Paypal needs to at THE VERY LEAST communicate more clearly between issues with Ebay and issues with Paypal Business customers using Web Payments. I'm a graphic designer and 99% of my income comes in through my website from clients paying for my design services already rendered (No Shipping Required). Today, I'm panicked because I received this email: "Your payments will be held in a pending balance We're writing to let you know about a change to your PayPal account. Starting Mar/30/2011, money from payments you receive will be placed in a pending balance for up to 21days. By doing this, we're making sure that there's enough money in your account to cover potential refunds or claims. Even though you can't access the money right away, please ship orders quickly and communicate with your customers. After 21 days, you can withdraw money from each payment as long as the customer hasn't filed a dispute, chargeback, claim, return, or reversal. The money may be available sooner if: We can confirm that the item was delivered. Your buyer leaves positive feedback. (Applies only to eBay items) This change isn't necessarily permanent. We'll review your account every 35 days and re-evaluate if we should continue to hold your payments. If we decide to stop holding payments, we'll email you to let you know. Why are my payments being held? We reviewed your account and determined that there's a relatively higher than average risk of future transaction issues (such as claims, or chargebacks, or payment reversals). We understand that it may be inconvenient to have your payments temporarily held but please know that we didn't make this decision lightly. Before deciding to hold payments, we consider many factors. These factors include account and transaction activity, the rate of customer disputes, the type of business a seller runs, average delivery timeframes, customer satisfaction, performance and history. Questions? Let us know We understand you’d like to have immediate access to the money you receive and we’re here to answer your questions about this change to your account. For more information and tips on what you can do to avoid having your future payments held, please see our Frequently Asked Questions. To speak to a Customer Service representative, log in to your PayPal account and click “Contact Us” at the bottom of any page. Thanks, PayPal" I immediately log in to the website, go through the dog and pony show that produces no real answers finally call with my web pin, get a person that puts me on hold for 18 minutes - my cell drops the call - I start over and finally get another person who talks in circles about ebay feedback scores, ebay, ebay, ebay...... Yes, I use my paypal to occasionally buy or sell on ebay - but again this is not my MAJOR CONCERN. Fine, I just won't sell anything on Ebay ever again. Big whoop! (I have 100% positive feedback for more than the last 12 months on ebay & all 12's on detailed feedback. I did just today receive a message from ebay about a delay in an $18 payment to a seller in Croatia. Their listing said they accepted paypal but sent me to another site to process paypal payment - I thought it was a phishing site or something and stopped until I could find more info about this company. Anyway immediately after receiving the message from ebay today, I investigated some more and found that it was a legitimate company that international sellers use, so I made the payment right then.) Apparently this ONE misunderstanding over $18 sends my Paypal account up for review and warrants holding funds? I've never had one of my clients making business services payments through my website dispute or request a refund. So after a long discussion with the second customer service rep - he swears it only applies to payments received through ebay, but now I'm still nervous. I can't afford to have my income disrupted for such a ridiculous reason. If he was telling the truth and my business payments won't be held then great! But communicate that clearly in your email rather than giving me a heart attack!!!!!! Stop communicating with your customers as if they are only using Ebay! If the rep wasn't clear on the issue and I DO have a problem receiving my client's payments after Mar. 30th, then I guess I'll have to open a separate account for use with ebay or just stop using them. Of course, they make that difficult also, because you can't have two accounts using the same credit card. ANYWAY, IT WOULD BE GREAT IF I COULD GET WRITTEN CONFIRMATION THAT MY COMPANY'S WEBSITE PAYMENTS WILL NOT BE HELD BECAUSE OF SOME STUPID ISSUE WITH A $18 PURCHASE ON EBAY!!!!!! Then maybe I can sleep at night. I can't afford to have my sole income held up for a month while you review my account. I've paid Paypal a percentage of every payment that I receive through my website for the convenience of not having to wait for checks in the mail and make trips to the bank all the time..... And this is how I'm treated? Sorry, but that **bleep**. BTW Ebay's customer service is even worse... well nonexistent really. I couldn't access my account for days once and got absolutely NO response from them. But, God forbid you are delayed in anyway communicating with them, you'll be flogged in the public square!
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