Where has my balance gone in my paypal account??

[bargainsfromalj]

Hi, if someone, anybody can give me some advice. I have messaged paypal but have not had any response from them. I had a paypal balance of aprox £34 in October which I chose to leave in there for any small future purchases , I have since purchased some small items and chose to pay by paypal. I expected the money to come from my paypal balance Which it obviously had as my balance is now showing NIL. However, whilst checking my bank statement online the costs of the items I have purchased since October have been drawn out of my bank account. At no point did I transfer the paypal balance to my bank account, so it seems paypal have taken the money from my paypal balance AND my bank account for each purchase I have made since October.....PLEEEEEEEEZE advise me on this

[sharpiemarker · Accepted solution]

@bargainsfromalj 

The only thing I can think of why this is possibly happening is that when paying with PayPal balance, it is backed up with a linked card (credit or debit) or bank account if one can be used as back up instead of a card, and so both accounts are tapped and once the PayPal system determines that you have enough in your PayPal balance to cover a purchase, the payment method will change in the period of a few days (click on the transaction to monitor this change). It'll go from "Paid by PayPal balance backed by Card XXXX" to "Paid by PayPal Balance" if it has enough to stays at "Paid by PayPal balance backed by Card XXXX" where appropriate. The charges on your back up will be temporary holds and then released sooner or later. There are some temporary holds that get released within a week and some may take up to 30 days.

I would keep monitoring the relevant PayPal transactions and bank transactions to see if these statuses changes.  Otherwise, contact customer service for further assistance:

Log on, click HELP on top menu, scroll down to click CONTACT US, and then scroll down to click CALL US or other contact options.

Or contact via social media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PayPalUK

Twitter: @paypalUK 

Facebook (US): https://www.facebook.com/paypal

Twitter (US): @AskPayPal 

My explanation above is something that I have experienced when I check out, the system kept asking me for a card and I didn't understand why at first and so I thought there must be something to this and so I read the checkout screens closely and read the fine print describing this process and sure enough PayPal taps my PayPal balance and my credit card and when the system determines I have enough in my balance, it uses my balance and releases funds off my card sometime later. This also sets up a billing agreement in your automatic payment settings with the merchant site to streamline future checkout transactions which I deactivated after making the purchase so that's something to look out for as well. Charges can sneak up on you. To locate your automatic payments page:

Go to Account Settings (gear icon) > Payments > Manage Automatic Payments

Select merchant on left, click Cancel on the right.