purchases eBay policy doesn't require anyone to use Paypal. It requires him to offer at least one online means of payment. He can't oblige the seller to supply his credit card details by phone or in writing, or at all to himself. While a seller can take a check if the buyer asks him to, he isn't oblliged to, and in most areas can't state it in his auction. Here are the permitted online payment methods:
For most categories, sellers need to offer one or more of the following electronic payment choices:
PayPal
ProPay
Moneybookers
Paymate
Credit card or debit card processed through the seller's Internet merchant account
Additionally, payment upon pickup and Bill Me Later are valid payment methods as well.
Payment methods not allowed on eBay:
For most categories, sellers can't ask buyers to:
Send cash through the mail
Send cash or money orders through instant, point-to-point cash transfer services (that are not banks) such as Western Union or MoneyGram
Mail checks or money orders (except for items in categories specifically permitted below)
Pay through bank-to-bank transfers (except for items in categories specifically permitted below)
Pay by "topping off" a seller's prepaid credit or debit card
Pay using online or other payment methods not specifically permitted in this policy
Here is the link: Accepted Payments Policy
Even when the use of Paypal was entirely optional, the majority of eBay sellers and practically all safe eBay sellers chose to accept it and pay for it, as a useful service which brought in the buyers. Even nowadays it should take some pretty unique merchandise to persuade a buyer to use even one of the other online services, which don't offer Paypal's level and ease of protection. For some new system to be viable, it would have to be at least as advantageous to buyers. Comparisons with Amazon aren't really valid, because there a seller is making a transaction with Amazon's name on it, arranged via the same search system as sales of Amazon's own stock, so it is naturally easier to suddenly part company with Amazon, than it is eBay.
It isn't much in anybody's interests to sacrifice anything (e.g. popularity on one hand, and volume of sales on both) for the sort of interest that is available on cash deposits nowadays. I also don't believe the majority of protection disputes arise outside the three week period, but that isn't really the point. Now please understand that I don't have the slightest reason to think the original poster is guilty of sharp practice, but there is a lot of it about. Even if late June cases are only reaching refund point now, there is great deterrent value in the seller's knowing that a lot of July payments are held in the Paypal system, and if he behaves discreditably, will never get out of it.
I guess that I am lucky. I had this stipulation removed from my account. As will most people that record a long string of positive feedbacks and no complaints. I had one payment withheld and nothing since then. And even if they decide to hold anything it wont matter to me because I keep $500-1000 in my paypal account all the time. Just in case of a splurge - the wife wont need to know about it.
Also, the holds release once the buyer leaves feedback on Ebay, and the only monies being held are from Ebay purcahses only.
If it isn't some new policy at least, it will also be released if the seller supplies some online viewable proof of delivery.
Actually, funds are apparently held not only for Ebay purchases. I have funds on hold right now for a razor I sold on Saturday through the SRP classifieds.
The buyer must not be a registered SRP member (the email I received from the classifieds software didn't have a username, and the linked profile is blank). Since I use my wife's Paypal account, she has been in contact with the buyer, telling him that the razor is packaged and ready to ship as soon as the funds are released.
I've sold 2 more razors through the classifieds since then, and the funds were available immediately.
You mean like you can do with any normal bank account?
Except those have much better consumer protection, a helpdesk you can actually talk with, a real address where you can go to, and a level of professionalism among all employees, for less money that what paypal fliches off you?
If paypal is better than your banks, then your banks must really suck.
I don't have these limits on my account, likely just high risk accounts (by their definition of course..) they are putting limits on.
About 5-6 weeks ago, I had another problem with eBay -- did you know that eBay limits the number of items you can list in a certain category, if you do not have a track record of positive feedback from items in that category? That was news to me! I had to contact them directly, have my account reviewed, and have the limit removed. That was a surprise!
This was a new one to me as well. I had been unloading some stuff on my personal account which has very low feedback cause it isn't used much. I could only list 2 DVD's before I got this message and other items only 1! I guess I could have contacted them, but it's not like it was pressing for me to get rid of this stuff.
I think there are two types of holds. One is for the funds to clear, and depend on the actual process that the buyer/paypal choses to fund the transaction (instant bank transfer and e-check are processed very differently).
Then there's the other kind, where paypal has cleared the funds, but is not making them available to the seller because they consider them a high risk. In this case, you should ship the item and once it is delivered the funds will be released.
And yes, US banks suck, but just in a different way that EU banks do. To large extent what we're talking is due to different regulations compared to EU. That's how paypal was able to get the business they are in, and now people give a huge amount of control over their money to an entity that can largely do as it pleases. But it's fairly small amounts of money, so things are not likely to change soon. Unless, of course, Google or Amazon decide they actually want part of Paypal's business.
What we have in US, though, is fairly good credit card industry - by default they side with the buyer. At one point ebay/paypal tried to pull some funky stuff on me, and the only money I got back was the one that was charged to my credit card, everything that went from my paypal funds was a loss to me and I don't know between paypal and the scammer who ended up pocketing it. Lesson learned - a 'protection policy' from an intermediary who has full discretion in the decision making, as well as financial interest to not be stuck with a loss from their mistakes, is useless.
I think you're right. I looked into this a bit this morning, and most things I read recommend shipping the item. However, I do not have the option of printing a shipping label through Paypal. Therefore, I would assume the hold is not because I am seen as a risky seller. Also, like I said, the payments for the other 2 razors (which sold after the one in question) cleared immediately.
The buyer has contacted Paypal, comfirming that he did purchase the razor. My wife has responded to Paypal's email asking about the transaction. But yet the funds are still being held.
I just feel bad about holding the razor. The buyer's money is tied up, my money is tied up, and Paypal is using it to bolster their profits. And neither of us has the item in question (I have it boxed up and ready to ship as soon as the payment clears).
You should just call paypal and ask them about it.
I've just started listing a couple of things on ebay and all the sales proceeds are being held for 21 days although as a buyer I have 1300 transactions and 100% feeback. It sucks but it's there show so if you want to use their site then you have to follow their rules. Apparently I need to have 25 sales and then the lock comes off. I had that but I changed my account from Australia to the US to avoid being locked out of US only auctions and that reset the sales number.
Shortly after you posted, I noticed that the payment cleared. Now I can mail the razor out tomorrow.
It was only a couple of days this time, but it really bugs me that Paypal holds people's money like that. Besides their anti-2nd amendment policies, this is another reason why I prefer not to use their service whenever I can avoid it.
Paypal is a bunch of rotten thieves who will steal your money and tell you they were justified in doing so.
After all the dicking around with random holds, etc, and putting up with it, they finally went too far yesterday - they reversed a transaction that had already completed and debited the money from my checking account. Today I called them, providing an email from the buyer stating that the transaction had completed to his satisfaction (the buyer never opened a dispute in the first place, Paypal took it upon themselves to reverse the transaction on his behalf for no reason whatsoever). This is all after Paypal had already put those funds on hold and told me not to ship until they investigated - they then completed their investigation and emailed me a "go ahead" for the transaction. I shipped the item, the buyer got it and was happy and then Paypal took the money back.
When I spoke to them, they said I don't qualify for buyer protection, and I am pretty much SOL on the deal.
So... Google Checkout has a new customer.