The story of a small business and the Evil Paypal Empire.
Discussion
IATM said:
Bloody hell! Shocked would be an understatment. I take it you never found out why? I wonder if they check company aco
s/credit ratings .
I'll explain it pretty briefly or it won't make sense haha!s/credit ratings .I run an advertising network (CPA), and we're pretty much a middleman for content publishers and advertising networks, so we don't buy products/deal with anything like that. We're just a commission based service. Our PayPal was limited because of a linked account at our home address, previous person who lived here was permanently limited (been a nightmare in itself).
PayPal were supposedly happy to oblige with unlimiting as long as I gave them everything they requested. They wanted to hold 35% of our funds for 120 days and I told them it wasn't our money to let them hold on to. They said it was either that or I give them a list of supplier invoices, a brief summary of our business, access to our publisher's dashboard etc. I told them I could supply everything but the supplier invoices as we didn't have any products that needed invoicing, only a paid invoice we could request from the advertiser. They told us that this wasn't acceptable and they would hold 35% of $255,000 for 120 days and we could get it released if we adhered to all policies (which we always have done) and that there was no way around this. We went back and forth for around 2 weeks non-stop trying to resolve this. They already knew what our company does, how it operates etc... all just a ploy to hold on to $89,250 for 4 months.
I told them I was looking in to a solicitor and would come back when I had any information or any advice from him/her. They immediately changed their tone and refused to answer on the phone saying we had threatened legal action and they don't take those threats lightly. 2 years later, everyone in my house is still blacklisted from PayPal.
Shocking customer service, genuinely surprised they're still in business at the amounts they actually hold. Considering our business is whitehat, we hadn't gone against any policies or used eBay etc. Had never used PayPal before, but was advised by the account manager we had nothing to fear etc - PayPal supposedly are a fair company. b
ks.We also had another network that was in the inc 500 companies for growth and had a turnover of 100m+ vouch for us as a partner to the account manager, and he still said PayPal don't limit accounts for no reason. There must've been a reason for us to be limited with that amount, apparently. Bare in mind this was after a year of the same thing.
Our payments come in, we send them via a singular mass payment through an API integrated in to our payments console. We had been doing this for 12 months prior, nothing changed and our business module was the same, same amounts etc as we're a closed to the public company - only way in is through an invitation from a conference (like advertising summits) or through an account manager. So traffic was the same, steady growth.
We just went to send a payment one day and we couldn't, thought it was an API issue but turns out it was the limitation.
Our payments come in, we send them via a singular mass payment through an API integrated in to our payments console. We had been doing this for 12 months prior, nothing changed and our business module was the same, same amounts etc as we're a closed to the public company - only way in is through an invitation from a conference (like advertising summits) or through an account manager. So traffic was the same, steady growth.
We just went to send a payment one day and we couldn't, thought it was an API issue but turns out it was the limitation.
dudleybloke said:
Can you claim interest on the money they decide to hold on to or does PayPal get to keep that?
Could be the method to their madness.
They keep it and it obviously helps them but its more to safeguard themselves against refunds. I am on a 7 day hold right now because we are consultants and really paypal isnt suitable as a payment medium but once we have 10 transactions we go to 48 hours (it will never be less than this with no actual product and the size of the payments) Could be the method to their madness.
dudleybloke said:
Can you claim interest on the money they decide to hold on to or does PayPal get to keep that?
Could be the method to their madness.
They get to keep it, I always assumed it's why they held ours.Could be the method to their madness.
Ours were sent via mass payment, so it's already in the balance and supposedly impossible to charge back on. Yet they still wanted to hold ours, $89,000... go figure! It's nothing to a company of that size, but still interesting.
We sell items on ebay that one would deem at risk from fraudsters. However by following the rules, shipping to registered address, tracked services etc we never get any problems.
We have been using paypal since 2004 and they limited our account once in that time after turnover fell by a large portion one year after the Christmas rush. Apparently this triggers some warning bells & whistles after speaking with a few people that work there. All we had to do was supply some invoices and identification and the account was quickly back up and running again. Touch wood we do not have a rolling balance being held by them either, but it has happend to some friends in my industry whom ive spoken with.
From a buyers view i love paypal and would prefer if all my purchases could go that route. Worst case scenario happens and something not as described etc its simple to open a dispute. Plus it also save looking for the wallet for my credit card and then going through 3d secure.
We have been using paypal since 2004 and they limited our account once in that time after turnover fell by a large portion one year after the Christmas rush. Apparently this triggers some warning bells & whistles after speaking with a few people that work there. All we had to do was supply some invoices and identification and the account was quickly back up and running again. Touch wood we do not have a rolling balance being held by them either, but it has happend to some friends in my industry whom ive spoken with.
From a buyers view i love paypal and would prefer if all my purchases could go that route. Worst case scenario happens and something not as described etc its simple to open a dispute. Plus it also save looking for the wallet for my credit card and then going through 3d secure.
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