There is a company in the UK that sells 2-3 limited edition, limited batch items a day Mon- Fri. Many days, they sell out within hours and occasionally, within 10 minutes. So to snag these items, you typically need to wake up 3am EST to purchase. Shipping is about $13 USD which is expensive enough if you order one item a week but often, many buyers want items on 2 or more. Since the items themselves only cost anywhere from $5-25, paying the shipping for each order gets expensive. The retailer is also unable to combine orders from multiple days. If you wait for both of your items to be available, there's a huge chance the one released earlier in the week will be sold out. This is where group ordering comes in...Someone collects the orders, calculates, divides the shipping costs based on item weight (since 3 items alone can drive shipping costs much higher), invoices and collects the funds from everyone and makes the daily purchases. Once the item is received, the seller sends the items to the individual buyers. Since the person who typically organizes this week's order will be on vacation, I had volunteered in her place. When I spoke to her about some tips, she asked if I was an active seller using PayPal. I've sold maybe a handful of times in the 16 years I've had my PayPal account but haven't in a very long time and use it just to buy. Now I am finding out about PayPal's lovely policy of holding funds for 21 days or until the buyer confirms receiving their goods. While I could certainly front the money for a week, it's just not in my budget to front the money for 21 days. I see that the holding doesn't apply to all accounts, such as accounts in good standing but am wondering if it applies to non-merchants as well. Otherwise, what are my other options? I do not know the others that will be ordering personally, but we are a tight online community. That being said, I don't feel comfortable asking them to send as a "gift" and forfeiting some sort of protection. I emailed PayPal earlier this morning but only received a completely irrelevant canned response. I did as instructed and replied stating my question had not been answered. I'm afraid because of the holiday weekend, I won't hear back in time as I need the payments by Sunday night so no one backs out last minute and get stuck with their part of the shipping costs. Thank you in advance for any advice you might have.
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