Friends and Family payment held with no release by Paypal.

[audioguy]

I send several thousand dollars to someone as Friends and Family, the transaction is marked as completed on my end, the receiver sees the money in his Paypal account, but Paypal will not allow him to transfer the money to his linked bank account.

In fact, he tried this, but Paypal got his bank to REVERSE THE TRANSFER!

The money is nowhere! Neither I nor my recipient can access this money!

Paypal says there is nothing they can do when I contacted them (and when my recipient contacted them).

This is crazy! I've had this Paypal account for 15 years with no issues, complaints, negative feedback or anything.

How could Paypal legally do this? They won't even agree to undo the transaction.

[sharpiemarker · Accepted solution]

@audioguy 

I imagine its some kind of security/risk issue due to amount and perhaps it being irregular, for either account in terms of activity, resulted in the callback. May take a handful of days when this money will show up again I reckon, at least back to the recipient's balance and held for further review. Customer service can't override the security. If you view all this from a security standpoint and that PayPal is charged with complying with anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist funding, US Patriot Act, etc regulations, it all make sense. Security is tight these days.

Call them customer service again and speak to someone higher up:

Click HELP on top menu, scroll down to click CONTACT US, and then scroll down to click CALL US.

Call early, during business hours, west coast time to try to get a US rep. 

Say "Live Agent" to the automated recording.

Or private message via social media:

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

Twitter (US): @AskPayPal