I've been reading these posts with a growing sense of anger. There's no question that PayPal delays these transactions to their benefit. And they're not being truthful about it. They claim that the delay is due to your bank's "processing schedules and funds availability policies." That's simply not true. I just spoke to an ACH service rep from my bank. We all know that ACH fund are reasonably available within a few hours of the transfer. The reasons Paypal's transactions take longer are:
1) They combine your transfer request along with others into batches, which they send at one time (usually within 24 hours).
2) They include instructions in the ACH transfer indicating when the funds are to be made available. This adds 2-3 days (or more) to the transfer.
While #1 seems reasonable, #2 isn't.
Two to three days doesn't sound like much, but when you spread that over the hundreds of thousands of transactions they process each day of money flowing in and out, this gives them free access to millions of dollars that doesn't belong to them. And from what I've read, 2-3 days is the best case scenario. Often times it takes much longer for funds to be made available.
According to my bank rep, they can get away with this because they inform us up front that there will be a delay. And there's no limit to how long that delay can be, as long as they tell us what it is! So, if they want to, they can increase that delay to 7, 15 or 21 days. In essence, because they tell us they're stealing from us, it's legal.
I'm all for reasonable profit, but this really puts the consumer at an unreasonable disadvantage. That's why I recommend that people lodge a formal complaint with the FTC. I've included the link below.
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=en
