Aral Balkan

If you've been following my tweets, you'll know that a few weeks ago PayPal froze my account without notice. This is the business account for my company that accepts payments for Update 2011, the independent mobile conference I'm organizing in Brighton this September as part of the Brighton Digital Festival.

PayPal freezing accounts is nothing new. They do it all the time. And they've done it to other conferences also, including dConstruct, and more recently to Remy's Full Frontal.

After keeping our account frozen for two weeks (during which time I had to send them proof that I wasn't a fraudster) they decided to unfreeze it. With a little catch: they implemented a "90-day 100% rolling reserve". What does that mean? It means that they keep all the money you have in your PayPal account for 90 days. So the ticket sales that are in our account now? Over £11K of them? Yes, they'll keep all that for two months after conference. (I spoke to Emmanuelle in their credit review department today who said that they would give 50% of it to me the day after the conference and 25% a few weeks afterwards but I'm not sure I believe them. It says nothing to that effect on the account.) Regardless, I don't know what planet PayPal are living on.

PayPal must inhabit some strange alternate universe where cash flow isn't an issue for businesses. In PayPal's alternate universe, venues and airlines apparently accept 90-day credit terms.

Thankfully, I knew about PayPal's reputation and I had been keeping a voluntary 25% reserve in my account for possible refunds and withdrawing the rest to my bank account on a regular basis. Yes, because of their reputation – because I didn't trust them – I was keeping my PayPal balance as low as I was comfortable with and thus depriving PayPal of interest on my balance too. (In case they need more evidence on how their policies are hurting them.)

So, ironically, because I didn't trust them, they weren't able to ruin my conference. Can you imagine what would have happened if I had trusted PayPal and left all the ticket sales in our PayPal account? We would have been royally screwed.

As is, thankfully, I have enough in the bank to cover the remaining payments for the conference even without the £11K or so that PayPal are keeping hostage. But it makes things more painful for me and means that I have dig deeper into my own pocket. Not what you really want as an independent designer/developer who is trying to stage a beautiful and affordable conference for the local community.

What this whole ordeal has meant is that I've lost several days – days that I could have been devoting to making the conference even better. That PayPal can treat independent businesses and conferences like this is utterly disgusting and unacceptable.

Oh, and I'm not taking it lying down.

As of today, I switched our event to use EventBrite's own credit card system. This wasn't straightforward as I had to create an entirely new event on their system by cloning the old one and then changing its short url to the old one. It means that I now have to manage two event databases for the conference and adds to the administration work involved and complicates registration on the day (we can't use the cool EventBrite mobile app and have to do manual registrations).

From now on, I am not giving PayPal a single penny of my money. Once this ordeal is over and we've received all our money, I will be shutting down my PayPal account for good. (I've been with PayPal for over ten years and our current business account has been with them for six years. During that time, I've put through hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of business through it. So yes, it wasn't millions – and is probably chump change to them – but still, they won't get a penny more.)

Thank-you all for your help and support through this.

Comments

• "and is probably trump change to them" The English idiom is "...chump change". Oh, and you're not the only one killing off their PayPal account - you're in good company; http://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec For the record - you never stated why PayPal froze your account; third party complaint? non-payment? someone paying for the conference with a stolen / cloned CC? Sometimes a bit of clarity helps build your case (including "...and Paypal wouldn't even tell us why it was frozen"). Professionalism in business > whiny /firstworldproblems, remember. Less 'entrepreneur' more 'Del-boy' at the moment is the vibe from the tweets. "Oh FFS, PayPal won't let me issue refunds either – really, @AskPayPal, REALLY? OK, folks, scratch that idea." Not really sounding like you have your shit together, my friend.

  by Anonymous English Teacher on 2011-08-12 20:23:15

• Transferring 75% to bank account was a smart move from your side. Anyway, I hope you get back the money asap. All the best with conference. PayPal needs to get better; their policies and processes are affecting small businesses. In our case, we are still for our app approval, which they are holding for some reason (advance api usage), which is not documented anywhere. cheers -abdul

  by Abdul Qabiz on 2011-08-13 11:32:32

• [...] my PayPal nightmare with the Update conference, I decided to create a site to warn future event and conference [...]

  by Aral Balkan · Announcing a new tumblelog: Conferences Burned by PayPal on 2011-08-24 19:19:32

• Aral What you're talking about sounds all too familiar, and as other people have said might have something to do with money laundering regulations, because a PayPal account is more like a bank account than a payment processor (I think it is legally considered a bank account in some countries but not sure which). With that in mind I'd probably advise moving over to good old-fashioned card processing. It's easy to set up and run, settles to your business bank account each night and depending on volume your fees will likely be lower than with PayPal. I work on an ecommerce site for my day job, we use HSBC for the merchant account and PayPoint.net for the processing, always works well. With your dev credentials you should make light work of integrating it.

  by David Goss on 2011-09-04 00:39:32

• Wow, I had no idea they did that - glad they haven't killed the conference and I hope this flags up issues to other independent organisers...

  by Leanne Johnson on 2011-08-15 09:49:21

• I'm having that exact problem with paypal. They rolling reserve is my profit so I'm thinking I can't continue for too long. So while the economy is tanking, it is even harder to earn a crust.

  by Chris on 2011-08-18 10:08:27

• ok... I get it... but then what's the other alternative? what do you think about Google Checkout?

  by jp on 2011-08-24 18:26:07

• At least you eventually got your money. I had a transaction which PayPal said was "fraudulent." I contacted my customer, and they had no idea why... they received their merchandise from me and were happy. Weeks of contacting PayPal got me nowhere. Every request for proof of the fraud claim was refused. PayPal is accountable to nobody, and can take your money at any time without providing any evidence of wrong-doing. They are the very definition of "internet scam."

  by Dave2 on 2011-08-25 09:53:20

• Glad to see you are doing all you can to hurt them back after what they've done. As you mentioned, it's probably nothing to them in the scheme of things, but enough bad rep will eventually have a significant effect. I've certainly learned from your experience - they'll never be getting any business from me. Best of luck for your conference, wish I could've been there :)

  by Tanya on 2011-08-12 14:33:07

• Quite frankly I find their behavior as a company disgusting. The amount of money they process should mean they have to be regulated in some way, but they seem to get away with murder. I'm not sure if you have read 'founders at work' but it seems like in the early days they were actually trying to do something good, now they just seem to have turned into a massive faceless corporation without any public voice. Have you had any replies to your tweets @paypal or @paypaluk (I noticed you sent off quite a few of them).

  by Andy W on 2011-08-12 14:33:09

• This is pretty standard for event payments, and not just with Paypal. Even massive events like Glastonbury Festival don't get the money from card payments for tickets until after the event has gone ahead successfully, in case of cancellation and refunds etc.

  by Oli on 2011-08-12 14:36:43

• Hi Oli, That's not entirely the case. EventBrite, for example, keeps some reserve but it's about 25% not 100%. And that's fine because that's how much I would keep voluntarily anyway for refunds. No business can survive without cashflow. Venues, airlines, etc., do not work on credit (at least not in my experience). I've now switched to EventBrite's advanced system and that pays out twice a month (1st and 15th) – which is perfectly acceptable. What I can't accept is restrictions like this being imposed willy nilly with a month to go to the conference.

  by Aral on 2011-08-12 14:41:09

• Thank-you Tanya, I appreciate your support and I wish you could have been there too. Andy, thank-you for your support too. I did have @jonin60seconds and @AskPayPal (Lilly) try to help and I spoke to a number of people at PayPal including Monika, Paul, and John at the credit review department and nothing. Finally spoke to Emmanuelle today at the credit review department and she said there was nothing she could do and that it was "corporate policy". Everyone I spoke to was apologetic and polite. I guess they know what a horrible company they work for.

  by Aral on 2011-08-12 14:51:27

• Having worked for PayPal in the past, I'm glad I left when they started putting a blanket hold of 10% on all money coming in. When I asked what to tell customers, I was told to say that it's what all other processing companies do. I guess PayPal didn't want to stand out.

  by STJ on 2011-08-12 15:11:55

• I pity the fool (or corporation) that picks a fight with Aral. http://trends.google.com/websites?q=www.sys-con.com&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

  by @LukeInTH on 2011-08-12 15:31:07

• I've known PayPal are scammers for a while now. Time and again you read about their scummy business practices and the way they get away with it by having their "bank" officially based out of Luxembourg, and whenever possible weaseling out of being classified as a bank. If I can avoid it at all I never pay for anything with PayPal, and the more businesses follow suit, the faster those scum can be put out of business.

  by Kyle on 2011-08-12 15:32:19

• What you are not saying is why PayPal froze your accounts. How many people were asking for refunds after registering? If too high, that could trigger some fraud detection. What else could be unusual? I organize my own conference, haven't had the same problem yet, so I'm curious to know what to watch for.

  by Alain Raynaud on 2011-08-12 15:35:17

• This is not about giving a bad service — it is about the security burecracy and it's essential effect on how PayPal does business. PayPal is the biggest and it is the most convienent one for the security apparatus to monitor and the relationship between the various governments and PayPal is worth much more to PayPal than the customer relationship ever will be, even though they genuinely care for that as well, they are handicaped. Thus, following the sometimes bizarre and aged protocol is all important to PayPal. There are understandable reasons for this, even if You or I do not agree with it. However, it is difficult for the people involved to understand that these reasons are becoming dated. Our societies function by policing in robust and sharp ways, sometimes cutting corners in a way that causes pain to the regular citizens. It is fun to watch police car chases on movies, where innocent people's cars get blown up or torn into pieces as side effects of the drama on screen. however, ironically, we feel the real pain when it's our own wallet and our own projects that are on the line in the unreal virtual world because cyber villiains need to be restrained in an all-encompassing manner. Also, five years ago everyone, web developers included, where much more likelier to brush off this type of behaviour but social media has changed how we expect people to behave as companies and as consumers and PayPal's security protocol first habit does not serve it well. The web has become even more faster and our sense for immediate gratification puts this types of incidents also in sharper contrast, even though PayPal has been acting the same way for the best part of the decade and shows no signs of changing. PayPal can do precious little, this is about how societies can tackle illegal online payments in a clever way that is more surgical and less like a butchery.

  by Robert Jakobson on 2011-08-12 15:39:01

• www.wepay.com

  by joao on 2011-08-12 15:41:50

• You should consider accepting bitcoin. Since there are no third parties, no one can freeze your account or charge back payments.

  by Astrohacker on 2011-08-12 15:56:11

• Hi Alain, We had one refund where someone realized they couldn't make it. Otherwise, nearly all the refunds I issued were partial refunds (e.g., if someone wanted to attend two one-day workshops, I'd refund a portion of one of the tickets that was for the conference attendance so they wouldn't have to pay twice). All in all, the amount of refunds was tiny. I've been told by those in PayPal and those whose accounts have been limited, that it's the amount received into the account that triggers it. So if you conference stayed under that radar, perhaps you were fine. I didn't hit it (apparently; or there were different rules back then) when I organized the conference in 2008 (I was using PayPal) and I didn't hit it while running my workshops this year.

  by Aral on 2011-08-12 15:59:22

• Eventbrite will withhold 100% until after the event if they believe it is necessary. I appreciate you found PayPal's action's distressing, but their actions are described in the terms and conditions that you agreed to adhere to when opening the account with them. Even so, I'm sorry they couldn't work something out with you.

  by LSF on 2011-08-12 16:11:42

• As a business owner, I've said good bye to PayPal years ago. I've got my own merchant account with HSBC and process all payments with SagePay. Settlement is overnight. I'm not sure if this feasible with the events software you're using, but for anyone needing to take money regularly, it's the best way to go.

  by Edith Karnitsch on 2011-08-12 16:18:10

• Sorry to hear this, and very well done to make people aware about Paypal scam practices. Two years ago I had to close a promising startup selling e-tickets for events exactly because of this. After having used Paypal for two years without any problems, when the sales picked up arount New Years Eve time, they held almost 50k€ of ticket sales for 3 months , money that didn't even belong to us but to the events organizers. This is incredible how this company can carry on nd be number one online payment system, they must make disgusting profits and destroy quite a lot of hopeful ventures. At all cost use alternative payment systems people !

  by Evan on 2011-08-12 16:19:50

• What were you expecting exactly? I understand them holding the money for 90 days is inconvenient but isn't this protecting the consumer and Paypal. I don't see this as fraudulent but unfortunate you were not informed that this could happen. Hope this isn't coming across as playing devil's advocate.

  by ji on 2011-08-12 16:33:01

• Hi Ji, As far as I know, holding 100% of revenue for 90 days is unheard of in any industry. It's simply not sustainable. Small businesses are lucky if they can get 30-day credit. For a conference, you have to pay for speaker's flights, the venue, etc. before the conference begins. PayPal's policy is ridiculous. And it has nothing to do with protecting the consumer. Before they placed these restrictions, I was keeping 25% of the revenue in the account to use in case I needed to refund people. Now, PayPal's rolling reserve means that I cannot use the money in there for refunds either. They have effectively stopped me from being able to take care of my customers as well as I could earlier. Basically, their conduct is inexcusable. If there was to be a reserve, it should have been made clear at the beginning. Maybe give people a way to contact that beforehand. And any reserve should not go beyond 25%. Which is what EventBrite implements.

  by Aral on 2011-08-12 16:40:51

• Thanks, Edith, I will look into this. I bank with HSBC so it might be easier. (Also a big thank-you to all of you expressing words of support. Apologies if I don't reply to each of your individually but I am reading your responses and they are helping.) :)

  by Aral on 2011-08-12 16:41:58

• Hey Aral, We are working on an alternative to PayPal so you don't get caught out like this in future. We are still pre-launch so can't give too many details, but get in touch and I would love the chance to see if we can help you in future! Cheers, Hiroki @hirokitakeuchi

  by Hiroki on 2011-08-12 16:53:48

• "I will be shutting down my PayPal account for good." - I wish more people had the balls to do that to the companies that treat them like sheeps. Well played, and all the best for you and your projects!

  by Luís Silva on 2011-08-12 16:55:44

• Hi Hiroki, Sounds good, following you on Twitter. Feel free to follow back and DM me.

  by Aral on 2011-08-12 16:56:27

• @ji, If Aral's event was cancelled, or it was fraudulent his customers would be demanding refunds on the day of or immediately after the scheduled event. Since this is a time specific event (and not a product purchase) blindly holding onto funds for 90 days provides Paypal with no additional fraud management while crippling his business. This *might* be necessary for a e-tailer business, but it makes no sense for an event related business. What's more, how are you supposed to run a business if your money might be borrowed without warning at any time? Its fair for Paypal to institute anti-fraud measures, but they need to be consistent and predictable. Additionally they can take other measures to determine risk such as verification of addresses, seeking out references, and looking at history. They can look at the context for a spike of revenue (ie: the holiday season, or if its an event business). Whats more, they could ask what expected revenues are for a business/event and decide not to take the business up front if the risk is deemed too great.

  by Towhead on 2011-08-12 16:58:52

• What can I say, paypal does suck.

  by aug on 2011-08-12 17:05:36

• Aral, this is truly just nuts! I can't believe that Paypal is still around if this is how they treat their members. I mean, does truly everyone goes through the same thing every time? I wouldn't put up with it. It's just not worth the stress and extra energy. I am relieved though that you are a smart business man and I can still look forward to attending this so promising conference. Will see you soon ;-)

  by Petra Gregorova on 2011-08-12 17:06:31

• Similar issue happened with me and getting so many payments from clients overseas via Paypal, although they didn't implement a 90 day hold or anything - just wouldn't give me my money until I went through their ridiculous verification process (birth certificate, social security card, license, etc) Glad you were so smart to circumvent their terrible manners. BTW, I thought eventbrite doesn't send checks out until after the event has completed? Best of luck with the conference - if you're doing it then I know it'll be awesome!

  by Daniel Schutzsmith on 2011-08-12 17:14:05

• So, you didn't trust PayPal, but you let them have your money anyway?!?!? Am I the only one who sees a problem with that?

  by David on 2011-08-12 17:35:25

• Ugh, Paypal - their downright weird random account freezes have been haunting me in my sleep for months now. I've been with them for 4 years now, never had a problem, and out of a sudden - limited account. Sent them the documents they requested, waited 2 (!) weeks - I was relying ONLY on Paypal for my payments and day to day expenses (with a debit card, I saw no point of transferring everything to my bank account), so that was pretty stressful. After a month, bam, limited account again, because of "suspicious account activity", which most likely was my payment to a developer (they didn't confirm nor deny it :-), which was twice as much as my average transfer amount - but that shouldn't matter, because I have like everything on file with them, photo ID included. Now I have to provide an invoice and proof that the product was ordered and delivered, and that will also probably take them a month to process. The worst thing is that it's the most accepted method of payment online - if you don't use them, a lot of people become suspicious... I hope they fail, get a good competitor or rethink their damn system and policies...

  by Dan on 2011-08-12 18:08:56

• Hi Aral, Thanks for share such information. I already had problems with them as well and lately I've been hearing a lot about their stupid behavior. I don't know how yet we don't have any better option around. I'm wondering what happen with Google Checkout for example. Anyway I hope we see someone/service beat them very soon. Cheers

  by Henrique Hohmann on 2011-08-12 18:39:08

• Yes it's shocking how companies are. I'm in south africa and my mobile provider increased my bill without asking me. They just sent me a notification that I'll pay a few rands more for a measly amount of data extra. They did this too all people with data bundles. Increasing the data for free is cool, but then forcing an increase on you is really unethical. If they don't fix this to the public, it's going on a blog and the uk holding company is going to get wind of it. Very sneaky

  by Znut on 2011-08-12 19:12:00

• I don't see how eventbrite is that much better - if you use their credit card processing service they hold onto your money until the event is over.... At least you get some of it with Paypal. Am I missing something here?

  by Royi G. on 2011-08-12 19:24:15

• Unfortunately its quite easy to fall into a trap of choosing a wrong payment gateway in the UK. The options are very limited in comparison with US. Our company had some funds frozen by Nochex and its been tough. Definitely another company you want to avoid when choosing your payment processing vendor. Luckily we have now a good partner and things are going well, but the easiest option to setup is not the best usually.

  by Pixalia on 2011-08-12 21:31:20

• Hi Anonymous English Teacher, My name's Aral. What's yours? I'd love to speak to you on equal terms. You're right, I got the phrase wrong. I'm not infallible, and I'm very open to learning. Thank-you for educating me on that point; I appreciate it. I've fixed the post now. The reason PayPal limited my account is because it reached a certain amount of revenue. Apparently, that's what triggers it. When it comes to having my shit together, I'm not sure how much more together it could be: the venues for the conference are all booked, the speakers and all the flights for the speakres are all booked, the volunteers are lined up (and meeting weekly) and new sponsors are coming on board every day (to be announced on the web site next week). What you are mistaking for a lack of shit-togetherness are the curveballs that PayPal kept throwing at me. To apply the reserve to refunds – thereby blocking you from issuing refunds – for example, is ridiculous. The reserve should exist to make sure that refunds are possible (this is how EventBrite, for example, uses the reserve). We haven't had a single chargeback and I'm very confident that we won't have any because there's no reason for anyone to issue one since we have support (and, furthermore, chargebacks are not as common in the UK/Europe as they are in the US). I'm reachable on Twitter and via email at any time and I'm human in dealings with our attendees. A trait that PayPal could do well to learn. I hope that clears things up. Thank-you again for correcting the miswritten phrase in the article and helping me to improve it.

  by Aral on 2011-08-12 21:32:45

• s/trump change/chump change/

  by pedant on 2011-08-12 22:52:29

• Hi Aral: I feel your pain. Back in 2008 at Macworld, PayPal froze my account when I had a spike in sales from a new release of MemoryMiner. It took a few days to resolve it, and I was similarly pissed off. Over the years, there has much discussion of PayPal woes on the MacSB Google Group over the years, with many people having switched to using FastSpring. Too bad they don't support ticket sales. At any rate, I'm sorry you've had to suffer all this nonsense. Update Conference looks awesome, and I genuinely wish I could attend. Best of success! John

  by John C. Fox on 2011-08-12 23:23:02

• I don't use PayPal for much, but after reading your tweets about them the last couple of weeks, and the comments on your blog post, I'm not going to use them at all anymore. The loss of *my* business isn't going to hurt them very much...but if enough people like myself (and businesses like yours) stop using their services, maybe they'll get the message. Maybe. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen, though.

  by Rick on 2011-08-13 04:03:06

• The reason PayPal limited my account is because it reached a certain amount of revenue. Apparently, that’s what triggers it. Ahh... now that's a very interesting and revealing reason, and makes a lot of sense of your plight. I strongly suspect your account (and John C. Fox's) got flagged not for fraud, but for (drum-roll): (potential) money laundering. There's two responses to this, one based on PayPal's business model, the other based on yours. PayPal (being an American company) are tightly bound by the Patriot Act and it is 99% probable that there's some stringent anti-money laundering rules in there - to prevent "international terrorism" of course (see further: Google admitting disclosing EU account holder's info to US gov; FB using facial recognition software in Germany & being asked to stop and so on). If this is the case, then it should be in the TC's [Terms & Conditions], which leads us to the second point; not having a contract with PayPal, nor using their services, I'd have to research the question, something I won't do, as I dislike the PayPal business, and will never use it. The second issue is - if you've fallen prey to hostile TC's the question is: why were you not aware of the potential issue / hard-cap on revenue stream? Your business plan will have P&L, so you should have roughly known the amount of cash flowing into your accounts - given the £125 price tag, and your mentioning of sponsors etc, I suspect five figure revenues. Which reminds me - if you're running large amounts of money through PayPal, I hope you're disclosing it to the UK tax man ;) Of course - this is all pure conjecture, as (again), I'm not working from full background. However, potential money laundering (as a business) is seen as a serious issue, especially in the electronic medium. This doesn't excuse PayPal's actions, however it might lead to some clarity on the why's of their draconian clamp down. It will also mean that you (the customer) could have been selling cakes @ a WI meeting and had the same experience [for Americans insert: girl scouts selling cookies]. To end - hello Aral, my name is John. I wish you good luck in the talk, you do actually sound like you've "got your shit" together. To end on another note: you've probably got a file @ USA.gov now, depending if PayPal reported you or not. Enjoy the talk! Reference: http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/index.html The purpose of the USA PATRIOT Act is to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and other purposes, some of which include: To strengthen U.S. measures to prevent, detect and prosecute international money laundering and financing of terrorism;... To require all appropriate elements of the financial services industry to report potential money laundering;

  by Anonymous English Teacher on 2011-08-13 12:10:12

• Aral, Frightening! OK, I read all the comments but at the risk of suggesting something that is unwittingly stupid, has anyone considered Visa, Mastercard, American Express etc... Or is that too much work or do you have to proove you are a certain-size business or something (it is alot to set up but we're a 23-person company that produces events for a living so it was just part of doing business). Just curious, Ted Bahr President BZ Media

  by Ted Bahr on 2011-09-27 18:32:12

• Here's a way to prevent this from happening in the future: Bitcoin. And here's an example on how you can use it to set up your conference: http://bitcoinme.com/index.php/bitcon-2011/

  by Rearden on 2011-08-15 11:09:06

• This happened to me not too long ago aswell. Paypal have no ethics or professionalism at all. Disgusting company. I keep minimal amounts of money in my account now.

  by James on 2011-08-18 14:57:47

• Its pretty common place for payment providers to request you hold a rolling reserve if you are dealing with large amounts. just googling it now - i saw that http://www.payovation.com/articles/rolling-reserve holds the money for 6months. so im sure that others will hold it from up to that amount of time. If your going to be doing business with any payment provider you should make sure you've done all your verification before starting to take in the big money - as it only take an email address to register and start receiving money, whereas if you opened a bank account - you would need to do all verification up front. my two cents.

  by AW on 2011-08-18 22:31:47

• Hi, I just wanted to reply to the comment by Pixalia. I work for Nochex and I would be interested to hear why you think ours is a "company you want to avoid when choosing your payment processor". We do not freeze funds lightly so there must have been some good reason for this to happen. Generally, we try to avoid the mistakes PP have made here by auditing applicants before they open an account. However, we're not perfect and really appreciate open and honest feedback, so if you want to get back to us feel free to do so however you feel best. Kind regards, Peter

  by Peter on 2011-08-30 10:44:31

• Hello Aral, I was wondering. I am still new in this industry, and what services would you recommend other than EventBrite. I mean I am starting out as a freelancer, after reading your post. I am doubtful about Paypal.

  by Javier Lo on 2011-10-20 17:30:55

• I've seen too many stories of such horrible behaviour, such as today: http://www.regretsy.com/2011/12/05/cats-1-kids-0/ I've chosen to offer my support by voting with my pocket. As of today, I no longer have a PayPal account and any service provider who can't offer an alternative payment gateway will loose out on my business.

  by Tim on 2011-12-06 08:42:40

• hello yes i have noticed the same thing you are describing but in a different way regarding pay pal. i myself used to use eBay for selling products and equipment however if you are a new seller and not sold a certain number they will also hold your payment for 21 days, this is until the buyer leaves positive feedback and then you still have to wait for the capital to reach your account, this means all sellers are at risk ill explain if i sold you for instance a CCTV package and equipment for around £650 and also another 9 to other people i have to send the products out and wait for feedback if they didn't give me feedback then it can take longer for me to receive the payment. this i do believe is wrong as the seller has no right back to that money as a receipt of purchase gets sent so you cant even claim the products back hope this warns new sellers to eBay

  by QnRSecure Limited on 2012-02-09 11:43:18