PayPal hold on funds?
 

Question for th boards. Has anyone every had a hold placed on funds 3 weeks after a buyer has paid with PayPal. Got a notice this morning from PayPal for an auction that had ended January 14 and the seller had paid on January 21. We contacted PayPal and the representative really could not explain what was going on. I would assume that if there were an issue with the cards bought that we would have seen something through eBay. There is no case opened and no correspondence from the buyer. The buyer is new to eBay and has been buying post war cards like crazy. Mine are the only prewar cards he has bought. They were definite beaters and the whole transaction was $11.00. Kind of weird.

I think in certain situations eBay can delay transferring payment, when nothing bad happened. In these situations, the seller gets money but after a delay period. I think but am not sure that when an eBay seller is a totally new, this delay can happen for a while. In short, I believe delays/holds can happen with PayPal when there isn't a horrible problem and the seller ends up getting the money.

I don't know if this relates to your specific situation, and perhaps there is a specific issue with the buyer.

Would an example of what you are talking about be lack of funds in the buyers bank account. Might be an easy explanation with all the buying he is doing?

I edited my post before I read your follow up.

What you said about funds is possible. I don't know. I don't use a credit card, but PayPal wouldn't let me pay in the first place if I didn't have sufficient funds in my account. They don't doesn't accept ghost funds.

But, as I said, it's sometimes PayPal's standard procedure to delay transfer even if nothing nefarious has happened. In many ways they're like a brick and mortar bank.

If there was a dispute with you as the seller, you would have been already clearly notified.

This happened to me awhile back. They held my funds for a few weeks. I don't know if it's the same in your case, but they told me they'd release the funds when the buyer confirmed that they got the card (when they leave feedback). It's to prevent you from buying something with that money in case something happens in which you need to give a refund to your buyer.

Happened to me about a year ago, a guy bought a card from me and the payment was on hold. Never got a reason, but i got the money about 2 weeks later.

I have a friend who have now this problem too. My friend is a powerseller but it is due to a couple of buyer who send to my friend positive feedback but put like 2 stars on his shipping charge ratting.. and now my friend have a lot of trouble with paypal... his funds is blocked since 1 month now...

The only issue is see with this is that in all his buying, he has yet to leave anyone feedback. Since leaving feedback is not mandatory for eBay, seems like a pretty lame way of doing things. It's only $11.00 so doesn't have any bearing on my purchasing from sellers. If its a question about my shipping, all they have to do is look at my feedback and see that I ship the day after I get paid in every case. The rep asked about tracking and we explained that it would cost more to track than it is worth. Got the impression that they were trying to get us to buy our shipping and postage from them at an inflated price. eBay/ PayPal and their policies, enough to drive anyone crazy.

In all my time selling, have only had 2 buyers leave low DSR ratings. Makes me think twice about selling on eBay.

Unless things have changed the price to buy the postage through Ebay/paypal is actually less than going to the post office. They were using the USPS online rates which were a bit less than the over the counter rate. Only a few cents for most postage, but loads cheaper for Delivery confirmation. Currently .90 at the post office but only .20 online. So you'd save maybe .75 per package plus you can just hand them to the mailcarrier.

It's still silly that they're holding up $11 unless the buyer is overdrawn.

Steve B

We have pretty well finished our sales on eBay but will keep what you said in mind. My thoughts in general is that tracking on a $11.00 package is kind of silly. Especially when the postage/handling is $3.00 out of the total price. Would do tracking on packages that are $20.00 and up. Thanks.

it happened to me once, they held my funds for a week or so, it was because they said that i was selling more things for more money and they wanted to make sure i was responsible and someone to trust selling at that volume and price. it was all baloney on their part but i couldnt do anything about it. that was the only time that happened.

Printing shipping label with tracking from ebay (up to 3 oz.) is $1.69
If you go to the post office it's $2.07 plus .90 for tracking.
For non-ebay shipping, go to paypal/shipnow ...it's still just $1.69.

Good info to have.

Sounds like the buyer didn't receive the item and notified P-Pal, now you have a few days to provide electronic prove of shipping DC if you cant
he'll probably escalate the issue to a claim and get his $$ back

The sad thing is that we verified address and sent day after he paid if that is what is going on. He also waited a week to pay for the items. What ever happened to communication between a buyer and seller? If I have an issue with a seller, I email. We did send an email to the buyer to see if they could give some light to the subject. Haven't heard anything yet.

I used to make all my purchases with a postal money order because I didn't have a Paypal account. Well after missing out on some good auctions I opened a Paypal account. Paypal would hold the money for about a week before transfering it when doing an e-check. That problem was finally fixed after I added a debit card to my Paypal account and now its an instant transfer. Maybe thats why your money is being held up.

Edited to add: The seller sent the card out right away to me because the funds showed in their account but they didn't know they couldn't access them. It was very stressful for the seller. The card was a T206 Hal Chase Blue Portrait Sovereign 460 SGC 60 for a Buy It Now of $245. It was listed for less than 5 minutes when I bought it. We had multiple friendly emails each day until the funds were accessable. We both left positive feedback.

For any interested, the buyers eBay name is maedad7. He still hasn't responded to our earlier email and not sure whether PayPal is playing games or if the buyer is playing games. He has been buying 50's and 60's stuff like mad and a bunch of newer basketball stuff. Just a FYI.

I had one of these strange holds placed a few weeks back. if anybody really wants to know the buyers ID is templarfsgt

Anyways, he bought a $34 card off me and told me his payment was going to be held. No big deal .... usually a 5-7 day thing until the payment clears his bank. It turned into a 10 day thing and i contacted the buyer and he replied. after 20 days i contacted the buyer and he replied. after 24 days the "payment pending" icon disappeared. I contacted the buyer 3 times over the next 3 days and heard nothing back ..... so i filed the non-payment bullcrap.

still never heard anything from him or got a payment.

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I never leave money in my paypal account for this very reason...........regardless if its $11 or $1100. Paypal can hold your funds and you cant do a damn thing about it. I have gone round and round with them in the past, the issue was on the buyers end, yet they froze my funds.

maedad7...just recently became my 1st ebay blocked bidder. No pay, no contact. Had over 100 feedback rating but also the "new member" icon next to his name.

Paypal will ALWAYS hold your ebay sales funds if you don't meet their criteria, which is at least 100 feedback and a couple of other things. I'd assume baseball cards are in a low risk category, which is a good thing for getting your funds quicker. It's certainly a pain in the wazoo for newer ebay sellers though.

My feedback is 1142 so definitely not a reason to hold funds. And please don't insult Wazoo, he's a nice kid. LOL

Definitely slow pay in our case and looks like he likes to play games given the current story. Once this is resolved, he will be blocked also.

A quick question I should ask, have you had paypal limit your account after you provided your ssn/ID/billing documents asking for supplier invoices and such? I know that with running an unofficial sports cards business it can be difficult/impossible to provide supplier documents. I had an old account get limited with this while I was selling stuff around the house.

Not to my knowledge.

Update!!! Looked at PayPal account detail and in fine print it said user is unregistered. What the Heck does this indicate? Does it mean that he does not have a PayPal account? If so, I would call that theft.

That's code for you ain't gettin your money. He probably registered on Ebay and then for one reason or another(fill in the blank, hint, put "did not pay for goods won"), he is no longer a participant in the safest and most transparent game in town. :)

Sounds like we need to open a case against him so he can't leave feedback. Not out much but it's the annoyance of it all. Will give it til Monday the game on.

Update, hold on funds was removed today with no explanation from Paypal. We still have decided to put maedad7 on our permanent blocked list. No evidence of him ever responding to Paypal and have seen several no communication/ nonpayment type feedbacks on eBay. Definitely not one I care to have as a buyer.

Surprisingly I think I know the answer
 

I'm pretty sure Paypal will hold funds if you do not have money in the checking account to cover the costs. I had a hold on so e funds a few months back but the. Deposited money into checking account and it cleared right away. And it hasn't happened since then. I had a $2700 transaction and took money out next day
Have checking account with funds in it connected to Paypal should clear it up. I think.
Hope this kind of helps

Problem clearly was not on our end. We were buying and selling all throughout this event. Seeing questionable feedback on the buyer so maybe he didn't have money in his accounts but with that said there were many transactions before and after ours for this buyer. Hard to say what happened but when PayPal does not give a reason for a hold, makes you wonder. As a minimum, they should tell people what is going on. If you had an issue with a bank, they would have to explain. Just sayin.

Be careful using Paypal to make on-line purchases of ïntangible" goods. I bought a PC Cleaner plus software product on the net before I read how their company was one big rip-off and Paypal would not refund the purchase price from them (even though seller told me it would not work AFTER I purchased it) because it was "intangible.""

After talking on the phone and "electronic action" claim, we are currently waiting for some response from ebay and paypal regarding a triangle scam. They have already removed the seller, but the most intriguing thing so far to me is how some of the feedbacks have been removed from BOTH the seller's and buyer's records for SOME, but not all, of they buyers that were hit by the scam. There is no real "pattern" as to why some were "scrubbed" and others were not. My wife actually has evidence of this since she printed out the seller's feedback list prior to the scrubbing (sometimes paranoia is a good thing). Not only are feedbacks now gone, but some of the buyers' feedbacks have a total of one less now than when she printed the list, indicating that the buyer received feedback from the seller but the feedback has since been removed. (Insert Artie Johnson comment here)