And eBay wonders why they're losing customers!

[MrObsessive]

I just received this email from PayPal, and all I can do is shake my head! In effect what they're telling me is that starting in January, anything I sell will have the monies held in a "hold" for up to 21 days to cover potential refunds or disputes.

Are they kidding me?? In other words, my money is being held hostage until PayPal deems it "appropriate" to let me have my money. No wonder eBay is on the slide!

Here's the email that was sent to me..............

Hello William E Geary Jr,

We're writing to let you know about a change to your PayPal account.

Starting 1/18/2012, 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:

1. We can confirm that the item was delivered.
   
2. Your buyer leaves positive feedback. (Applies only to eBay items)
   

This change isn't necessarily permanent. We'll review your account every 35 days and re-evaluate if we should continue to hold your payments. If we decide to stop holding payments, we'll email you to let you know.

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.

Questions? Let us know

We understand you’d like to have immediate access to the money you receive and we’re here to answer your questions about this change to your account.

For more information and tips on what you can do to avoid having your future payments held, please see our Frequently Asked Questions. To speak to a Customer Service representative, log in to your PayPal account and click “Contact Us” at the bottom of any page. Thanks,

PayPal

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

To receive email notifications in plain text instead of HTML, update your preferences.

Now there's a possibility that this is a "phishing" scam, and I ain't bitin'! Nevertheless, if this email is accurate.........well they're going to have quite a few unhappy customers.

So how many of you have got this same email and are as irritated as I??

Will you do any further selling on eBay? After January, I may think long and hard!

[Johnag4004]

Sorry Bill, I have to agree with something like this, I lost a lot of money once trying to buy an X-Box (the first ones) which I was going to give to my nephew for Christmas, Pay-Pal could only recover a small amount as that was all that was left in the account of the seller, who had used a school's address and contact number for his/her details...

So with them holding the funds will make it harder for people to rip off buyers...

[JamesW]

I've had Paypal hold funds on a few occasions. It ALWAYS gets released once the buyer leaves positive feedback. Unfortunatly in the case where a buyer doesn't leave feedback the money is held for the full 21 days.

[Evil Appetite]

I wonder if they'll be making any interest off of those holdings

[Casey]

So how many of you have got this same email and are as irritated as I??

Will you do any further selling on eBay? After January, I may think long and hard!

I didn't get it. There's a whole lot of information we are not privy to-- your history with both eBay and PayPal, how your account or card is linked to PayPal, etc., etc.-- and quite frankly, I don't want to know any of that information, so please don't post it. For whatever reason (again, I would be speculating), PayPal seems to have decided you are a risk, so they've taken action to prevent possible losses. Nothing to take personally. It's just how they decide to run their business.

I will gladly keep selling on eBay. The benefits far outweigh any problems I have ever experienced.

[Casey]

I wonder if they'll be making any interest off of those holdings

Of course they will, but you also have to consider the cases where the account holder clears out his/her account after the money is transferred, then closes the account/card and stiffs the buyer and eBay/PayPal.

[Eshaver]

Just another reason to NOT use Evil Bay ! Ed Shaver

[Guest Johnny]

Sorry Bill, I have to agree with something like this, I lost a lot of money once trying to buy an X-Box (the first ones) which I was going to give to my nephew for Christmas, Pay-Pal could only recover a small amount as that was all that was left in the account of the seller, who had used a school's address and contact number for his/her details...

So with them holding the funds will make it harder for people to rip off buyers...

It cuts both ways!

It also makes it easier for a buyer's false claim of non received items to get their money back plus have your merchandise too!

[henry57]

I haven't got the email

[Harry P.]

It's an inconvenience, but it looks to me like ebay is just trying to do what they can to make sure neither buyer or seller gets ripped off. It's not an exact science, but at least they're taking steps to try and combat the problem.

[TurboKitty]

I have to agree with Casey here. PayPal does the 21 day hold for sellers who are just starting out (and it is removed once you have at least ten 5 star DSR's, or Detailed Seller Ratings, on your eBay seller profile in which buyers rate your seller performance when leaving feedback. Buyers don't always take the time to rate you however, and anything less than 5 stars in all categories will not count towards your public DSR count). If you have been selling for awhile and PayPal is just now introducing the 21 day hold, then unfortunately it has to do with your seller performance. Either a buyer had a problem and opened a case, or something like that. It happens since you can't make everyone happy all the time. Just as already said your money will be released within 3 days of the buyer posting positive feedback for you. So package & ship ASAP, and provide the delivery confirmation number as proof of shipment on both eBay and PayPal. Proof of shipment will also release the funds from that particular auction. Every 90 days PayPal reviews accounts to see if it is still necessary for a payment hold to be enforced.

Ebay is not so evil if you know how to be a productive seller. You can print shipping labels w/ tracking #'s from home & schedule a pickup from USPS without even leaving the house.

[MrObsessive]

Casey, I've never had a problem buying or selling on eBay, nor have I ever had any problems with a seller having to collect. My feedback is 100% and has been so since I started with eBay in 2002. BTW, my handle is Obssesivebldr if anyone is interested.

I can see PayPal's case in trying to hold funds, but to arbitrarily single out my account is puzzling to me.

I may give them a call to see what exact instance led them to decide this................but I'm not sure I'll get far.

[MrObsessive]

I have to agree with Casey here. PayPal does the 21 day hold for sellers who are just starting out (and it is removed once you have at least ten 5 star DSR's, or Detailed Seller Ratings, on your eBay seller profile in which buyers rate your seller performance when leaving feedback. Buyers don't always take the time to rate you however, and anything less than 5 stars in all categories will not count towards your public DSR count). If you have been selling for awhile and PayPal is just now introducing the 21 day hold, then unfortunately it has to do with your seller performance. Either a buyer had a problem and opened a case, or something like that. It happens since you can't make everyone happy all the time. Just as already said your money will be released within 3 days of the buyer posting positive feedback for you. So package & ship ASAP, and provide the delivery confirmation number as proof of shipment on both eBay and PayPal. Proof of shipment will also release the funds from that particular auction. Every 90 days PayPal reviews accounts to see if it is still necessary for a payment hold to be enforced.

Ebay is not so evil if you know how to be a productive seller. You can print shipping labels w/ tracking #'s from home & schedule a pickup from USPS without even leaving the house.

Michelle that may explain it. I've not been selling all that long comsidering, and that may be the case here. I don't know of an action against me.........the last item I sold (it was a major purchase for the buyer) was back in September, and the buyer was from Europe. He left positive feeback for me, so it was all good.

[Guest]

It does sound kind of suspicious Bill. Looks like they are trying to make you angry so that you'll click on the link and put in your info. Last year my wife and daughter got hacked on Wal Mart's site. I still don't know how that woman did it,but we got all of our money back. We now only use PayPal for online shopping. Anyway,some time later we got an email wanting us to confirm charges on our PayPal account that we hadn't made. My wife immediately went into panic mode and wanted to click on the link,but I stopped her. I told her the first thing we need to do is check our account to see if there were any actual charges. When we did,there were no charges to our account.

Scammers are constantly using ebay and PayPal logos and emails to scam people. Scammers are really bad on Craigslist on the selling and buying end. They bait people with deals that they can't pass up and try to use ebay as a middle man to hold the money. They also will buy your vehicle sight unseen and want you to pay to have it shipped to their father. I like to lead those people on for a while and then send them a nasty email.

[tjones87]

they have been holding my funds because I don't have an established ebay seller account. I am through selling on ebay, and possibly done buying on there too. If they would give enough to ship stuff it would be ok. I had to ship out 3 packages the other day out of my pocket and then 2 days later paypal sent me the shipping funds but are still holding the rest until the 6th of January.... I have been trying to find a reason to get away from ebay, so think I have found it. felt like telling my opinion lol..thanks

[moparmagiclives]

Just another reason to NOT use Evil Bay ! Ed Shaver

Has nothing to due with Ebay, Paypal is used for tons of sellers. I dont have any accounts set up to sell so I have not gotten a letter like this from payapl. I would have to say you will get it lifted soon.

[TurboKitty]

when you go to your own ebay feedback profile to see your feedback, do you see anything in the "Detailed Seller Ratings" box? It is to the right of the "Recent Feedback Ratings (last 12 months)" section. It will include 4 criteria that buyers can rate you on:

Item as described

Communication

Shipping time

Shipping and handling charges

If you have at least 10 DSRs of all 5 stars for each section then it will show, otherwise it won't. But I recall being told by a PayPal rep that those are the main factors in the 21 day holds because earlier this year I still had them. She said I was at 9 DSR's and once I got my 10th the holds would stop. Sure enough, it did. I guess all you can do is ship quick, charge very reasonable shipping rates (or do free shipping which gets you automatic 5 stars for shipping/handling charges), and do your best to earn a positive feedback. If you do have more than 10 DSR's and it shows on your ebay account, I would contact PayPal to see exactly why they think it's necessary to have a 21 day hold if you haven't done anything wrong as a seller.

[imarriedawitch]

As an eBay purchaser I have noticed that sellers are quick to point out in their listings that if you don't like the terms then don't bid. Perhaps the shoe is on the other foot now. If you don't like the terms don't sell.

[Draggon]

And I bet they are collecting interest on the money they are "holding".

[Kaleb]

Ya know I see a lot of Loop holes for the buyer. I think once I start selling again I am going to add the price of a signature fee in there. So they will have to sign for it when they receive it. Yes I know there is a loop hole there as well, but it closes it down some.

[LAone]

this one looks to be a legit email from paypal. i have received quit a few emails from paypal indicating that there is a problem with my account. so i emailed paypal through their website, not the email and they told me that any email that doesn't start with your full name is a fake and should be forwarded to them to spoof@paypal.com

i have heard of this before, some sellers even ask if you can leave feedback as soon as you recieve the item because of this.

[Joe Handley]

And I bet they are collecting interest on the money they are "holding".

That wouldn't surprise me in the least.

[Casey]

Casey, I've never had a problem buying or selling on eBay, nor have I ever had any problems with a seller having to collect. My feedback is 100% and has been so since I started with eBay in 2002. BTW, my handle is Obssesivebldr if anyone is interested.

I can see PayPal's case in trying to hold funds, but to arbitrarily single out my account is puzzling to me.

I may give them a call to see what exact instance led them to decide this................but I'm not sure I'll get far.

It may be due to how your PayPal account is "backed up", via a credit card, a checking account, etc. I really don't know, but I'm sure they can explain why when you call them.

I have gotten scam e-mails from "PayPal", but if you look at the e-mail address it's xxxxxxx@paypall.com - Note the two "l"s My Google Mail account always catches it and quarantines it in the Spam folder, too, so it's not really a problem.

On a side note, I had trouble printing out a shipping label a few weeks ago and had to call PayPal to get it figured out. I was helped quickly and the guy had my problem solved (and a label printed via manual override) within a few minutes, so I have nothing but good things to say about their customer service.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Casey

[Kaleb]

I did not have anything like this take place, but this happened last year around the end of November and first of December. Someone hacked my PayPal account and wrote an e-check for $500. I contacted PayPal about it and they resolved everything.

[Greg Myers]

I wonder if they'll be making any interest off of those holdings

#1 money maker in the Post Office, money orders. Just the short time the PO holds the money from purchase to cashing can really add up.