Change of payout account triggering risk-based payment holds
Summary: retrodogga shared their experience of how changing their bank account for payouts led to unexpected holds on their funds by a platform, disrupting their cash flow. Despite contacting support, they received inconsistent explanations for the issue, citing both the account change and potential 'explosive growth' as reasons. They sought advice or similar experiences from others who faced such disruptions. e_purchasing responded, suggesting that the increase in sales volume alongside the account change likely triggered the holds due to perceived risk, and predicted the situation might persist for several months.
Hi all!
I recently (29 days ago) changed my payout destination to a different bank account (for what it's worth, the new account is under the same legal name as previously used). This has apparently triggered something with the risk detection automation, causing a hold to be put on all my funds until after delivery of my items. (The verification of the new account occurred within the quoted 48 hour window, with no apparent issues.)
Because 90% of my sales use untracked postage, which have no mechanism for being marked as delivered (other than feedback being left, something that does not occur most of the time) - my cash flow has been majorly disrupted (now waiting up to 14 days for funds to clear as opposed to 1).
I have contacted eBay support several times. Unfortunately, the advice I have received has been unsatisfactory, having received conflicting information depending on the support agent working on the day. They have told me:
a. The hold on my funds cannot be removed. I can understand if there is no mechanism to force funds to be released, but getting any further information on the flag on my account (or the conditions in which it might be removed) should surely be achievable.
b. One agent informed me that the change in payout bank account was indeed the reason the payout behaviour changed.
c. ... but a different agent informed me that the change in behaviour was because of risk associated with "explosive growth" - I don't see how this could be possible given the change in payout behaviour literally occurred the moment I changed my bank accounts (.. including >$1000 being moved from Available to On Hold at that very instant)
d. With regards to the flag on my account being lifted, one agent said "there is no way to know when it will happen", whereas a different agent said I had to "re-establish a positive selling record" - there's never been a dip in my performance metrics so I was very surprised to hear the latter...
Obviously, I don't expect anyone to be able to comment on my account specifically, but I would love if there might be:
any concrete information I could refer to on how long this automated flag might remain raised against my account, or
anecdotes from anyone who might have experienced the same disruption, or
if there is someone I can escalate to at eBay AU for further assistance given the conflicting information provided to date.
Thank you kindly in advance for any assistance,
Harry.
countessalmirena
·1 week ago@retrodogga
Contacting eBay CS is not going to result in the dial shifting on this. First of all, the agents are not authorised to act on such matters; their sole purpose is to soothe, obfuscate, put up polite roadblocks when it comes to payment holds resulting from eBay policy. They read from scripts generated to help them do precisely that, and the precise answer you receive at any given time will result from whatever keywords trigger the output.
Hence, replies will not be consistent and they certainly won’t address the things you want them to address.
Not only are the CS reps not authorised to help on this, but they also wouldn’t know what has unequivocally been the trigger for the hold or the period for which it will last, or what would mitigate or minimise the hold period.
Even if you got hold of someone higher up, with more information and more authority, they’d not tell you. The holds are a risk mitigation measure for eBay, and informing any customer how to avoid or shorten those measures would be like giving someone suspected of being a thief the combination to the safe. The holds are not explained with that level of detail in the Help pages for precisely this reason - so that mischief-minded fraudsters can’t plan in advance (or after the fact, supposedly) what behaviours of theirs will set off the algorithm alarms.*
*I say this with considerable irony. eBay and its reactive (ha!) responses to scam sellers is unfortunately legendary. Nevertheless, it doesn’t affect the situation: eBay’s policy and bot-driven procedure re holds.
The only advice I’d give you is to factor in holds for now, and sell consistently with excellent customer service. Hopefully you’ll have no issues with buyers.
retrodogga
OP1 week agoWith thanks for the in-depth response. I was hoping this would not be the case and that there would at least be some human element accessible in the situation. Completely get why some information must necessarily remain scarce but it's disappointing for there to be nobody to have a (genuine/non-scripted) discussion with, particularly given the perceived pressure to be selling more / developing and growing my store.
Obviously not too much to be achieved with further whinging so I will have to assess how I can minimise the impact of the holds and just keep pressing forward as best I can.
Thanks again
e_purchasing
·1 week agoYou have to think logically here. You sold nearly as many items in one month that you did in the previous 6 and you changed bank accounts. The site would see you as a risk as you could suddenly list a few pricey items get your payments and do a runner and eBay would have to reach into their coffers to re-imburse.
I would say this will continue for at least 6 months for you so that the system detect that the quantity and $ you sold this month is basically no different to the previous 2-6 months.
IMO, the bank account would have had less impact on the situation compared to the volume change