I am also waiting on funds that was sent over 24 hours ago. I received other payments before and after the one that is not reflected in my account balance. I also did not get any email notification of that transaction. I discovered it when I logged in to withdraw money from another transaction after that one. When I saw I had a transaction that I did not get notified and was not reflected in my balance. I have called PayPal twice about this, and it is over 24 hours since funds were sent. I find this completely unacceptable, and I question what is going on at PayPal.
If PayPal has bills to pay without adequate funds, holding others money like this is a way to float funds to cover their bills. Is this really a systemic issue? If it is and effecting so many, why has PayPal done nothing? I have not received any emails or notification from PayPal about a known problem they are working on. I have not seen any news or press releases. I just discovered this thread when I was about to start one myself.
I have filed a complaint with the CFPB since this is the 2nd time in 2 weeks I have had issues with payments being sent, but I cannot do anything with the money. The other was with unclaimed money, I had no means to claim. Though I did click the link in the email, went to PayPal's site and claimed the money. The transaction never appeared till PayPal reversed it, and I used PopMoney instead. I also use ClearXchange at times, and am about to switch to Google Wallet from PayPal. I have long disliked PayPal, and this type of issue is simply unacceptable.
PayPal could issue credits to people who they know they have received money on their behalf. That this problem has spanned more than 24 hours, does not give me any confidence they will be able to resolve this in a timely manner. That they are not issuing credits, making any announcements informing customers of the issue, or any real effort on their behalf. I really question if this is a system issue or something else.
Either system issue or lager, this is a clear case that PayPal is not a responsible business when it comes to other peoples money. It is likely time the government takes some action here against PayPal. They will only take such matters seriously when it effects their bottom line. Right now as far as I am concerned PayPal could very well be benefiting from all this money they are not paying out. Either generating interest in some interest bearing account, paying bills, etc.
At this point the funds will not hit my bank account till Monday 9/12/2016 , for money sent mid day on Wednesday 9/7/2016. That is providing they get the problem resolved before end of business day tomorrow. If it carries beyond that I may not get my funds till 9/13/2016. Though they have no ETA so it could be even longer. They cannot say why a transaction is effected but another not effect. Which seems amounts may have something to do there. I am getting and able to withdraw small amounts, but larger ones I cannot. Which again going back to PayPal needing money for bills. They would need lots of small transactions to equal a large bill, and risk upsetting quite many, and making the issue much bigger. Doing it to some larger dollar transactions makes it less noticeable and they can effect less transactions to get a larger amount of money for some bill.
Does anyone really trust PayPal? Keep in mind most banks were leveraged far beyond any cash or assets on hand, thus the economic collapse a few years back. Who is to say PayPal does not have liabilities in excess of its revenue or assets?
I have never seen any financial institution that separates a balance from a ledger. How money can even be received, yet be de-coupled from the balance makes no sense. Clearly PayPal systems are designed in such a horrible manner it allows for such issues to occur. Which takes their own engineers days to resolve. They need to fire and hire some new engineers. Or not be in the business of handling other peoples money if their systems have such issues they cannot resolve in a timely manner.
No excuse I hear from PayPal is believable. I am a programmer and systems administrator. I cannot see any company I have ever worked with allowing such issues to persist. This is really not acceptable, and action needs to be taken to ensure this never occurs again. PayPal does not seem to want to act on its own. Thus I recommend others file complaints with the CFPB, and maybe if the matter is escalated enough. Paypal will take it seriously and do something. Starting with a formal notification to anyone effected explaining in detail the system issue. Also explaining why account balance is not related to transactions.
Even more interesting, per my request to refund/reverse the transaction. I was told it will make my account negative that amount. So they can refund/reverse a transaction and have that show up as a negative in the balance. But transactions received are not showing a positive in the balance. Which makes even less sense. Nor does that I received money before and after, both those showed in my balance and I was able to withdraw. Is it particular servers, database, etc effected? There should be some technical reason why some transactions are effected and others are not. The fact that PayPal cannot produce any real information as to what the problem is, no ETA to resolution, no action to compensate in the mean time, no notification to customers. That all adds up in my book to PayPal doing something quite shady and using we have a system issue being worked on as a excuse to cover what ever is really going on.
Which if PayPal is struggling and/or going under. We really need to know before we cannot get our money because they do not have it. Just like back in the Great Depression when people went to withdraw all their money from banks. If this is really some technical issue. Then PayPal has many things at their disposal to notify customers, and compensate. Yet PayPal does nothing and asks everyone to wait some arbitrary amount of time to resolve some problem that should not exist in the first place.
Please do not just let PayPal get away with this. Please file a complaint with the CFPB and any other you feel necessary, congress person, senator, etc. I am not one for increased government regulation, but clearly some business are just to big and when they stop carrying about what they are doing to customers, not taking any action to notify, or do what is right for all. It is time the government steps in on our behalf.
