I've had Paypal for some time and had a Paypal credit account several years ago that I paid off, and recently got another one. This time things have been different. I bought a camera when I was on my laptop getting my car's oil changed. Immediately I had an automated call from Paypal's "fraud detection" service but wasn't able to answer it (my phone is Google voice so I need a headset). I went home, logged into my account, looked for any messages, and seeing none called back and went through the phone maze and spoke to a rep who couldn't see any issues with my account. Fine, probably didn't recognize the IP address but usually there's a message or e-mail to go with a security concern.
Today at home I ordered a camcorder off of Ebay using "commit to buy," the only other high value item I've ordered, and well below my limit. Everything looked fine until I tried to pay. It went through the payment cycle then seemed to log me out and say "we can't complete this right now" and asked me to try again. After an hour of trying different browsers, clearing my cache, and so on, I called Paypal. This time I was told there was a lock on my transaction but not the account. He couldn't tell me why, my account and the Paypal credit account looked normal and no messages or alerts or warning, and yet he couldn't override. Ebay told me I could only go to the seller like someone who can't pay my bills and ask to cancel.
Is this the status quo now? Once I can untangle from this transaction I can't see any reason to continue using Paypal if it will suddenly block a transaction with no warning and not even tell me it's blocked.
