Odd PayPal deal the other day

Ever have this one?

[dpd1]

Customer paid on invoice request. He was an employee ordering stuff for a job. They processed the payment fine. Then come the next day, PP put a hold on it... No clear reason given. I called them up and they said it was showing as "possible unauthorized card use". I emailed the customer and he contacted them. Week goes by, still doesn't clear. I call them again and they say it "may" have been the bank for the card that told them it could be unauthorized. Why would they call PP instead of just calling the card holder? More time goes by... The customer calls them again and they finally released it. No email notification though... I had to go in and go back to the original transaction to see if it cleared to find out. I was about 99% convinced the guy was trying to get away with something before that. Good thing I was still polite.

Anybody ever have this one happen? Normally I don't have any PP problems, but it seems stupid to me that they would not keep a log of what's going on with a case. That would make things a lot easier. When they can't even tell you why something is the why it is, that's just stupid.

[jwolthuis]

PayPal's fraud management filters do some screwy things sometimes. Their standard answer is, "we dunno, maybe it's his bank". Plus, we all know that banks basically approve everything except credit limit overages.

I had a transaction actually get reversed once by PayPal, even though both myself and the customer (one of my regular's) each called them multiple times to say everything was fine. PayPal blamed the bank; the bank said the transaction looked fine.

The only good news is that these PayPal hiccups seem to be occurring less frequently.

[dpd1]

That makes me mad, because they really jerked us both around. Luckily this is the only time this has happened. But now I know.

[jecasc]

It happened several times, the longest it took to resolve was about 4 weeks. The item had already been shipped when the payment was put on hold, but since it was domestic and I know how to collect debts if necessary, I did not bother but simply waited. After 4 weeks however it was resolved.

I have long ago given up wondering what triggers this. Since it happens only in less than one of a thousand transactions I can live with it.

[dpd1]

Yeah, luckily it seems like it's rare. I have no problem with them having some sort of safety system. But I think it's ridiculous that their system catches something... then when they look at it they tell you it's somebody else doing it and not them. I don't see the point of that, and it just seems retarded.

[g1smd]

one of a thousand transactions

... so it only happens a few million times each year.

[jecasc]

... so it only happens a few million times each year.

That's part of the problem and one of the reasons Paypal has still a bad reputation. We are doing 4000 transactions/year so it happens 3-4 times a year and this is no big deal. However if you have only very few transactions or maybe only one/year and you happen to be merchant no. 1000 you can get the impression that nothing works at all.