Higher Release Amount, Paypal holding money over $400 for 21 Days

[NZ-Kiwi]

Hi

I have had a Paypal account for 17 years - since 2004.

I use it for selling a business product through my business website (not for ebay or other platforms).

I have a successful history with Paypal of never having a dispute or claim or refund.  

Not one in 17 years.  

So a PERFECT 100% customer satisfaction history with Zero claims and Zero disputes and Zero refunds over 17 years.

I get more than one order per day and can turn over $4,000-$20,000 on a month and most orders are $120-$400 per order.  

And Paypal can see my past history going back 17 years.

I never had any limits on my account in the past.

But then I choose to leave Paypal and use another provider for my payments for 2 years and have just moved back to Paypal.

Now that I have moved back Paypal has put a $400 limit on money I can release.  

That is less than one days of sales for me.

They said:  "We wanted to remind you that any payments that you receive above $400 will be held temporarily for 21 days and released after the orders are fulfilled"

So at this rate they will release $400 and hold upwards of $4,000-14,000 of payments for 21 days.  

I estimate they will release 3 payments and may hold 30-60 payments for 21 days.

As I mentioned I have a Perfect history with Paypal for 17 years, it is just I used another provider for the last 2 years.

My history of business with Paypal has not changed, my name is the same, I have only one product (that I invented and produce),  I live at the same address, same bank account, ship with the same company.  

I ship quickly, generally the same day or the next day.  I enter the tracking into Paypal.  I cannot use the selected shipping companies in Paypal as they cannot take my product which is 3 meters long, the courier companies on paypal can only take 1.5m long items so I have to use a road freight company, but I manually enter the tracking and the company name.  But this means the tracking will not link through updates within Paypal.

But I have always used this freight company for all the years and Paypal can see this.

So the risk to Paypal has not changed with me.  I am not selling on ebay, it is through my own private website and I am selling the same product, which I invented and make and I only have the one product and that has not changed in all the years.

Paypal sent me an email on 28-8-21 saying I could request an increase, but the links on the email do not work.  There is no "request increase" link on the bottom of the notifictions page so there is no way of requesting this though the email.

Their email said:

“You can easily request that a higher amount is available to you sooner. 

To request an increase, log in to your PayPal account, click the Notifications icon at the top of the page and then click Request Increase at the bottom of the page."

I have messaged them through the message centre and telephoned them.

They do not seem interested.  I get generic copy paste responses….

I got a generic message back from them but this does not apply to me:

"We've reviewed your request but we're unable to increase your release amount this time: 
Here are some tips on how you can have a higher release amount:
• Avoid taking a long time to refund your customers. 
• Ship promptly and provide valid tracking information through PayPal. 
• Work closely with buyers to avoid chargebacks and claims.
Thanks for choosing PayPal.

Sincerely,
Ashish 
PayPal Merchant Risk Operations"

Clearly Ashish did not look at my past history……

……….. or would have seen that none of that he/she wrote applies to me.  

It does not apply to me because:

• Avoid taking a long time to refund your customers.  

- (I HAVE NEVER HAD TO REUFND A CUSTOMER IN 17 YEARS AND THEY CAN SEE THIS HISTORY)
• Ship promptly and provide valid tracking information through PayPal.  

- (I ALWAYS SHIP PROMPTLY WITHIN 2hrs-24hrs AND I ALWAYS ENTER THE TRACKING - THEY CAN SEE THIS IN THE 17 YEARS  OF HISTORY.)
• Work closely with buyers to avoid chargebacks and claims. 

- ( I HAVE NEVER HAD A CLAIM OR CHARGEBACK IN 17 YEARS AND THEY CAN SEE THIS HISTORY)

At this stage I am at the point of leaving them again.  

Why would I stay?

Why would they be so stupid to treat a Perfect customer with a 100% Perfect transaction history and 100% Perfect Customer Satisfaction for 17 years and thousands of transactions for hundreds of thousands of dollars this way?

Why would anyone ever go back to Paypal after they leave?

How does Paypal ever expect to win back past business customers who have left if they treat them this way?

Any ideas on how to resolve this other than leaving Paypal?

I am looking at going to Stripe but that will take me a month to build the site as my website designer needs to rebuild my site to integrate.

My current website I built myself on dreamweaver and I used Paypal as it was easy for me to integrate buttons.  

But if anyone has some advice on other competitors to Paypal that I can quickly build payment buttons on while I move my website payments to Stripe that would be good, until I can build a new website and move from Paypal.

To be honest I am pretty annoyed with how Paypal are treating me.

Paypal are stupid to alienate Perfect Customers like me.

Paypal are forcing me to leave because they are treating me badly.

I have a Perfect history of no claims, no refunds, no disputes in 17 years.  

All I did was have a 2 year gap from not using Paypal.  

I do not sell through ebay or other platforms.  Only through my own business website.  

Thanks everyone for your help and advice