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I've processed successfully hundreds of thousands of dollars with my Paypal account over the pat 4-5 years. My account has been on review a few different times
by sabslaurent 10y ago
I've processed successfully hundreds of thousands of dollars with my Paypal account over the pat 4-5 years. My account has been on review a few different times because of volume spikes (around the holiday season, I do ecommerce). When that happens, I usually reach out to Paypal and we discuss like humans, I explain where I'm coming from, they make suggestions and we get it settled. Around November 2016 Paypal reached out and told me due to the disputes coming in they need a $5000 set reserve + a 10% rolling reserve which will be released 90 days after a transaction.
I accepted and since then Paypal has called me on 3 different occasions to check up on me and my efforts to reduce the dispute rate. We discussed and the calls seemed to go very well without them having any requests or EVER telling me my account is at risk of being limited and shut down due to disputes.
Towards the end of January I myself realized I tired of the disputes (seemed to be a quality issue with the product which got hundreds of 5 star reviews on my site but still disputes were coming in at around 2%) so I slowly stopped the business meaning I stopped advertising and the only sales coming in were trickling in organically. My volume went down from $200k a month to about $10k a month.
On Wednesday I log in to my Paypal account and it says it's limited they need more information.
They asked for Photo ID, bank statement, proof of address, supplier invoice, supplier contact info and proof of delivery for the last 5 transactions.
I provided everything but the proof of delivery for the last 5 transactions. From the resolution center whenever I clicked proof of delivery it brought me to a page with no transactions so of course I could not provide proof of delivery for transactions that don't exist.
I contacted Paypal letting them know I submitted everything but proof of delivery since there's a bug in their system, they said no worries i'll get an email requesting the transactions they need tracking for and I could just reply back.
I never got that email, but I did wake up Thursday morning with an Appeal Denied automated email saying my account is closed and the money will be frozen for 180 days. That's $20k CAD in my reserve + $15k USD in my available balance. Keep in mind in the past 30 days I processed less than $10k usd on Paypal in total.
I reached out to a supervisor at Paypal and told him what his happening simply doesn't make sense, i provided everything they needed except for what their system was unable to request/receive and that if they had any issue with what I provided they should tell me what it is and help me resolve instead of giving me the hammer for no reason. He said he couldn't help me but opened a ticket for both his supervisor and a supervisor from the limitation team to call me within 24 hours.
The limitation department supervisor never called me back but the business support manager called me back a few hours later. He called me from an unknown number in the evening, told me there's been a mistake, they added a second set of eyes to my account and they agree with me the limitation was unnecessary and wrongfully made. He said he just has a few questions and I will either get a restored access email in a couple hours or a call asking for more information in order to get it settled but he said there's a small chance of that happening, realistically the account will just be restored within a couple hours.
I never got an email or call again, so I called the following day. When I called the rep basically told me there's no evidence of a call and there are no notes on my account from that person/call and nothing was moved forward for a review.
I told him that is nonsense and to look harder. He eventually tells me there's evidence of a call but no notes, they tried to reach out to that supervisor and he wasn't available so there's nothing they could do for me, the decision is final.
I'm being treated like a fraud and a criminal when I'm a legitimate entrepreneur who's processed 10's of thousands of transactions successfully. I also paid them thousands of dollars in fees, never had a negative balance or anything of the sort that would put Paypal at risk.
Now whenever I call they are extremely rude telling me the account is closed they're holding the money and there's absolutely nothing I can do.
They have been rude, lying, inconsistent, unfair and have made 0 effort to resolve this amicably.
They have 0 logical reason to hold $40k of my money for 180 days, the only reason I can think of is they do this on 10's of thousands of accounts and gain big money off the interest.
When I log in to my account there's a notification saying they need more information from me. When I click on that notification it brings me to a page that says the account is limited because they need more information regarding my recent sales, they do not say what information or how to provide information. That is straight up illegal and a complete abuse of power.
I know there are thousands of Paypal horror stories but I genuinely feel abused. I have expenses, a family and so on and need that cash flow and no one at Paypal can be consistent for more than one phone call or help me resolve my issue, it's pathetic.
Just had to vent and hopefully this will give them some of the negative attention they deserve.
- throwaway_374 10y agoYou have my sympathies. A firmly drafted lawyer's letter should get their attention very quickly. This will cost you a small amount but it will bypass CS protocol and get you a senior.
- jasode 10y ago>My account has been on review a few different times because of volume spikes (around the holiday season, I do ecommerce) What type of products do you sell? That also affects the triggers for reviews and freezes. >but still disputes were coming in at around 2% 2% is really high. A lot of non-Paypal CC payment processors will flag your account when chargebacks exceed 1%.
- cpncrunch 10y ago>2% is really high. A lot of non-Paypal CC payment processors will flag your account when chargebacks exceed 1%. Yes, 2% is insanely high. I do about 2k/month through paypal and haven't had a chargeback in years. I think the last one was a few years ago, and that was just because a customer had their credit card stolen and just charged back all transactions they didn't recognise.
- kweks 10y agoDepends on the product. I've seen businesses run at 10%, and others at 0%. Until you have a massive, public facing product that sells internationally across many facets of customer - you've probably never experienced the hell of CB management. Typically, you'll get: - Stolen cards (obvious ones) - Stolen cards (very insidious ones - all customer information, proxies that match the customer address, etc). Typically the only way to catch these guys is to have a hugely expensive 'express delivery' option, and manually filter each order that comes through on this option. - Dumb thieves (chargeback the day after delivery) - Smarter thieves (chargeback the day after posting) - Horrible people (chargeback months later) - Idiots (Unable to use a product, so chargeback) - Assholes (Weaponise chargebacks to blackmail you) Words to anyone struggling to fight CBs / fraud: - Use machine learning, ie SiftScience (or similar) to screen all transactions. - If you use Stripe, use their Radar feature. - If an order gets one flag, place it into a review queue, and manually process it 24 - 72 hours later. Emailing a customer smokes out the majority of fraud. - If an order gets two flags - blackhole the order (refund the card, if charged) The biggest thing is making your fraud processes opaque to scammers. If your site returns true/false responses, they'll just keep hammering until they find a combo of cards / proxies / etc that works. The only way around it is to shadow-ban: - Send blackholed orders to an approval page. - Send blackholed orders an approval email. Train your customer service to know which orders were banned, which weren't. If scammers have to wait 1 - 4 weeks to know if their order worked or not.. they will move onto easier targets.