I recently had a bit of a run in with PayPal. To be specific, my account’s access got limited all because I tried to sell a camera on eBay, and this run in lasted from the end of November to the day before yesterday (end January).

The story in summary was that I sold a camera on eBay, during which I promised the buyer a refund on shipping. I then attempted to withdraw the funds from my PayPal account so that they could be put to better use.

Next thing I knew, I got an email from PayPal informing me that my activity was suspicious and that my account was being limited as a result. This meant that the money was frozen in PayPal. No putting the money to better use, and no refund for the buyer.

To lift this limitation, I would have to send in additional information in the form of shipping invoices, to prove that I really shipped the item. So that is what I did in addition to an email.

I wanted to find out  what I could do to resolve the issue, but all I got in reply was pretty much the same as what I found on the website. My logic in dealing with them was simple: I was a relatively long term user of eBay, and I had a feedback of over 140. Why would I bother to cheat someone like that? On top of that, both eBay and PayPal had my bank details, and address.

A week later, still no action. I called PayPal and they said the matter would be reviewed (which meant nothing was happening till I called). This resulted as it would seem that nothing was happening. They did tell me however, that I needed to send in a tax invoice for the item itself. Hoping to expedite the process I scanned that and sent it in as well.

Deciding that maybe they were busy I gave them another week or so before I called again. This time I was informed that there was a problem with the tax invoice that sent in because there was no company name on the invoice. I wasn’t sure exactly what they meant since the invoice I sent in had a company logo in the background as a watermark. I asked them if it would be better if I got the buyer to email them to confirm that he had received the item. I was informed that this “might help” to move the process along. I asked them which email address he would have to send the email to and they gave one to me which I passed on to the buyer who was at this stage quite anxious about the shipping refund.

He sent in one email, and I called them. They said that they hadn’t received the email, so he would have to send another email in, this time to a different address. It was at this stage when I started to suspect that the PayPal “help desk” was as unsure of what to do as I was. So I got the buyer to send another email in and I called them again.

Again, the lady at help desk couldn’t find any evidence of the email, until I pressed her to check. She did a quick search and then acknowledged that they did indeed receive 2 emails from my buyer. Even then she said they would have to look into the matter further. At this stage I had to go away for about 3 weeks so I didn’t have the time to check back.

Three weeks later, I decided to check my PayPal account again. STILL nothing. This time I was really angry. I had done everything within my power to sort the matter out, but it was PayPal who was stalling.

At this stage I realised that if PayPal really didn’t want to give me my money back there was nothing I could do to get it back. I called them and gave them a piece of my mind (I seldom like to resort to this), and emailed my buyer to advise him that he would have to call PayPal himself if he wanted to get his money back. I’m not sure if that’s what he did or if it was because of the negative feedback he eventually left me on eBay saying that he received the item but not the shipping refund, but not long after the phone call I got account restored. A total of over 2 months.

So PayPal is a “safe” and “convenient” way to send your money, but if something like that happens there really isn’t any authority you can turn to in order to receive fair treatment. PayPal sees itself as judge juror and executioner. The problem is that in this case all of them seem to be blind, deaf and suffering from dementia. There are tons of sites out there documenting the problems that PayPal users face, so I’m certain this happens a fair bit. For the world’s most popular online money transfer service, they sure have a long way to go in ironing out their policies.

Until then, I am going to avoid PayPal like the plague.