I fell upon this topic by accident and knew nothing about the 3-week hold policy. At first I thought it was for those with numerous complaints or for new sellers so I thought, "what a great idea", since I never bid on higher priced items from sellers with only a few smaller sales. But after reading sellers complaints, I was shocked to realize that Ebay, which is also PayPal, is strictly holding funds to make millions on other people's interest! Wow, that is dirty. I'm sure they worked it out to be legal but that is still "cheap" of them. I buy from Ebay often but I QUIT SELLING here a long time ago strictly because the take a good chunk from the Ebay commissions and THEN ALSO from PayPal and if you accept credit card payments from PayPal, they charge you the same % on payments you receive even from those you do NOT use a credit card (as if they did use a c.c.). For those reasons, I have turned to Craigslist to sell and get higher prices for the same items and I don't give out part of my money to 2 departments of Ebay. And I don't also have to let the same company make interest on the entire amount for 3 weeks! Sellers should not have to provide a tracking # (which you, again, have to pay more for) which I'm sure Ebay/PayPal will, one day, find a way to get the post office to pay them a portion for that too. Even though I'm no longer a seller because of the double-dipping fees, I feel bad for the sellers who have remained loyal to Ebay. Ebay all ready makes a crap load with their fees and now to make interest off of those sales is just con-like. Whether they slipped it into their policy or not! I am a buyer here and I'm not foolish enough to believe for a second that the holds are for the buyers protection. It's one thing if they put that policy up front in bold so it doesn't get overlooked and they admit that the reason is to make more money "and take it or leave it, that's part of how we make our profits" and not pretend it's for other reasons. Then, no one can be upset that they didn't know. But when policies are long, you get tired of reading every detail of small print. If we read every small print detail of everyting we deal with in life, we would never have time for anything else. At the risk of ruining the experience of buying on Ebay for myself (items here are cheaper and more plentiful than CraigsList) being a seller there is a wonderful experience compared to the complicated "fine print mess" and demands of Ebay and Paypal. I hate to be negative because I once LOVED Ebay and I wish they would listen to the people that have made them so successful and implement some good business give-and-take practices. ***since posting, I have read from another poster that you have to PAY for these shipping labels to receive funds earlier? You've got to be kidding me! By purchaseing a shipping label OR providing a tracking number only proves that you can still ship defective items or dirt & rocks in said package. That policy does not even make sense.
... View more