Help! Paypal account limited!

[berserkfan]

I am doing my moving sale.

Knowing how paypal can screw people over suddenly, I have been very reluctant to accept paypal payments. But most people insist on paypal, so I realized it was impossible to run a moving sale unless I accepted paypal.

I have barely collected $1k USD to date and they have limited my account. See below.

Paypal account limitation.png (73.63 KiB) Viewed 4874 times

Paypal account limitation1.png (6.27 KiB) Viewed 4874 times

(I had a balance of about $400 in this account previously so that's just under 1k from moving sale)

Now I have no difficulty fulfilling 3 of their conditions, Photo ID, Proof of Address and Proof of Delivery (although that will take time and I am also not happy to have money locked up while stuff is in transit).

I can't/ will not provide invoices, supplier contact info, business info. This is not a business account. I am not a business. I have not kept receipts of my stuff purchased a long time ago. This is not a group buy, so I don't have a manufacturer or factory to provide contacts for.

My own ads and photos are poor because I have not had time to work on them. Now I have to do this? It's ridiculous. I do not have the time to navigate what seems to be a bureaucratic maze. Paypal itself says that things are up to their discretion. I do not have the time to take out all my keyboards and keycaps and photograph them again for pp's pleasure.

I think I will have to refund everybody and only deal with the people who can send money to me via bank transfer. Does anyone have suggestions otherwise? I could open a bitcoin account, but it also sounds kinda sleazy/ I lack confidence in bitcoin myself.

[Ray]

I see "Help!" in the title, yet the post does not contain help. Nor can we provide help.

[chuckdee]

Have you tried to contact them by phone? That's not guaranteed to help, but might be more useful than trying to get through this just from the resolution page.

[berserkfan]

At this point I may just have to cancel my moving sale, or at least cancel the paypal part.

Anyway I can't move. 'New' house is in a mess. I am suing my contractors. I am fed up.

Anyone wants to buy from me, welcome to use bank transfer and bargain aggressively. I don't want my stuff to go back into storage, and I don't want to deal with paypal. I'm thinking, let the money stay in my frozen account for 45 days or something, and when nothing happens and pp unfreezes, just refund.

If pp never unfreezes well, I'm the biggest loser because I had a pp balance in that account to begin with that was more than twice the largest payment from anyone. Sorry but at this point I'm also thinking about myself. I have lost everything. (Not exactly the fault of my moving sale or anyone on geekhack.)

[berserkfan]

You guys won't believe how dishonest pp is. AFTER flagging me as a scammer, they allowed other people to pay me.

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=81 ... msg2141111

[Redmaus]

Jeez they flagged you as a scammer too? What the hell I thought this was to prevent money laundering.

If that was their concern they wouldn't let you receive any more money!

I hope you can resolve this. Is there any way you can use the forums as a way to verify yourself? I don't think PP does that but who knows

[Wodan]

Paypal is a prime example of how a monopoly is something bad. There's no global alternative to PayPal. I paid Berzerk for my order by bank transfer and was charged 35€ just for the transfer - no buyer protection or anything included in that. just shows how super complicated safe international payments are up to this date and what a comfortable situation PayPal is in. They can afford to treat all of us like crap until there is a viable alternative service.

Anyone ever tried Alipay for this? I have a customer in the financial/payment industry and they tell me Alipay is expanding internationally.

[webwit]

It is not super complicated, your bank just ripped you off, that's all.

[Wodan]

Uhm ... It is super complicated. And you're supporting that with your statement. Your bank can basically charge you what they like and very few people here picked their bank by the conditions for international money transfers or are willing to open another account at a bank with better condition. Some banks/account don't support these transfers at all. Don't act so smug unless you can come up with a better alternative.

[webwit]

I meant it's not complicated for a bank. So by making it complicated and expensive they rip you off. With my online banking it as easy as a domestic transfer and not nearly as expensive.

[Wodan]

That's really great for you but:
- This will require alot of people to change their bank account or open up an additional bank account for this purpose
- The buyer protection PayPal offers is important for alot of people joining GBs these days. 180 days should suffice for the organizer to present proof of payment to the vendor/manufacturer.
- It's a payment through a different channel than the internet. No idea how long it takes for an international money transfer to show up. Transfers have to be matches to forum alts/email addresses.
- Banks will try to make another few ‰ through the currency conversion. Paypal will charge my CC directly in USD and their conversion rate is very good.

[chzel]

Actually Paypal's conversion rate is crap compared to bank's rates. If you are having your European card charged in USD, you are not seeing Paypal's rate, but the bank's.

[berserkfan]

Jeez they flagged you as a scammer too? What the hell I thought this was to prevent money laundering.

If that was their concern they wouldn't let you receive any more money!

I hope you can resolve this. Is there any way you can use the forums as a way to verify yourself? I don't think PP does that but who knows

Ok it was exaggerated. They just limited the account, not call me any nasty names or made allegations. (In Singapore this is also illegal, you can't accuse people of criminal activity because that's per se defamation.)

But it is unacceptable for them to permit money transfers to a suspicious account. If they suspect someone and place restrictions on that account, they should go all the way and not let other people pay more money into that account. Anyway everyone should be refunded by now.

[berserkfan]

Uhm ... It is super complicated. And you're supporting that with your statement. Your bank can basically charge you what they like and very few people here picked their bank by the conditions for international money transfers or are willing to open another account at a bank with better condition. Some banks/account don't support these transfers at all. Don't act so smug unless you can come up with a better alternative.

OK Wodan, no wonder why people say they don't like bank transfer.

Some banks are very international and transferring money is very easy. But as time passes I'm hearing that most banks are NOT. If I had known how troublesome and costly it was for you I would have taken paypal...

And you would be getting a refund now...

[berserkfan]

That's really great for you but:

- The buyer protection PayPal offers is important for alot of people joining GBs these days.
- Banks will try to make another few ‰ through the currency conversion. Paypal will charge my CC directly in USD and their conversion rate is very good.

OK, so how did Paypal protection save the 1000s of people who got scammed by Ivan?

Also, chzel is right. Paypal's official conversion rate, as used internally on your paypal cash balance, is incredibly poor. I am typically charged 3.5-5.5% in conversion fees. Euro is not so bad, but when you have a Small Country Currency, paypal goes all out to screw you.

If I accept a European goods payment in Euros, then want to put the money in my Singapore bank, paypal will charge me conversion into USD, then conversion of USD into SGD, plus seller fees, plus Singapore bank transfer fees, and eventually I will lose at least 11%. They managed to claim over 23% in a very small 3.50 Euro payment a long time ago and I spent at least an hour trying to figure out how they managed to claim so much money.

But when you use a credit card through paypal, paypal is officially regarded as the counterparty, not your seller. The currency conversion fees charged are from your credit card company, which is a legit financial institution subject to proper governance, as opposed to being a quasi-criminal organization called Paypal. All credit card companies will act responsibly because they will lose their banking licenses if they don't.

[berserkfan]

That's really great for you but:

- The buyer protection PayPal offers is important for alot of people joining GBs these days.
- Banks will try to make another few ‰ through the currency conversion. Paypal will charge my CC directly in USD and their conversion rate is very good.

OK, so how did Paypal protection save the 1000s of people who got scammed by Ivan?

Also, chzel is right. Paypal's official conversion rate, as used internally on your paypal cash balance, is incredibly poor. I am typically charged 3.5-5.5% in conversion fees. Euro is not so bad, but when you have a Small Country Currency, paypal goes all out to screw you.

If I accept a European goods payment in Euros, then want to put the money in my Singapore bank, paypal will charge me conversion into USD, then conversion of USD into SGD, plus seller fees, plus Singapore bank transfer fees, and eventually I will lose at least 11%. They managed to claim over 23% in a very small 3.50 European (cant' remember country) payment a long time ago and I spent at least an hour trying to figure out how they managed to claim so much money.

But when you use a credit card through paypal, paypal is officially regarded as the counterparty, not your seller. The currency conversion fees charged are from your credit card company, which is a legit financial institution subject to proper governance, as opposed to being a quasi-criminal organization called Paypal. All credit card companies will act responsibly because they will lose their banking licenses if they don't.

[Wodan]

OK, so how did Paypal protection save the 1000s of people who got scammed by Ivan?

Well he played it smart and did his best keeping people from creating disputes and straight up lied about the progress.

Simple lesson learned: no proof of payment or delivery within 180 days - start a dispute with PayPal.

Same here, I am expecting my package within 180 days

Sorry to hear about your problems bezerk. Building a house and working with contractors seems to be a deep bucket of shit all over the world.