i have a payment marked 'pending' from a sale on sunday. recieved email saying i'd recieved an echeque. never had one of those before. said i'll get another email when it clears.

eCheques are quite normal, it means the buyer has had the funds debited from their bank account rather than used a credit card (or has a Visa / Mastercard back-up funding source).

eCheques can't be subject to a credit card chargeback, at least.

For the last few weeks, several payments for sales made elsewhere have been "pending" (always the jewellery store on Et*y ), where I get this:

Dear [my name],

This transaction is pending.
Amount: $[not squillions of] AUD (unfortunately)
Transaction ID: [random string of characters]
Buyer: [Buyer's Name]

View the details of this transaction

Unfortunately, we are unable to complete this particular transaction. Please note, this decline is specific to this transaction only and does not affect the use of your PayPal account for other transactions.

For more information on the reasons for the review, see our Acceptable Use Policy which is part of our User Agreement.

Sincerely,
PayPal

Then it clears anywhere from 1-24 hours later. o.O 

I finally received a reply from PayPal this afternoon - issue still not resolved, same as above, and just a "trust us, the payment was received and we're working to fix this as soon as possible" note. >_> 

well thats a relief. as id never seen it before i was a little worried the buyer would be messaging me asking why i hadnt posted the item.

you have made that problem much better.

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@davidc4430 wrote:

well thats a relief. as id never seen it before i was a little worried the buyer would be messaging me asking why i hadnt posted the item.

you have made that problem much better.

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I probably should just mention that eCheques can sometimes fail (I've had it happen a few times, occasionally it's due to a PayPal error, but more often than not it's because there wasn't enough funds in the buyer's account) - I know you said you haven't posted yet, but I just figured I should add that (you'll get an email from PayPal if it fails). 

Not too long ago, I had a repeat buyer pay via PayPal with an eCheque - they sent me a message the next day and asked me to post immediately because their eCheque had already cleared (I knew this was highly unlikely, as PP will send notification of clearance, and it pretty much always takes a minimum of 3 business days anyway). 

I logged into PayPal and had a look at the payment - it was showing as cancelled.  (I received no notification from PayPal for that, and the buyer never responded to my "uuhhhh, hang on a minute.... " message, so they went on the BBL).