PayPal Community

Well my advice to you is to go do some research or at least read the previous posts. There is no simple way to get Paypal to change their reserve policy. If you are going for legal action, be prepared to go through such a hassle, that may or not make your business worse, due to all the money, time, and dedication that will be required.  Just ask yourself if it is worth it to go through all the troubles of legal action toward Paypal. If it was that easy, then it would have been done because this rolling reserve policy is not anything new.   Take the advice of many, and just leave paypal as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more money they will hold from you. I personally left Paypal after 2 days of signing up with Payments Pro. I instead just offer regular Paypal Payments Standard on the website for people who feel more comfortable with Paypal. As for Credit Card payments, just go with an actual Mercant Providor such as Authorize.net, Quickbooks, or the many others that are offered out there.     ... View more

highwaysong,   I was in your same situation about a month ago. I will give you my honest advice and opinion on this. After reading the forums for days and speaking to Paypal reps, I came to the conclusion that they just don't care. I have a drop-ship based business as well, so I totally understand where you are coming from. We need to pay for the items before we can ship them out. I tried speaking to reps, and they just don't have any sympathy and was told they could do nothing about the rolling reserve. Their excuse, is that this rolling reserve is a common practice. The truth is... It really isn't. Rolling reserve may be legal and may be used, BUT it is not a common practice when rolling reserve is abused. My account was hit with a rolling reserve the minute I signed up for Paypal Pro. Most merchant accounts only hit merchants with a rolling reserve after they review the history and base it on their amount of chargebacks, and of course other factors. The point is that most merchant accounts let you make a history first, then hit you with a rolling reserve as a penalty action only if they feel as it is required; NOT as a first thing basis.   My advice for you is to cancel Paypal or just go back to offering paypal standard and sign with an other merchant account. The only real benefit for me is that Paypal offered a shipping label program which made setting up orders super fast. However, that was not a good enough benefit to let them hold my money. I suggest just going with another payment gateway.     ... View more

Haha we are one step ahead of ya =]. We just cancelled payments pro about an hour ago. Had Paypal payments pro for a total of 2 business days, they have about $200 in reserve. Yeah I figured I mightaswell cancel now before they take even more. I spoke to a representative myself and figured there was nothing that can be done as well. I was told that in the future, when Paypal decides that a Rolling Reserve was not required, they would remove it from our account, but I can tell from the way he said it, that the chances of that happening was slim.   Thanks for the help everybody, you guys helped me realize that Paypal is really that frustrating. I was blinded by the convenience of their tools and the shipping label service. The shipping label service and gateway really makes it an all-in-one. However the high rolling reserve makes it unbearable. So future advice for people, be aware of that. %30/90 day is ridiculous. I honestly would've been okay with a 10%/30 day, even. Good luck to everybody, I will try out authorize.net to see if I can get a better plan. ... View more

I know this is an old post, but I hope Paypal reps read these threads and stop the rolling reserves. I understand rolling reserves weren't started by Paypal and has been around for awhile. However, a lot of the common and more well known merchant accounts don't do this, so why can't Paypal cancel reserves as well. I highly doubt they need to hold reserves on us, especially at this strict of a process.   HELLLOOO PAYPALLLL, not everybody makes 30% profit on transactions... By holding these reserves, you are killing our businesses. ... View more

I just upgraded to Website Payments Pro, hoping that being able to accept CC's on our actual website would help business. Been one full day of having website payments pro and I'm already looking into a new merchant account.... probably Quickbooks or my Banks merchant services. I am getting hit by 30% reserve fees also, and don't find their reasons justafiable for holding our money. The only reason I liked Paypal in the first place is because they are a gateway and merchant all in one, PLUS they have a shipping label service that saves a lot of time as opposed to going to usps.com itself. Anybody know what we can do about this rolling reserve problem before I cancel and just switch over? I figure the sooner I cancel the better, so less of my money is in reserve. ... View more