Money on hold

[flipside_mel]

Hello fellow PO'd PayPalers.

What is going on?

All of a sudden (stared Saturday) my Payments are pending in PayPal. The buyers don't know. I wrote to one of mine and she was informed that I had to receive the money and that I was not registered with PayPal. Absurd!

Is this the 21-day thing I'm reading about?

I really don't want to ship my merchandise BEFORE I have my money..Even though PayPal may have it, I don't trust that I will ever get it. I mean its all one big computer running the show.

Calling them is a total waste of time.

Any advice?

Thanks much!

[PayPal_Adrian · Accepted solution]

Have you recently changed your email address on your PayPal account? In most instances, the root of this issue is that the auction form that was filled out included a misspelled or outdated email address.

You can check to see what email address was used by bringing up one of the items and clicking on "Sell Similar." Check the payments section and note the email address there.

If you still have access to this email address, add and confirm it on your PayPal account to accept the payments. This has to be done within 30 days of the payments being made or they are automatically returned.

If you don't have access to this email address, you'll want to ask your buyers to cancel their payments so that they can manually send it to your new email address via the Send Money tab. Make sure you reach out to them and let them know what to do, and provide them your new email address. You may want to ask for theirs if you are sending them a money request via PayPal to help facilitate the new payment.

[flipside_mel]

Thank you very much for your thorough response.

A month or so ago a bogus email address was on a few of my listings. At that time, I had to go through the process you delineated, however I was told at that time to open a case to cancel the transaction, have the buyers accept the cancellation and then pay me via "SEND MONEY."

When I listed the auctions in question, I did "sell one like this" to set them up BUT I changed the email address to the correct one. Then, I double-checked after the listings were posted to make sure the corret email adress was there AND it was.

So, I'm not sure what happened to have these payments linked to the erroneous email...maybe this is something Ebay and/or PayPal should look into.

At any rate, thank you again for your response. I will go forward with contacting my buyers. I hope I don't lose one like I did last time...

[flipside_mel]

Okay...update...I have notified my buyers. One has responded, cancelled her original payment, and sent me money through PayPal...STILL NOTHING.

The status icons on Ebay have not changed.

I cannot "claim money" as Ebay is telling me to do. I cannot locate her payment at all.

In her response to me, she stated "OK, I CANCELLED & RE-MADE THE PAYMENT. IT WANTED TO LINK ME TO THE EBAY AUCTION, AND SO I LET IT, ALTHOUGH I USED THE EMAIL ADDRESS THAT YOU SENT ME."

Any more thoughts?

[flipside_mel]

HELLO Adrian...where are you? I am still having problems...

[PayPal_Adrian]

flipside,

From what you described  that your buyer told you, it sounds like they went back through the same eBay check out process - which will again route it back to the old email address.

You'll want to ask them to check their PayPal to see what email address it went to.  If it went to the old one, they're going to have to cancel again.

Ask them to use the "Send Money" feature directly from https://www.paypal.com and manually enter your updated email address. Don't use the Pay for eBay Items feature.

Once you receive the payment, you can manually mark the item as paid in My eBay.

Adrian

[Joan3]

I had a note from eBay just a couple of days ago saying they were trying to settle a dispute with PayPal.  Could be that is part of the problem.  Hold-ups until they settle their differences.  Should be a better way to handle transactions though.