We have all had our share of frustrations with PayPal's paranoia, and as fairly high-volume sellers with 50% of our business international, we have grown quite accustomed to those - even though we have an impeccable customer service track record. Still, just in the last few days we have twice had a situation which is new in our experience, and really infuriating. The more recent one was today, when we received a message that PayPal had launched an inquiry into a relatively small payment from the UK last week. There is nothing about the transaction that would make us or them reasonably question its legitimacy. This will surely turn out to be just like the almost-daily transactions "held for payment review" upfront which have never ONCE in our experience failed to eventually clear. Please bear in mind that the customer had not filed a claim or chargeback of any kind - this is just PayPal in their own wisdom "investigating". And as a precaution, they "reverse" all related funds. The problem is that, since this payment was received in British pounds, which we had converted to USD before requesting a withdrawal a couple of days ago, that momentarily left us with a small negative balance on the books for THAT CURRENCY ONLY. We still have plenty of funds in our USD balance and several other currencies. And yet, even though their theoretical "hold" was amply covered by funds in other balances, PayPal canceled the rather large USD withdrawal which should have otherwise been processed today. Now, in repsonse to their inquiry we have dutifully provided PayPal with the Express Mail tracking information, etc., and I don't doubt that the inquiry will be resolved quickly. And we are likely to receive other payments in pounds which will cover that negative balance within the next 24 hours anyway. But no matter what, PayPal, through its own actions, has created a situation to their benefit. At a minimum, there will be an additional two-day delay before that large withdrawal will be processed and credited to our bank account. The only way to speed that process along would be for me to transfer funds from one of the other currency balances in GBP (and then back to USD later), and of course PayPal benefits greatly from the spread on those currency transactions. My primary question/vent is: how can they justify canceling a withdrawal astronomically larger than the amount in "dispute" when it is from another currency balance, and the negative balance amount is well below the available funds in the PayPal account in the various currencies even AFTER the withdrawal is processed. In this case the amounts involved are not that large, but that is what makes this so particularly infuriating - the total lack of a sense of proportion. Even if they were somehow to have to eat this transaction completely, PayPal's losses on it woudl represent a mere fraction of their earnings in fees from us over one month.
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