Forum Moderators: buckworks
A programmer that we work with IM'd me asking why I disputed the latest payment of $300. After doing some research I found the following:
A large invoice was over looked by the accounting people at the company that was payable to their graphic designer. The amount was just over $2000 – while not a huge sum, they wanted to get the money to the designer ASAP, so they decided to send him the money by PayPal. That is what triggered the issue.
PayPal flagged that transaction and as a result the whole account. They asked the designer for various information about the transaction and when they received that they asked my client for more info about the company. Until they review everything, they will not let the designer get his money that we paid (which PayPal already deducted from the company credit card), nor will they allow the client to receive payments or make any other payments.
As if that is not enough, payments that were made a few days before and a few days after that big payment (but before the account was flagged) are also being held and PayPal is asking the sellers for more paperwork. These are payments that we have made to these same sellers multiple times in the past for the exact same amounts.
As you can guess I am a bit frustrated at the moment, and quite embarrassed about this. Has anyone else had similar issues? Any suggestion on what we can do to avoid future occurrences of this type of hold up?
thanks,
Alon
This happened to us as well we supplied all the required information got the account reopened and paid another charge, well you guessed it they closed the account and we had to just about get a lawyer to get the money refunded from our AM card.
They charged the card then put the account on hold so we were out the charge the client didn't get paid it was a nightmare.
We have cancelled all dealings with them and won't go back, completely lost to their thinking or lack of it...
I see paypal going like AOL is down..
Their sales team has been contacting us pretty aggressively recently. They have asked us to add their new Paypal Express Checkout feature to an ecommerce site, and are offering $5000 up front to "help with transition costs". Pretty attractive offer, but getting cut off from the funds even once would negate that.
Thanks for the heads up. It sounds like Paypal still has their heads up something as well.
Anytime you can add an extra processor for processing orders especially in an ecommerce site I would do it....
> Any suggestion on what we can do to avoid future occurrences
The biggest thing is becareful who you deal with. Almost always it is about the receiving person and not the sender. Especially when dealing with 'one offs' that don't fit the norm.
Don't allow external people to have access to your account. IP mismatch is one of the cheif fraud flags. That is 100fold true if they are non US based employees.
Also, certain internet sectors are known to attract very close PayPal scrutiny. Things like pharm, hosting, adult related, and other historical problem areas get the full look by paypal when matters of fraud are at issue.
When your paypal rep calls or emails - talk to them and get to know them.
Now with the Yahoo deal (and rumors of a Microsoft deal), I think PayPal is going to continue to grow by leaps and bounds.
As it turns out, someone stole the account owner's credit card last summer and opened a PayPal & eBay acount with the stolen info. The owner quickly worked with them to close down these fraud accounts. The problem is that PayPal's automated systems show the owner's SS# as part of the fraud account and does not allow the same SS in 2 different accounts.
So after a while on the phone with PayPal (yup - he actually got someone on the phone) we are waiting again after he explained the problem to them. Still in the no-man's land where they deducted the money from the credit cards but refuse to refund it or relrease it to the payee until this whole mess is resolved.
More often than not I do steer clear of PP but I would imagine thats irrational based on what ive just said
With a post like this it would help to say which country you are in as PP has many different national operations all with different regulators.
If you see any charges that are over the highest ticket item in your transaction, contact the provider immediately. Remember, the provider will have to pay if there is a chargeback and the provider will want its money.
It is always good to keep in communication with the provider on large ticket items and respond to them in a very timely manner. Even though they might not be able to respond to you right back because they might be dealing with scores of transactions, it will show them you are working with them and they will speed things along
-Corey
We have seen about 3m in/out through them in 8 years. I'd guess 30k transactions. Not a single glitch.
Brett, your customers are by in large good ones with clean track records I would safely assume.
asMy problem with Paypal is that they have a hair trigger with the nuclear option...total lock down of an account with one transaction that may need closer scrutiny. Let's say one has $25,000 in a PP acct and pays $300 to an account holder who has had problems in the past...what is the logic of locking out the one making the payment from access to funds that are rightly their's?
Why not just put the one transaction on hold until PP does it's due diligence?
It's not the size of PP that more cases such as this are reported...it is the neighborhood that PP does most of it's business in...Ebay which is wrought with fraud. This is why they have such insane policies.
case in point [webmasterworld.com]
Stop dropping so many links to this organization. It makes me paranoid about whats really going on here, whether there is some sort of referral issue involved.
It's human nature. Just like the power company. We wake up in the morning, and expect the power to be on. But we can remember those days when the power went out. And if it was off for more than 30 seconds, 75% of the people were probably getting ready to call to find out what the problem was and when it was going to be back on.
Paypal is dealing with a lifeline - money. And things happen from time to time. And with the thousands of transactions done every day, chances are pretty good that something will happen, some time
-Corey
