Another Paypal problem...

[jointopz]

Im too thinking of not accepting Paypal anymore. Heres my problem.

 

A customer i have dealt with almost a year now has somehow gotten into a problem with Ebay (owes them money i guess). So instead of going after him for the negative balance on his Paypal account, they place a hold on all past payments i have received from this guy. Which is a VERY large sum...

 

I cant even see how this is legal. I mean when your account gets overdraft at a bank, the bank doesnt then just go back and take back payments that have legitly cleared in the last purchases youve made .

 

How can they hold us responsible for the actions of someone else just because he is a customer of ours?

[nosit1]

Have you tried speaking to someone higher up on the chain in PayPal about it?

[Derek]

Give them a call.

[ECF]

Paypal is not a bank and has a certain set of rules that clients must follow. If your client somehow found their way into trouble with Paypal then they will freeze all assets in their account until an investigation is completed.

 

This is nothing new with Paypal as they do it all the time. We have payments frozen every month from someone trying to claim a refund or that they did not get our product.

 

I understand your frustration, but Paypal has to abide by their policies as they are written in their own contract. Hopefully after the investigation is cleared up your monies will then be forwarded to you as planned.

 

In the time being simply shut the clients services off or ask them to arrange another form of payment such as credit card?

[jointopz]

I have contacted them and they say they are working to resolve the problem, but its still may take 3 days she said... Its not a problem, but if it was the first of them month it would be a problem.

 

I could understand this if there was a complaint filed by the customer, but there wasnt. This doesnt involve us in any way shape or form. They are taking back payments that completed, some more than 3 months ago. It seems once the payment says COMPLETED then it is now our money. Unless of course the customer files a dispute, but he didnt.

 

I guess Paypal sees any money in anyones Paypal account as their own money. Since the customers account is overdraft then they can just place a hold on money that was cleared to me months ago... What a joke

[ECF]

Paypal is by no means perfect. I understand your frustration. I would call Paypal directly as something doesn't seem quite right with taking past payments.

 

I would also make sure that you are running a Paypal Business account and not a regular Paypal account if that is the case.

[jointopz]

Yes I do have a verified business account with Paypal.

 

After calling them back again the guy said that it could only be one thing causing this, which would be fraudulent activity on his account. Like he has been using someone elses account or a stolen credit card etc etc.

 

The good news is everything my customer has told me seems to be true. As far as he has contacted them about the issue to get it resolved. The agent confirmed he has infact contacted them by phone and there are agents working on the case.

 

Name,email everything matches with what Paypal has on the guy so im thinking its an honest mistake. Still thinking about switching to a credit card only transaction system, and squashing Paypal.

[ECF]

Credit Cards are just as bad. People do chargebacks all the time and the credit card companies won't lift a finger to help you.

[Jesse]

PayPal is a joke when it comes to this. For about three months in a row I was having claims CREATED BY PAYPAL on the customers behalf when they though something was wrong. In each and every case the client ended up sending the money back. I think this was a big problem at one point, but I finally ended up talking to the supervisor of a PayPal Claims Specialist and these were the words I had him say after a lot of word twisting on his part:

 

"There is nothing you can do to prevent this"

 

Just recently I noticed a new option for these specific claims:

 

"I accept the liabilities related to this transaction" (which ends up refunding the customer). On top of this, if they used a credit card you get a nice $10 fee for PayPal having to deal with the CC issuer.

[jcroom]

Such is life, I think that you will lose some custoemrs if you drop Paypal. I do however think it is very wrong for them to put a hold on past payments that have already completed.

[studeggle]

Personally that is why I tend to clear my ballance every couple days.

If I have a ballance and they pull from that then my complaints that they said it was a legit transaction and goods have been delivered are basically ignored with the statement of oh well it happens sometimes.

But every time I have had a zero ballance and they take it to the negative, they have credited me back when I complain.

Basically they already know not to touch my bank accounts or CC for negative ballances as that was allready discussed with them as it is an unauthorized transaction and hence fruad on there part. And they seem to fear if they make me keep a negative ballance until next paypal customer pays me I might just close the account.

[VicToMeyeZR]

Hence the reason paypal has been sued so many times, and lost.

[leetservers]

Between PayPal and Creditcard issues, you have to factor it in your cost of business and the prices you charge.

 

-bobby

[ECF]

Also remember that all chargebacks are tax writeoffs if you are a registered company.

[nosit1]

Really ECF? I'll remember that when doing my taxes, that'll be a nice return!

[Dan M]

Whenever this happens to us, it's happened on one or two occasions we just said to PayPal "It's vastly affecting our business"

 

They reactivated it with a few questions. I guess PayPal UK are more lenient than PayPal US.

[iLight]

Had one time a problem with a customer. What he told me is that he sold a steam account with paypal and than bought me a server. The person who bought the steam account made a chargeback. The three paypal accounts were locked x.X. I phoned them and they unlocked it but never had the money back.

[KingJ]

I accept PayPal and Google Checkout, i'd say 95% of our customers use PayPal despite both options being available to the customer on checkout, i'd prefer they use Google since I get the payments from Google daily and their fees are a lot lower.

 

I've only had one issue with paypal, where they flagged one transaction as not being authorised by the customer - despite the fact they have a history of paying me monthly. However, giving them a call normally resolved everything - never email them, it takes a few days for you to get a canned response and then another few days to get a real response.

[jcroom]

Yea, I have had someone dispute a payment when they had setup a subscription

[Dan M]

Just ensure that your TOS fully cover everything, paypal usually request to view them for business accounts / disputes

[nosit1]

We have restrictions in our ToS that state against this, however we still loose them.