I would like to hear from someone at PayPal the answers to several specific questions relating to the pending payment policy. I have read the various threads on this, and the relevant section of the Terms of Service Agreement, but these are questions not answered elsewhere.
FIrst, the background. Like so many others here, I was caught by surprise when payment was held up for an item I sold on eBay. The item sold for $455 and because it is heavy and bulky, the shipping charge was $225 (in the actual fact, it cost me more than that amount to pack and ship and I ate the difference). The winning bidder paid immediately via PayPal. PayPal immediately marked this as a "pending" payment. The item was shipped less than 48 hours after the auction closed and delivered yesterday. I supplied the tracking information to PayPal/eBay as instructed. The payment still shows simply as "pending" and when I click on "Details" I am told that status applies for another 14 days, OR 3 days after PayPal can determine that the item was delivered, OR 3 days after the buyer leaves positive feedback.
There is no way for me to verify that PayPal/eBay knows now that the item was, in fact, delivered yesterday. There is no way to know when and if a change in pending status has occurred. The policy is ambiguous as to whether delivery even matters for an eBay auction item, or if only positive buyer feedback will release the funds in less than 21 days.
QUESTION 1: If the item was sold pursuant to an eBay auction, is the pending status changed when the SOONER OF or LATER OF the two listed events occur: provable delivery or positive buyer feedback? How can I verify that PayPal now knows the item was delivered and, therefore, that the 3-day clock has started to count down?
PayPal positions itself as the most convenient way for a seller to accept payments, especially on eBay transactions. I was charged a $20+ fee for this transaction. I had to front the $225 shipping charge. I now have to wait an arbitrary amount of time for payment, with no feedback from PayPal as to status before or after the buyer submitted his PayPal payment transaction. In the very best case, the funds will hit my bank account two weeks from when the auction closed because of the holiday weekend.
QUESTION 2: Why is this good for me as a seller? You are charging me premium transaction fees, what service am I AS A SELLER getting in return for this policy and the fees charged?
The most basic tenet of contract law is that the parties have to agree to the terms in order for there to be a contract. PayPal's Terms of Service Agreement relating to pending payments is hopelessly vague, to the degree that I question that it constitutes a contract. It would not be a valid contract for me to say, for example, "I can do whatever I want for any reason" and for you to agree, and for me to then take your car and your house. I could argue that your agreement was stupidity on your part (which is, essentially, PayPal's response to sellers in the various threads and is vaguely insulting), but I could not defend such capricious actions in court based on that "contract." Particularly in a dependent situation like this
The PayPal pending payment policy does not, for example, let me know, as a seller, whether I or any given transaction are subject to being pended, what I can do to prevent it, or what specific criteria PayPal will use. PayPal relies on terms like "high risk" that clearly mean something very different to the sellers who have spoken out in this forum than they mean to PayPal. In no way would I, as a reasonable seller, read the text of the TOSA and interpret it as meaning what PayPal is, in fact, doing. You are doing things that are not reasonable interpretations that a reasonable seller would be expected to conclude are consistent with the TOSA's language. They appear to be arbitrary and capricious and unrelated to the stated policy.
In short, a seller "agreeing" to the TOSA can have no basis for understanding what it now turns out PayPal means by those words.
QUESTION 3: How does the TOSA, regarding pending payment holds, constitute a valid contract, given that you provide no way for the seller to know what he/she is agreeing to and that reasonable sellers clearly think you are interpreting this language in ways opposite to the way they understand it?
Given that PayPal relies on its "sole discretion," there is an implied obligation for the policy and its enforcement to rationally relate to its purpose.
As with so many others, there is no evidence in my case of any kind of a problem. This was a personal sale, but I own a company that accepts credit cards based in large part on my own credit history, and have had no problem with approvals for those transactions from banks, or any problems with any specific transactions. There is no history of complaints against me personally or my company, I have no criminal history, no financial fraud, solid credit rating, bank account has been verified. In other words, PayPal has reached a decision about my "risk" that is opposite what other financial institutions that provide similar services have concluded.
QUESTION 4: How does the pending payment discretion policy of PayPal rationally relate to actual risks to buyers, its putative purpose? What does the term "high likelihood" mean anyway - 50%? 10%? 1%? What statistical evidence does PayPal have that the criteria used are predictive of a "high likelihood" (whatever that means) of buyer dissatisfaction? Is there any such evidence at all that eBay frequency is a reliable predictor, or is this just someone's guess?
Clearly, this policy benefits PayPal financially. You get the benefit of interest on the funds while they are in pending status. It is like travellers checks - the financial institution makes money on the float. Therefore, PayPal has set itself up with a clear conflict of interest, between fairly interpreting ambiguous or discretionary sections of the TOSA, e.g., what constitutes "risk" to buyers, and what is financially beneficial for PayPal.
QUESTION 5: Will PayPal remove this conflict by paying interest on the funds held? If not, how can you claim to not have an egregious conflict of interest in your unilateral interpretation of the TOSA?
