Making a formal complaint against PayPal

[RichardForrest]

I am making this complaint because of the utter lack of PayPal to provide customer service, the repeated falsehoods I have been told by your operatives, and the fact that you are sitting on over £1000.00 of the money we need to run the conference and are in effect stealing it from us by making it impossible to withdraw.

I set up an account with PayPal to take payments for a conference I am helping to run on the subject of marine reptiles because it needs a system to take payments especially from overseas delegates who do not have a UK bank account.

The issue has arisen because when I set up the account, I set it up as a non-profit organisation, on the grounds that this is an organisation which is not set up to make a profit. It turns out that this was a big mistake, and that to qualify as a non-profit organisation it needs either to be a registered charity with a charity number, or a registered non-profit business with a business number.

On 31st December 2019 I received an email from PayPal saying that a restriction had been placed on the account and asking for additional information in the form of a business or charity registration number, or that I should log on to the account and change its status to individual sole trader account.

I tried (and have tried on many, many occasions since) to change the account status, but the site does not allow me to do so.

To date I have phoned PayPal 13 times in an attempt to resolve this issue.

I have explained every time that because there is no business or charity associated with the account, I am unable to provide information which does not exist. On each occasion I was told that I could onlock the account by changing its status to either individual or sole trader. I was told that I need to provide additional information to unlock the funds in the account. I have provided the information requested each time, and on the last occasion kept your operative on the line until she could confirm that the information had been received.

To give you some idea of the utter frustration I have experienced in trying to get this sorted, here is a log of the calls and emails I have had:

[Removed. Phone #s not permitted]13 Email from PayPal Action required: please provide some additional information
06/01/2020 10:32 Skype Call Duration: 3m 53s
06/01/2020 10:51 Email from PayPal ‘additional information’
06/01/2020 11:04 Email to PayPal : Thank you responding, but unfortunately it is not very helpful. I can't change the business type. "Not-for-profit organisation" is greyed out and I have not option to change it.So I can't change it to either of the options you suggest. Please respond with a solution which I can actually implement rather than one I can't. In the meantime, you are sitting on over £800 of the money we need to run the conference. We need access to that money. Sent to paypal
06/01/2020 11:11 Skype Call Duration: 3m 51s Was told I needed to send bank statements - which I did
07/01/2020 02:03 Email from PayPal Request for additional information
07/01/2020 02:05 Email from PayPal Your PayPal Account “ We’ve updated your account information”.
07/01/2020 10:44 Skype Call Duration: 5m 11s Call cut off
08/01/2020 01:41 Email from PayPal Request for additional information
08/01/2020 08:48 Skype Call Duration: 3m 11s Call cut off
08/01/2020 09:13 Skype Call Duration: 25m 12s Was told I needed to complete a User Agreement
08/01/2020 09:16 Email to PayPal: As of 8th January 2020 I, Richard <removed>, now run my account as an Individual/ Sole Proprietor. As a result of this change, I now accept and agree to the terms of the User Agreement for PayPal services. Sent to paypal
14/01/2020 08:39 Skype Call Duration: 7m 0s Was told that I needed to provide additional information
14/01/2020 09:14 Skype Call Duration: 33m 52s Tried to find out what information was lacking. Was told that it was all they needed.
15/01/2020 08:53 Email from PayPal Request for additional information
15/01/2020 09:26 Skype Call Duration: 2m 55s Call cut off
15/01/2020 10:07 Skype Call Duration: 39m 12s Told that I needed to complete a User agreement. Previous one could not be acted on as the email address was not the one for the account. Explained that I couldn’t, and gave them another email address.
15/01/2020 17:17 Email from PayPal Request to down grade Paypal acct
15/01/2020 17:18 Email to PayPal: “As of 15th January 2020 I, Richard <removed>, now run my account as an Individual/ Sole Proprietor. As a result of this change, I now accept and agree to the terms of the User Agreement for PayPal services.” Sent to paypal.
15/01/2020 17:26 Skype Call Duration: 47m 28s Contacted PayPal to make sure that they had received my email. They confirmed that they have and that the issue woiuld be resolved by their limitations department. They promised me specifically that this is all they ned and I would not be contacted with a request for additional information.
16/01/2020 02:48 Email from PayPal Request for additional information
16/01/2020 09:25 Skype Call Duration: 28m 42s Asked why I had received a request for additional information and what I need to do to change the account status. Also asked for how to contact them to make a formal complaint. Was sent a link which doesn't take me to a page on which I can make a formal complaint.
16/01/2020 10:17 Skype Call Duration: 38m 38s Tried to find out how I can make a formal complaint. Was sent the same link again and yet again it doesn't work. Tried it on three different browsers while I was on the line. None of them worked. Asked how I could escalate this to their head office and was promised that they would send me a link.
16/01/2020 12:00 Skype Call Tried to find out why they have not sent me an email with details of how to contact their head office. Was told that I have been sent an email with a link to a page from which I can make a formal complaint. The link doesn't do so.

[Ni4H]

We have the same problem and have been trying to resolve it for months, going round and round in circles. Made a formal complaint a few days ago which has also not even been acknowledged.

We registered as a not for profit community group and sent our constitution, but PayPal keeps insisting on asking for a charity number, business registration proof, tax exempt certificate ... none of which can we provide as we are not a charity or a business! The money in PayPal has been donated by people to pay a barrister and experts to represent local people at a public inquiry opposing plans to build a huge incinerator. 

WE WOULD NOT RECOMMEND PAYPAL TO ANYONE.

They have over £4,000 of funds donated by the public which we owe to a Planning Expert and PayPal will not release the limitation on our PayPal account and transfer the funds to our bank account, even though the link has been set up and we have provided a bank statement and all the information that it is possible for a not for profit UK community group to provide and much of it we have had to send several times!

When we do get someone on the phone they simply do not understand the situation and no one seems to care. 

'Please go ahead and leave us a message if you haven't already and we will get back to you in a few hours.' Leave messages which are not even acknowledged then: 'This conversation has been closed.'

Today it says: 'We're sorry, but messages are currently unavailable.'

PAYPAL WHAT IS GOING ON? CAN ANYONE HELP US PLEASE?