Can't get money back

[Temp20220130c]

Hi I've been using PP for a long while and suddenly I realized that my money held in PayPal doesn't belong to me anymore and I can't get it back anyways.

Recently I've sold some used personal belongings on eBay and the buyer paid the money via PP in AUD.

After the trade is finished, PayPal is telling me that I have some money "Waiting for Me" and I can "Accept" those money.

However, I actually can't because every time I reached the "Choose Back Account" step, all my bank account is hidden with a message like "These bank accounts are not ready to accept the transfer" or something similar. I added different accounts, just none of them can be used.

And these is no way for me to use those money, transfer to others, online shopping etc. I literally can't touch those money anyways.

What's making it worse is I've be calling PayPal Support everyday for 2 weeks, every time I reached them out they'll ask me to repeat what happened and walk me through the steps of "Transfer money to my bank account", whey don't even listen to my real questions and just repeat that "They are well trained" with ignoring all what I'm saying and keep telling me to "try this or maybe that" and suddenly cut off my line.

Finally I was lucky enough and was assigned an representative who is more understanding and he let me know if was due to I don't have an SSN or Tax Number so I can't open the Cash account, hence not being able to convert the AUD -> USD to withdraw them into my US bank account.

But my account was opened in the US many years ago and now I'm living outside the US and now they are asking me to close the account and open a new one in the country I'm living in. 

I already opened the new one in Australia, but how do I close the US account when you force people to zero balance the account but don't give me a way to take the money out to my bank account?

I've been using all my mid night times trying to call them for 2 weeks just want to get this resolved and you know how long it takes to get through the phone, but I'm very frustrated that no one from their team can actually help me with this.

What should I do?

[Temp20220130c]

And no one even read my posts 🙂

[kernowlass]

@Temp20220130c 

Paypal is country specific so if you move countries you have to open another paypal account in the country you reside in and add an address / phone number / bank accounts / cards from within that country.

You should really withdraw any funds / resolve issues / remove cards and bank accounts / cancel any subscriptions and close the old Paypal account before you move countries. If you don't then you may have problems doing so once you have moved and may need to contact customer services for help to resolve things.

However its unlikely you would be able to accept those funds into your U.S account now as you don't live there, so they should return to your buyers and you can then send a money request from a paypal account in the correct country.

[Temp20220130c]

> Paypal is country specific so if you move countries you have to open another paypal account in the country you reside in and add an address / phone number / bank accounts / cards from within that country

I already open an account in the country that I'm living in.

> You should really withdraw any funds / resolve issues / remove cards and bank accounts / cancel any subscriptions and close the old Paypal account before you move countries.

I've been using the account for many years and it just stopped working suddenly. Also I think closing accounts would also lose all my account history like transactions etc. this if how they suggest, but doesn't make too much sense to me.

> If you don't then you may have problems doing so once you have moved and may need to contact customer services for help to resolve things.

Point is no matter how many times I called them, they just can't resolve this for me and walk though the knowledge base articles every time and can't do anything else.

> However its unlikely you would be able to accept those funds into your U.S account now as you don't live there,

Here is the thing that I really didn't understand - if they don't allow money out, they should prevent money in in the first play, can't think of any difficulties doing that since they can block the money out so well.

> so they should return to your buyers and you can then send a money request from a paypal account in the correct country.

Doesn't make sense either - the existence of PayPal being a third party is making sure the money safety for buyers and sellers, and that's why we also pay so high percentage of fees (to eBay or PayPal I can't tell the difference) for each transaction. And they can't just tell me to solve this myself with the buyers.

thanks for the reply though. @kernowlass