BEWARE! Paypal pending payments

cyber69 · 5 Apr 2016 at 09:35

I recently sold an ebay item for £200 and the buyer paid instantly through Paypal and the payment went into 'pending'.

I've never experianced this before having sold quite a bit on ebay and have an above average rating of over 1,500.

I called Paypal and apparantly their system 'flagged' it for security which means that if I can provide a tracking number then I will have to wait for the courier to deliver plus another 72hrs to get my payment. If I had sent it with no tracking number then Paypal will hold the payment for 21 days.

They say they have sent the buyer an email so he can log into his Paypal account and then confirm it has been received.

This seemed to coincide with the ebay 20% off day which makes me suspicious that Paypal have deliberately held a stack of payments so that they can earn interest on them.

Adam · 5 Apr 2016 at 09:39

I don't see what anyone needs to be cautious about. You just need to provide the tracking number which it's good practice to do anyway (you should always keep the proof of delivery anyway).

Seems a bit of a dramatic post?

randal · 5 Apr 2016 at 09:39

They've done this to me in the past, before the discount.

I pushed them for a reason, and they said due to the nature of the product and the value of the transaction they'd held it. Then some nonsense about not having a sale in 60 days.

I've sold similar items, other high value items and received feedback etc within the last 20 days. When this was pointed out, the issue stopped happening.

Previous to this I'd pointed out 2 crooks who'd tried to game the system by getting me to post to a non-PP verified address, had no response to that but this started happening. Go figure.

Diagro · 5 Apr 2016 at 11:27

its an anti fraud measure. Been going on for years.
Its random.

get over it

Glanza · 5 Apr 2016 at 11:35

Happens from time to time, no matter if it's through Ebay or sent as a payment i.e on the MM here.

robfosters · 5 Apr 2016 at 12:21

I had and because the item was collected it took about 3 or so weeks to clear.

Haggisman · 5 Apr 2016 at 12:22

robfosters said:
I had and because the item was collected it took about 3 or so weeks to clear.

Taking a PayPal payment for a item collected in person?! You like to live dangerously!!

clockwork.satan · 5 Apr 2016 at 12:48

Same thing happened to me recently, but it wasn't a problem once the item was marked as dispatched.

robfosters · 5 Apr 2016 at 12:51

Haggisman said:
Taking a PayPal payment for a item collected in person?! You like to live dangerously!!

Well I weighed it up, I spoke to the bloke on the phone who I sold the guitar to and he was very knowledgable about guitars, so I decided to trust him. I think you have to weigh things up, not just assume everyone's out to rob you.

CREATIVE!11 · 5 Apr 2016 at 12:53

Yes it's well known paypal collect interest in your money.

And it's annoying.

asim18 · 6 Apr 2016 at 00:00

cyber69 said:
This seemed to coincide with the ebay 20% off day which makes me suspicious that Paypal have deliberately held a stack of payments so that they can earn interest on them.

I thought that was a well known fact PayPal withhold people's monies to gain interest?

They used to do this to me all the time. In fact it used to be worse. They used to withhold actual cleared funds from being transferred into my own bank account.

I told them in plain English that if someone had hijacked my PayPal account and proceeded to withdraw my own funds into my own ****ing bank account wouldn't that be the best news ever?

It never happened after that.

And from the looks of things more people have figured out what they've been doing under the guise of "fraud prevention", so they've had to change the point at which they withhold money from the withdrawal stage to the actual payment stage.

mejinks · 6 Apr 2016 at 00:39

Charge them interest

Jambo · 6 Apr 2016 at 01:09

asim18 said:
I thought that was a well known fact PayPal withhold people's monies to gain interest?

They used to do this to me all the time. In fact it used to be worse. They used to withhold actual cleared funds from being transferred into my own bank account.

I told them in plain English that if someone had hijacked my PayPal account and proceeded to withdraw my own funds into my own ****ing bank account wouldn't that be the best news ever?

It never happened after that.

And from the looks of things more people have figured out what they've been doing under the guise of "fraud prevention", so they've had to change the point at which they withhold money from the withdrawal stage to the actual payment stage.

Paypal do not withhold money to gain interest.

They did not change their policies due to your message.

There is no guise of fraud prevention.

Pawnless Endgame · 6 Apr 2016 at 08:12

Diagro said:
its an anti fraud measure. Been going on for years.
Its random.

get over it

For me, it wasn't random. It happened in 2009 (eBay member since 2001), and Paypal froze my account when my lifetime sales hit £1500. That's £1500 across 8 years (2001-9). I had to provide more ID than getting a bloody passport in order to unlock my account and incoming transactions again.

Felon · 6 Apr 2016 at 08:19

Got £1k pending in my PayPal account right now, despite the items being delivered AND me getting positive feedback

It's all lies and nonsense, the money will be held until the 23rd of April apparently, even though they agreed with me on the phone that everything went "smoothly"

**** them tbh, they're making too much money and can just act as they damn well please,

cyber69 · 6 Apr 2016 at 08:43

I'll be back on the phone to them tomorrow if the funds don't get released today like they promised and I won't hold back in giving the agent some stick. Ebay have earn't over £80 in charges off me this month and I get **** poor service in return.

And my wife was mulling over the idea of running a small business over ebay! I told her it was far too much hassle for what the return would be.

Felon · 6 Apr 2016 at 09:07

If you were going to run a business, it probably wouldn't be as bad, you'd basically get some pain at the start, but it would probably smooth out..

The problem is if you sell your own personal valuable items, once every year or longer - each time you do it, it's just a massive stress-fest of delayed payments, restrictions, made up money laundering holds, and **** poor excuses, and at some point you get paid, maybe 4-6 weeks later - during which point, if the buyer changes their mind or decided to be a **** - you get screwed very easily.

Last time I sold some camera kit on ebay, about 2 years ago - I vowed never again.. I was stupid enough to do it again last week, and never ever ever again.

DaleTheWhale · 6 Apr 2016 at 10:18

cyber69 said:
I'll be back on the phone to them tomorrow if the funds don't get released today like they promised and I won't hold back in giving the agent some stick. Ebay have earn't over £80 in charges off me this month and I get **** poor service in return.

PayPal and eBay are separate entities now, AFAIK.

jimjamuk · 6 Apr 2016 at 12:03

Pawnless Endgame said:
For me, it wasn't random. It happened in 2009 (eBay member since 2001), and Paypal froze my account when my lifetime sales hit £1500. That's £1500 across 8 years (2001-9). I had to provide more ID than getting a bloody passport in order to unlock my account and incoming transactions again.

Money laundering laws this. Happens to everyone who takes more than £1500 through a paypal account

Diddums x · 6 Apr 2016 at 12:50

Paypal can do one, honestly. The only reason I have a Paypal account is to accept hosting contributions on my site but other than that, hell no. My dislike of eBay and the people that inhabit it are fairly well documented in GD so there's no reason for me to use Paypal really.