Permanently restricted account.

[paulhh]

I have received a notification saying:

“You can't use PayPal anymore We've noticed activity on your account that's not in line with our User Agreement, so we can no longer offer you PayPal services.”

I have been using Paypal Virtual Terminal for around 10 years and have done nothing different recently to what I have always done. Paypal refuse to tell me their reason for this restriction. Any advice?

[angelleye]

Have you studied the user agreement? Can you think of any reason at all based on the user agreement and your procedures that they would have flagged you?

The first thing you need to do is figure out what you did (or what could have led them to believe that what you did) is against their policy. If you can pinpoint that then you could try to gather evidence that shows it was a misunderstanding if that is the case.

You really don't have any clue what it could be? In most cases people have some idea what PayPal flagged. What sort of products/services are you selling over VT? Are you doing anything more than VT?

[Jojogirl06]

It doesn't matter if he figures out what he did or not it seems like 99.9% of the time there is no changing it. And it doesn't matter anyway they can limit you for whatever reason they want to or none at all. Just they want your to hold your $ long enough to make money themselves. Their user agreement is so so evil. It basically says "We own your money and have the right to do what we want with it whenever we want to with no warning. If you want to use Paypal (one of the most prevalent and widely used payment platforms available online) you are agreeing to these terms and acknowledge that there is a likely possiblity at some point we will hold your money and combine it with the money of other users who have a held balance and we'll use it in liquid investments." On top of that PayPal owns the interest or other earnings on these investments. Which means they are "borrowing" (i use that very loosely) money from their users to see if they can make money on liquid investments. They usually "hold" your money for 180 days (6months) which is usually long enough to see a return on the investment they made with your money and then you can maybe finally have it back." I admit I've fallen victim to this issue. I have since read the user agreement and I can't believe just how awful this company really is. And how they would just outright take advantage of the fact that most people don't sit and pick through a user agreement with a fine toothed comb and usually just accept without reading. They have no concern for their users at all. NONE. I'm fairly certain that if everyone that was signing up for Paypal's services actually read that user agreement top to bottom (which they change whenever they flipping want to without notifying current customers that significant changes have been made that should call for users to read accept the new agreement before further use) and had a basic understanding of what was in it Paypal wouldn't exist. I learned my lesson for sure and guess I will be reading the user agreement for EVERYTHING I use in the future. Could have really used MY money they're holding a few times over now. Sorry bout your luck. Or maybe good luck proceeding and maybe you'll have a better outcome than most have. If you figured out a way to get them to lift your restriction I'd love to know. Otherwise hopefully I've educated you a little. I'll just be waiting for a Class Action to happen. It seems inevitable (I hope).

[angelleye]

@Jojogirl06

Read any user agreement for any payment processor. They are all very similar. Imagine if you owned a massive payment processing company processing billions of dollars, and you were paying out millions covering disputes every year because legitimate sellers were spending money before their buyer was happy, and then couldn't offer refunds when they had legitimate complaints. Even when sellers agreed they owed the refund they couldn't pay it because they spent the money already, and you're left holding the bag. I think you'd be putting policies in place to fix that problem real quick, just like all the processors do.

This theory that they hold your money to earn interest is just silly. They hold the funds to cover any potential disputes that could come from the customers that made purchases in the previous months. Credit card companies are the ones that let people submit chargebacks and give them their money back months later, so PayPal has to hold funds to cover that period of time when flags are raised. Again, all processors have some form of this. It's a very standard procedure, and it has nothing to do with earning a whopping 1% on bank cash right now. If PayPal really wanted to hold those funds they could deploy a lot better than that, but they can't. It has to sit there on hold because it's not their money. It's yours, and you will get it back if you wait out the holding period and you don't have disputes/refunds that use it all up.

As for changing the terms, I get a notification (actually about 10 of them because I have a bunch of accounts) any time the policies are adjusted in any way at all. If you aren't seeing those notifications then you aren't paying attention to your inbox, or you're filtering them out somehow.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but I'm curious what sort of products / services you're selling? What sort of volume are you doing? Did you have a major spike in sales at some point? Did you have a spike in disputes/refunds? Give us some info about your actual situation and we might be able to help you figure out how to avoid such problems in the future with PayPal or any other payment processor.

[paulhh]

I run a long established touring company for overseas visitors to the U.K. As I said previously there has been no variation in my use of Paypal VT for almost 10 years. However, it seems that it is not something which I did that is the problem. An email from Paypal says:

“After a recent review of your account activity, it has been determined that your PayPal account is linked to other PayPal account that have violated PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy. Therefore, your account has been permanently limited.”

As I do not have a “PayPal account is linked to other PayPal account” this causes me to think that someone has created an unauthorised link to my account. If this is the case then my financial security has been compromised and I need to know just what Paypal think has happened so that I can rectify the situation and nullify this potential security problem.

[angelleye]

Do you have an account manager with PayPal or are you dealing with standard phone reps and generic email responses?

Have you called and requested to "escalate the call to a manager"? I've had luck with that in the past.

[paulhh]

No account manager. My emails to the addresses suggested just get generic, computer generated replies or are completely ignored. The telephone "Help line" just results in scripted brick walls.   I will try your escalation suggestion. Thanks.

[paulhh]

I have read the T&Cs thoroughly and have not transgressed any of them.

[TonyAS1]

Same here literally I’ve been with in 10 years and all the sudden I get a notification as well. How do we resolve this?

[paulhh]

I gave up in the end. If you get anywhere, post your method here.