I refused to disclose my annual income to PAYPAL and they froze my funds !

When I was with them they kept chewing away at my money.

Customer support was utter # and didn't care, so I closed it.

reply to post by tauristercus


contact your buyer, have them request a refund
refund the money how it says in the email,
then have the buyer send the money to a new paypal account or some other payment option

though for this to work you would have to trust your buyer more than paypal

just an idea i had reading that email

but making paypal know their fault would be better

reply to post by tauristercus


I am really sympathetic to you about this nasty rabbit hole that PayPal has thrown you down, I truly do wish you best on getting this issue resolved.

Could you give us some more information?

Have you had communication with the Buyer?
What country was the silver exported to, from Australia?
Did you state to the postmaster that you were exporting silver?

Many posters, and others, have had problems, it appears, with PayPal and it does appear that you should get legal aid and pursue this matter.

My best to you in resolving this situation.

Damn frustrating ain't it. Sell stuff at your local flea market.
Take a little less, walk away with the cash.

Originally posted by TheRedneck
reply to post by ZindoDoone

Howdy back at'cha Zindo!

You know, I just realized the OP never mentioned the location of the buyer... if it was in the US, that would explain an awful lot!

TheRedneck

Sorry, forgot to mention that I live in Australia and the buyer also lives in Australia ... so it was just a simple sale/purchase transaction conducted within the same country. Theoretically,I could have driven to the buyers location and handed the item over.

Did you read the terms and conditions before you had agreed to them when you signed up to paypal?

My guess is no. If you had read the terms and conditions, you wouldn't have signed up with Paypal.

Somewhere in the terms and conditions it states that they can freeze your account and withhold your funds for up to 6 months, without giving a reason. This is what they are doing to you now, and you agreed to it when you signed up to Paypal.

This has happened to a lot of people before, including myself. It is suspected that Paypal earn interest on your money while it is being withheld. In 6 months time, they will give you your money and Paypal will keep the interest that they earned off of your money.

It is wrong and should be illegal but it isn't because they state it in their terms and conditions, which you have to agree to before signing up.

I suggest you go to www.paypalsucks.com and share your story. It wont help you get your money back any quicker, but you can warn others about Paypal.

Originally posted by MrDesolate
reply to post by tauristercus

 

I SELECTED THE MINIMUM AMOUNT BECAUSE I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT MY ANNUAL INCOME IS NONE OF PAYPAL'S CONCERN!!

Which means you do believe it is of their concern.

Yeah, I didn't notice at the time I filled in the form that I had used a "double negative".
I was just so steamed off that they were demanding such private info for no apparent useful reason.

The eBay is hosting and advertising your product for sale so they get a commission. That's the price for gaining easy access to the buyer base. If you cut them out, they won't have a business.

Arghhh!! they did it to you to??? I went through this about a while ago!!!!

My account ended up being frozen for over a 8 months, unable to touch my money, all because my room mate was paying his share of the rent weekly, through Paypal. That was supposedly suspicious activity!

Paypal can burn in hell..

Originally posted by schuyler

Originally posted by HIWATT
They took OP's $300 and "froze" it for 6 months. How much money in interest do you think they are making per quarter with all these "frozen accounts" ? because you know damn well they sure are not frozen ON THEIR END.

About $1.00 to $1.50.

Then multiply that $1.50 by thousands of such PayPal "freezes" around the world happening on a daily basis.
Suddenly we are talking some serious money being withheld by PayPal based on nothing but spurious allegations being made by them regarding certain accounts.

We've had massive problems with moneybookers, they are complete jerks when it comes to this kind of thing, your account may be frozen for no reason, BUT they still allow you to add money in there or accept deposits from other moneybookers accounts, sending them the documentation, then unfreezing, only to have the same thing happen again a month later, so this time we pulled all the money out and called them up directly asking for it to be deactivated because of the absolute annoyance.

Originally posted by ZindoDoone
You are in Aussie land so this might not be applicable but don't you have an Provincial Attorney General or some such consumer protection agency in your province you can call and see if they can help? I'd even go to the local TV stations and radio stations and see if they are interested in this story. You're being screwed by a very lousy, unresponsive company that I personally refuse to deal with because of similar problems. Hope that helps! Sometimes a few squeaky wheels get results!
Zindo

This is the best idea, if you get enough attention, and make them look bad, they could lose much more than just 302$. Write articles, inform the public, speak the truth before others gets scammed.

reply to post by tauristercus


"I selected the minimum amount because I do not believe that my annual income is none of PayPal's concern"

Does that mean that you do believe it is your concern? Is this where you came unstuck?

My poor Ocker, stuck on the wrong side of the ditch.

Originally posted by Kr0nZ

Originally posted by tauristercus

Did you actually write this on the form before sending it?

If so then thats why your money got frozen.
If you draw attention to yourself then attention is what you will get

This is EXACTLY the reason that I believe PayPal went after me in such a manner.
(Yes, I know I used a double negative in my written comment !)

Just use craigslist or another plattform. I can understand why buyers refuse to NOT use paypal. It comes at no extra cost and grants them protection, or so paypal promises.

I had a rather negative experience with Paypal as well. I didn't know much about the service and I opened an unverified account (because I didn't want to link a bank account). When you do this, you get a sending limit set on your account equal to the initial amount of money that you upload (which was $40 in my case). Problem is, they don't really explain how this works to you. So this whole time, I'm buying things and selling things, getting money on my account, and the whole time, paypal is still saying my sending limit is $40. I then add $20 in funds to my account and my sending limit goes up to $60. It seemed to make sense. So I make a few more purchases. Sending limit still says $60. Then the next time I go to pay someone "Oops! You've recently hit your sending limit and can no longer transfer money. Want to lift this limit? Simply link to your bank account or give us your credit card number!". Then my sending limit is suddenly set at $0.00 and I can't pay the guy.

I call up paypal and after some confusing and frustrating discussion, I find out that your sending limit when you're unverified is a total amount. As in, if you initially upload $100, then for all eternity, you can only transfer up to $100. Doesn't matter if you get more money on your account. Once you've transferred a total of $100, that's it. You're done. And the worst part about this? I was told that at the end of each month (or every 30 days) your sending limitation will reset, and when I asked about this on the paypal help forums, one of the staff members there confirmed that this was the case!. The only reason I even sold things and added money to my account was because I believed that my limit would reset every 30 days as I was told by a paypal forum staffer. So now, I've got over $50 on my account that I can't use. I called and asked how I could get access to it, since it was useless sitting in my account. "Just give us your credit card number and we can send you a check for the amount in your balance for a $5 fee". Uh, no? I don't have a credit card, and even if I did, I wouldn't give you my CC number. "Well that's the only way, sorry. It's for your safety".

So incredibly frustrating.

Originally posted by Indigo5
reply to post by tauristercus

 

Strange...is it possible that the buyer was on a terrorist watch list or something similair?

Possible ... but I don't think so because the shipping address was a Dental Practice or something similar.
Perhaps they wanted to use the pure silver to make bridges or dentures or something else dental related that requires silver.

reply to post by tauristercus


use Neteller, i've heard nothing but bad stuff about paypal and refuse to use it myself.

But with Neteller, i have a "credit" card in my wallet that's linked to my Neteller account which i can use across the globe (mastercard affiliated)

I'm not saying this is a safeguard against crooked coorporations, but Neteller simply doesnt seem crooked.

Transfering money online is a dodgy business and paypal has always been on the top of my avoidance list.

I've been dealing with Paypal for about four years now both for the business I work for and personally. About a year after I started using my personnal account they froze it saying that my address was linked to another bad account that owed them money for some EBay Transactions.

I called to get information and was pretty much told that I needed to get a supena. It was only a couple hundred dollars and more of an announce that they did it. Because I had nothing better todo and I felt insulted I went down to get a supena.

Issues that came up was getting an accurate address and a name for someone to have sign for the supena. After a few days of calls I got half the data I needed. Usually the spend 90-180 days for investigation. (the whole time they are collecting interest on your money) The day after they get the Supena the investigation was closed and the money was taken.

Now I'm really annoyed and looked into filing a small claim against them. The response was them closing my account. But it gets better...

I'm the direct contact for our work paypal which according to last years tax report they send off to the IRS. We do a bit over 500k a year. I was concerned that this issue would affect the business account so I decided to call my rep. (yeah we have a account rep. who actually is extremely helpful)

Not only did he assure me this issue would not affect our account he had the investigation reviewed. He had me send him the paperwork I had gathered to prove the address and email from that bad account wan't mine. Less than a week later my personnal account was active and the funds back in it.

Currently it is our company policy to never leave mor than a grand in the account. Everyone knows they are scamming people all the time and it's pretty common joke in our industry.

Couple Facts
Paypal in the State of Washington is covered by Safeco insurance as a money transfer broker. By law they must transfer all funds within 10days.
Washington State has a law that prevents a debt from being collected after 2-3 years. Although not my account, the transactions in question had been over five years old.

Unless the Attorney General gets involved or the government forces them to act like a bank nothing will change.

One last comment: the only other realistic option for an ecommerce business to use is googlepay. But google pay has zero customer service. I don't mean bad service I mean no phone or contact details.

reply to post by tauristercus


Sup, nice to see your still around.

I am really upset by your story. What a scam.

I didn't read the other posts (aside of a few at random), but I wanted to link you this:
paypalsucks.com
If you already know about it, cool. But if not, I think all that you need to know is in that place.