Account Limitations: What You Need to Know

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PayPal Employee
PayPal Employee

 

Keeping your business and customers safer

To ensure PayPal remains a safer place for enabling payments, we regularly review all accounts. Sometimes, limitations may be placed on your PayPal account, which could restrict you from completing certain actions: such as withdrawing, spending, or receiving money. Limitations are in place to help protect all our customers, and in some cases to meet our regulatory obligations. Protecting your account and money is important to us.

 

Account Limitations: What might cause it, and how to help avoid it?

If your PayPal account is limited, you may be unable to withdraw, send or receive money. There are a number of reasons why your account could be limited:

 

Suspicious & unusual activity

  • We suspect someone could be using your account without your knowledge.
  • Your bank alerts us that someone has used your credit/debit card linked to your account without your permission.
  • There are unexpected changes to your selling activities such as a sudden increase in your typical sales volume.

In such cases, we do what it takes to protect you from potential fraud prompted by the unusual activity– through limiting your account, and investigating.

 

You can safeguard your personal information and help protect yourself against fraud through some simple measures.  For example, don’t enter your personal or financial details when describing items for sale or in response to emails, and log out of sites you’ve entered your personal information into.

 

Regulatory reasons or business is not compliant

Your account could be limited for regulatory reasons. For example, India PayPal sellers need to include additional information to be able to accept payments in their account. Also, reaching a certain transaction value in your account may trigger a limit, which can also be removed by providing information required to PayPal.

 

There are also restrictions on what a PayPal account can be used to accept (and make) payments for. For example, PayPal doesn't allow the sale of counterfeit goods or banned items. So, ensure that your business is compliant with PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy .


Increased buyer issues

An increase of complaints, claims and chargebacks from buyers can lead to account limitations.

 

Following some simple guidelines can help you improve your performance and reduce the likelihood of limitations. Overall, communication is key. You should:

  • Provide detailed product descriptions and photos.
  • Be upfront about policies such as shipping and returns.
  • Ship orders promptly and track shipments.
  • Respond quickly to any messages from buyers.
  • Work to amicably resolve any problems.
  • Ship to the address provided in the transaction details page.
  • Use quality shipping materials to prevent damage.

 

Removing limitations

 If your PayPal account is limited, here’s what happens:

  1. We’ll email you to let you know –  we’ll ask you to log in to your PayPal account and go to the Resolution Centre for details on how to resolve the issue quickly, usually by providing information.
  2. Once you’ve submitted the information required, we’ll review and reply via email.
  3. We’ll remove the limitations once we have verified your account. At times, limitations can be removed by simply changing your security questions and password.

Here are the types of information and documents we may need from you:

- Supplier’s invoice with contact information

This helps us determine the inventory source and validate that you have the items that you’re selling in stock.

 

- Payment information

When an invoice is unavailable, we’ll review the following information about your payments:

  • The item or service that was sold
  • The buyer’s name and shipping address
  • Proof of shipment to verify that an order was delivered

- Shipping or Tracking information

This helps us to verify that customer orders are being fulfilled.

 

- Proof of business
This provides evidence of a valid business registration and business ownership.

 

- Information for India sellers
This is to comply with our India regulatory obligations. Provide a valid PAN, a local bank account and the purpose code in your PayPal account task board.

 

- Proof of address such as bank statement or utility bill, Proof of identity such as passport or driver’s license
This helps us verify your identity when there is unusual account activity or to comply with regulations.

 

Once you’ve submitted your information, look out for any more emails from us as we may need additional details. We’ll do our best to confirm your information and remove the limitation within 2 business days, but sometimes it can take a little longer.

 

Quick Tip: If your PayPal account is limited, don’t open a new account. It could be traced back to the limited account.  It’s always best to resolve the limitation. We will guide you through it and restore full access to your PayPal account as quickly as possible.

 

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1,050 REPLIES 1,050

Stej
Contributor
Contributor

Totally agree @JenerSilva,

 

they are arrogant and they seem to think they can just bully people with their terms and conditions.

 

It is time for paypal to change. I am currently setting up a website called regulatepaypal.com

 

I intend to have it all launched by the end of this month. I am hoping that people will get on board, so that we can take paypal to the courts as a single entity and force a change in how they operate here in the UK. It is disgusting that they are holding money for so long - and in some cases - people are going hungry along with their children! When they respond to these people, they are basically sticking two fingers up at them and saying F**k you, go and starve for 180 days. This in itself has to be illegal!

 

Banks would not be allowed to do this - and whilst banks are not much better, they do at least follow the laws of the country that they operate in - and offer recompense, when they cause any stress to their customers. Paypal just cream the interest off of the money and send canned robotic responses!

 

Time for a change for sure!

 

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JenerSilva
Contributor
Contributor
Well, its official paypal just doesn't want to talk to me. I've been hung up on ignored by email and social media. I don't want trouble just my money back they robbed from me. Jezuz Chr*st this is pure madness.
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stewbobs12
Contributor
Contributor

They have hundreds of pounds of mine and i cant get

paypal need closing down themselves they should be done themselves for thieving peoples money they are an absolute disgrace 

 

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mainemini
Contributor
Contributor

"Try to resolve the limitation in 2 days..." right..... How come I have been waiting 2 MONTHS? I jumped thru all the hoops, I have given very detailed feedback but nobody reads it... (considering I used to be a mystery shopper, that's a bit of a slap in the face) There is no decent method of getting ahold of anyone to say "you SAID you put two small amounts in my bank and took them out BUT NOTHING  happened in my bank!" I really want to get back on eBay and I have birthdays coming up shortly - can we PLEASE settle this?????

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pterhaar
Member
Member

"We’ll do our best to confirm your information and remove the limitation within 2 business days, but sometimes it can take a little longer."

It's been 5 WEEKS now, that's more than a little longer!!

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elc078
Contributor
Contributor

Paypal cannot be trusted with money, period. I think any account with a positive Paypal balance is in murky waters. Paypal will use anything, I mean anything, to freeze accounts with a balance.

 

I tried sending a friend money today and her account got frozen. I simply wanted to check fees, funding sources, etc. No transaction ever took place and the account she uses for life tasks and additional income suddenly gets frozen.

 

Customer service is non-existent. The agents just copy and paste and regurgitate the same thing over and over without any resolutions offered. They sidestep questions or simply do not even know how to read. I gave them a full account and they just copy and paste the same reply from a previous message.

 

I used to trust Paypal. Now, I completely revoke that trust.

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Loex
Member
Member

Got an email from PP yesterday (15 july 2018) because of suspicious behaviour on 7 december 2014  13:03 CEST my account is limited...

This is pure nonsense..  this was FOUR years ago!

 

Luckily there is no money in the account, I just use it for small payments online, funded by a CC.

 

So be prepared that they can and will limit accounts for no reason at all!

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davidms12
Member
Member

I cannot believe this **bleep**. they limited my account saying they wanted to verify my ID (which they did last year to me also). Now I cannot print labels for items I have sold on ebay. I responded to their bogus "verify ID and make sure I'm not a member of parliament WTF" within 10 minutes. I uploaded my GOVERNMENT ISSUED DRIVERS LICENSE and their response is that my drivers license cannot be used as VALID PROOF OF ADDRESS. ARE you **bleep** serious? ITS GOVERNMENT ISSUED! WHAT KIND OF IDIOTS WORK AT PAYPAL? The DL has a photo, date of birth, ADDRESS, Unique identifiers but it's not good enough. I am so sick of Paypal **bleep**.

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DLT56
Contributor
Contributor

send them a utility bill as proof of address within the last 6 months or so

the driving licence is photo I.D only

utility bills are proof af address

just been through all of this as i didn't have any photo I.D at all

had to send a photo of my birth certificate and a government letter i used a tax form i luckily found

this went on for nearly 2 months back and forth

try the facebook page mate i got more help through messenger than straight dealing with paypal

 

good luck


@davidms12 wrote:

I cannot believe this **bleep**. they limited my account saying they wanted to verify my ID (which they did last year to me also). Now I cannot print labels for items I have sold on ebay. I responded to their bogus "verify ID and make sure I'm not a member of parliament WTF" within 10 minutes. I uploaded my GOVERNMENT ISSUED DRIVERS LICENSE and their response is that my drivers license cannot be used as VALID PROOF OF ADDRESS. ARE you **bleep** serious? ITS GOVERNMENT ISSUED! WHAT KIND OF IDIOTS WORK AT PAYPAL? The DL has a photo, date of birth, ADDRESS, Unique identifiers but it's not good enough. I am so sick of Paypal **bleep**.


 

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temp20180723a
Contributor
Contributor

Can I get some guidance on what they actually accept?  I've submitted a copy of my passport and a letter from my utility company, but the letter from the utility company got turned down as a partial document.  I've now submitted my bank statement, but just the first page.  I'm not expected to give them the whole thing right?

 

I really don't like that they just reject it with a form answer without saying what's actually wrong. Was my thumb in the way?  Did you need to see the edges of the letter?  Literally, if it has my name and address on it, and you can clearly read them, what's the issue?

 

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