I have a Personal Account. Prior to the last paypal website revision I could get to a setting that blocks payments from non-US account holders and/or block payments in currencies that I do not hold. I know it used to be there, as I saw it and was contemplating using it.
I called paypal support to have them walk me through the settings to block international payments, and they told me a Personal Account holder can no longer access those settings. They said it changed with the last website update. Now only Business Account Holders can access those settings. I had to make several paypal support calls and argue with them before they agreed to make the change for me. I called back again to verify it was done.
Why was this change made? If paypal is going to charge an additional 1.5% fee for international payments, shouldn't the personal account holder have the right to refuse those?
The reason I want to change it is that I have my ebay set up not to sell outside the USA, but international bidders wih a USA drop and ship company address are allowed to place a bid. Some of these drop and ship companies are just not reliable, I don't want to deal with them. I want to have control over who is doing my shipping all the way to my customer's residence. I'm in the midst of a dispute where my item was delivered to US address (Amarex International) on June 1st and then 10 days later it arrives broken in Abu Dhabi, UAE. At the time of the sale I had no idea that it was going offshore. Ebay tells me I have to prove it was re-shipped, and prove that the item is not in the USA.
Shame on me, I didn't check the fee on paypal, I just assumed no one from outside the US could bid. The US shipping address makes no mention that it is an international shipping company. The US address had the buyer's name on it. The strange thing was a code in the second line of the address: AUH.
After the dispute was initiated I found that AUH is the airport code of ABu Dhabi international airport.
So, OK, fool me once, shame on you, I don't want to be fooled again, but paypal won't let me make the setting changes that personal account holders used to have access to. I'm not certain that they actually made the setting change for me, I'll have to take their word for it, but if one gets through again, I will not ship.
