Thread: New PayPal Policy

Has anyone else read about this new Paypal policy or holding received funds for up to 21 days?

A bit ridiculous in my opinion. eBay and Paypal need some competition.

What do you mean by holding the funds?
There is always the amazon payment system, no fees and instant transfer to bank account.

I got this message in my email:

"Starting 7/25/2011, money from payments you receive will be placed in a pending balance for up to 21 days. By doing this, we're making sure that there's enough money in your account to cover potential refunds or claims.

Even though you can't access the money right away, please ship orders quickly and communicate with your customers. After 21 days, you can withdraw money from each payment as long as the customer hasn't filed a dispute, chargeback, claim, return, or reversal.

The money may be available sooner if:
We can confirm that the item was delivered.
Your buyer leaves positive feedback. (Applies only to eBay items)"


I found it strange since I've never had any customer disputes and my feedback rating is 100%. I'm definitely going to look into this Amazon payment system

As a casual buyer this news scrap worries me as well. If my payments don't go through in good time it will ruin my rep and could cost me auctions.

I have not gotten the message but it is pretty crappy move.

I guess we can revert to old fashioned checks for payment?

They do this to people from time to time.

They claim that:

Why are my payments being held?
We reviewed your account and determined that there's a relatively higher than average risk of future transaction issues (such as claims, or chargebacks, or payment reversals). We understand that it may be inconvenient to have your payments temporarily held but please know that we didn't make this decision lightly.
Before deciding to hold payments, we consider many factors. These factors include account and transaction activity, the rate of customer disputes, the type of business a seller runs, average delivery timeframes, customer satisfaction, performance and history.

No one knows for sure why it happens, but if you have a Paypal account, it will happen sooner or later. When they review your account again, they should release it.

yeah, the company as a whole has been getting more greedy year over year (which company hasn't, though).

It is my understanding that not EVERY paypal account will have this restriction but they will re-evaluate each account every 35 days and decide whether or not to implement this "feature"

well there are and will be options eventually.
Looks like Visa is going to start personal payment service at some point
Visa Moves Beyond the Point-of-Sale
Chase has Quick Pay , that is supposed to work very well and is free.

Is it possible that they only hold funds when your account is not linked to a bank account?

There are alternatives, ebay only allows paypal or checks/cashier checks though. For "Security reasons"........