Cancelled Payment, Money out of my Bank, Not refunded yet, problem?

[ryanbarnes1]

I made a payment to an incorrect email address on 2.29.2012.  I cancelled said payment within 1 hour (and it shows cancelled correctly on Paypal), and made the correct payment to the correct email address right after.

Both transactions have been taken out of my bank account on 2.29.2012.

Therefore, Paypal owes me for the cancelled transaction that has been debited out of my bank account.  

How long does this usually take?  

My bank cleared both payments on 3.1.2012.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

[ryanbarnes1]

Problem Solved.

Paypal put the funds in my paypal account.  I thought it would go back to the bank, or never come out in the first place.

Just took a while for it to show in paypal, and just transfered funds back to my bank.

[Joel1]

I'm having this problem as well, and there are many messages boards out there with people discribing this same problem. Hey PayPal, why don't you fix this, HUH? You'd think if this was not a vaild e-mail address, you would refuse these transactions! Is what you are doing PayPal even legal? Is this some kind of scam to build interest? My bank account was overdrawn thanks to you guys, and I now I need to take money from my savings to pay my rent, and I will barley be able to get by by until you put my money back! I think from now on, I'll use money orders or use the money sending service Xoom. Thanks a lot.

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi ryanbarnes1 and Joel1,

Welcome to the forums! I hope you'll stick around for a while. Feel free to take a look at some other posts to see if you can offer some input on other people's questions, or even stop by the Social forums to shoot the breeze and Introduce Yourself!

I'd be happy to shed some light on the reason why funds are not immediately available in this situation.

When you use your bank account to fund a payment with Instant Transfer, a couple of different things happen simultaneously. The first is that the request for funds is sent to your bank. This request is sent via the ACH process, and the funds will actually not make their way to PayPal for several business days (3-5 business days for US banks, and typically more for international banks). At the same time, PayPal pays your seller up front as a service to you, so the seller can begin processing your order immediately. Once the funds clear from the bank, PayPal is reimbursed for the money that was laid out to your seller.

In a situation where a seller refunds the payment before the ACH process has completed, the funds cannot be made immediately available because they haven't finished transferring from the bank. The request for those funds also can't be canceled. The money will be made available the moment it completely clears to your PayPal account. From that point, you can spend it or withdraw it, as you see fit.

You can learn more about all the details of Using Your Bank with PayPal in this FAQ. Please feel free to post additional questions! 🙂

Olivia