Paypal payments pending / on hold :/

[silence_electronics]

Hi, as of yesterday paypal are now placing payments to me 'on hold' due to 'higher than usual risk'. Not sure if it was my increased selling volume lately or the fact I sold a Samsung Phone, but the next payment after that for a computer part was also held.The emails hint that it will be 7 days, yet after logging in it seems the release date is 21 days away!

I assume everything from now on until some arbitrary time when they 'trust' me again will be held, which is going to cause massive cashflow issues for me as this time next week I'll have probably another $800 on top of the $500 I was paid last night. If anything, I don't want to take the risk of selling any more now as who knows if their coinflip will determine that I'm entitled to my own money? Do I keep pumping thousands of dollars into a void hoping for the best?

Will calling paypal achieve anything? I've been using paypal for probably almost 10 years on the same account and not sure there is any of my ID that they don't already have on file.

[*tippy*toes*]

Yeah, I know that it goes for 90 days for new accounts, but as each tracking shows as delivered, you can still call up to get the funds for that transaction released without waiting the 21 days for it to auto release. If you have lots of sales, it's a lot of phone calls, so in that case it's easier just to wait the 21 days. It also helps if you upload the tracking number into PayPal. Sometimes the system picks it up and releases it, other times you have to call. I'm not saying that ringing them up will release the hold permanently, like setting the FOS onto them, just the transactions where the tracking shows as delivered.

[hank_lammington]

One of my accounts has this just had this "payment pending" rubbish attached to it. 100 transactions in the last 6 months with no negs or neuts. Rang paypal to ask why and am no wiser thats for sure. I only do a steady 40 free listings per month(low $ stuff) so if someone knows WDF goes please explain. Cheers.

[hank_lammington]

One of my accounts has this just had this "payment pending" rubbish attached to it. 100 transactions in the last 6 months with no negs or neuts. Rang paypal to ask why and am no wiser thats for sure. I only do a steady 40 free listings per month(low $ stuff) so if someone knows WDF goes please explain. PS its not a new acc, cheers.

[*tippy*toes*]

If it's saying payment pending, there's a high chance the payment is an eCheque, rather than funds being held. You can check on your My Selling page. Instead of having a blue $ sign where payment has been made, there will be an hourglass

[hank_lammington]

No its a different message than the one you get when someones paying by CC.

[collect247]

How long ago since you sold an item?

If it has been a while then you have been put on the 21 day payment hold with PayPal and unfortunately you will need to meet their criteria again before the payments are released.

You could try contacting the fos.gov.au and complain to them but I know of a few people that have had no success with the FOS and had to bite the bullet and wait until they have met the criteria.

[collect247]

I'm not sure what has happened to you again because you have been selling for a while now so it should all be smooth selling

[collect247]

Checking your sales again I noticed that you have only sold about 22/23 items so the criteria is that you need to sell for 90 days and sell over 50 items thus receiving over 50 positive feedback for the hold to be complete.

But as I said before you can contact the FOS and get them involved.

People say to contact PayPal but like you said they won't do anything about it because it's ebay that tell them to hold the payments.

I did contact PayPal a while back and they told me what I have just mentioned.

[barangutan]

Thanks for the info, may I ask who or FOS is? I'm in the same boat (recently started selling a few items again) and am appalled how poorly they treat sellers. I don't feel secure in reciving payment if a buyer chooses to claim there is an issue, nor do I have any history when selling of any problems. I also had a NPB recently and discovered you cannot even leave negative feedback, nor it seems does the buyer have any consequences for not paying (that I can see). 90 days of sales and over 50 feedbacks needed from those sales will never happen in my case. So I'm never going to sell on eBay ever again... I do quite well for most items selling through Gumtree and Facebook anyway. Cheers.

[lyndal1838]

FOS = Financial Ombudsman Service.