e-checks - anyone else defaulted to e-checks?

[mitchd123]

Despite having a bank account set up in paypal for over 10 years, and a Credit card,  I went to may a ebay payment, and for the first time ever, it defaulted to e-check.   I thought this was something new way to handle instant transfers, so I went along....mistake.  

The seller contacted me and said my payment had not cleared.  I value my perfect feedback score on ebay, and this puts my feedback score at risk.   It was going to take a week to pay via echeck.  Finding no way to cancel the echeck and use another method of payment,  I asked the e-bay vendor to cancel the transaction.   I had to then go into ebay and cancel it from my side as well.    I initiated a new purchase with the ebay vendor, and this time made sure to pay with my credit card.    About a week later, PP tells me the e-check has now cleared.    Making payments should NOT be this hard. 

Some suggestion to Paypal to improve quality of customer experience, as I investigate other methods of payment:

The user should be prompted that an e-check will not be instantaneous.  If there is such a warning, it was not clear to me. 

There should be some way to open an issue.  Granted this transaction was small, but had someone hacked my account for thousands of dollars, I'm not  finding a quick and easy way to contact Paypal?   Scary. 

A bank account should not require that a CC be linked.   Instead simply require a minimum balance.    Linking exposes the PP user should PP or their account be hacked.  I'm sure PP could never be hacked...Experian, Sony, Staples, etc,etc,etc, 

A cancelled transaction should put a stop on an e-check. 

There should be a way to cancel an e-check.

[kernowlass · Accepted solution]

@mitchd123

An echeque is sent when a credit card is not linked to a paypal account OR that card has expired.

It is also sent if a buyer has had a recent failed bank transfer OR negative balance.

Equally it can be sent if paypal feel for any security reasons that it should be. This is because when you pay normally its never instant paypal CREDIT the seller for you and paypal take the wait for the funds to transfer. However they only do that if they feel there is or has never been a risk to that transaction.

Your seller can cancel an echeque however you can't cancel an already authorised and pending payment ie those funds can't do a u-turn so you have to wait for them to process through to paypal and then they are credited to your balance.

You can see an echeque is not instant as there should be a clearance date on your paypal account when you pay and it should say uncleared or pending instead of completed.

Its easy to contact customer services.............

Click on the words "Help / Contact" at the bottom of paypals pages and use the phone option in the blue band at the top OR very bottom of page dependent on what country you are in. Scroll down past the list of help questions and click on 'Call us' bottom of that page. Log in and get the code.

OR

have you considered contacting Customer Service via Facebook or Twitter?
You can send them a personal message from their facebook or twitter pages.
It's: https://www.facebook.com/PayPal and @AskPayPal for Twitter.

Lastly I am confused about your worry about your Ebay feedback, as buyers can NEVER get neg or neutral feedback then as a buyer you will always have 100% pos feedback. Only sellers can get negs or neutral feedback and they can only leave positive for a buyer or leave no feedback at all so you are at zero risk of getting bad feedback.

Hope some of that helped, took a while to type it all up.....LOL