Ebay.. how long does it take to get money through Paypal?

[Zeldarulah]

On 7/9 and 7/11 I sold two items on Ebay. Soon, the customers paid, and their thing turned to an hourglass saying "payment was initiated on 7/11, and is being processed through paypal." Okay, fine, I thought. I'll wait till the payment processes to send it.

Soon, I find something on Ebay that says to send it before getting paid... sounds like a terrible idea, but I do it nontheless.

Now, it says estimated funds availability is 7/19.

7/19 comes and goes.

I contact Paypal, don't get any help.

Now, it is the end of the month, and I just contacted them again... I am a new Ebay vendor... but, how long does this normally take? Because this is frankly absurd, and I am thoroughly dissatisfied with Paypal so far. Is there a way to have payments not go through paypal on Ebay? Because I certainly don't want to have to go through with this again, and I still don't have my money.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[jerriestice]

I have been selling on ebay and accepting payments through PayPal for quite some time. My experience has gotten better and better with PayPal, and the time for payments to be available has gotten almost instantaneous.

My experience has been that:

- PayPal Balance payments are INSTANT always. 

- Credit card initiated transactions are almost always instant, as long as they are MasterCard or Visa that is.

- Payments from verified bank accounts (instant bank transfer) post within 3-4 days, though most are within a day or so.

- Payments from e-check can take anywhere from 7-14 days with a real-life range of 4 days to never if the check is invalid.  ((I've never had an e-check come back unpayable... maybe someone else has an idea on what to do when this happens?? ))

Other considerations:

- Remember there is a bank on the other end of this verifying the money. Visa and MC are a fast system, but banks and e-check are not.  PayPal is very fast on their end, they're not holding it back - they're waiting for validation.

- CALL customer service... even though the information is not super descriptive online about your payment, PayPal knows what the detailed status is and if you are patient on the phone they can and WILL help you.

- PayPal loves you! Seriously, they are there to help you.

- Ebay has a number of options you can follow through with when your payment is held because of an invalid payment from your buyer.  Read the reccomendations (there's a section in eBay help for this) and follow those. Remember to communicate with your buyer if there's a payment discrepancy, and if that fails you can take appropriate action for non-payment.

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi jerriestice and Zeldarulah,

Welcome to the Community! 🙂

jerriestice - Those are really great points! Please consider making a post for the Tips from Members board at some point! 🙂

Also, both of you please feel free to drop by the Introduce Yourself! forum. We'd love to learn more about you.

Olivia