Paypal holding funds - Anyone know an alternative?

Does anyone know any alternatives to paypal, used for ebay auctions?

So I haven't sold on ebay for a while, but i've certainly bought stuff. I started selling again yesterday and so far 2 items i'm selling have sold. The 1st one, fine, money went to my paypal, I shipped it out today. Yay.

The 2nd however, paid, but now paypal has put a freakin hold on the payment until, the buyer leaves me feedback, or they can confirm the item has shipped. THIS IS INSANE! I've had an ebay and paypal account for 10 years, have 100% feedback, and never had an issue that wasn't easily resolved in an auction. I see their policy is if you have under 100 feedback and sell over 100 dollars, or just in general have under 100 feedback they can hold funds (i have 56 feedback all positive).

I am so pissed right now as this completely goes against the system I use in auctions. Sell item, get payment, confirm address, use money I got from my payment to pay shipping, that way money that I have that has nothing to do with ebay doesn't get involved. It's already enough that paypals and ebays charges have gone UP over recent years, and they (paypal) are generally a pain in the ass company to deal with.

Are there any alternatives to paypal, using ebay that anyone knows of? Western union isn't an option as it is sktechy, and unsafe. Just doing checks, and money orders isn't an option as paypal is just what most people use and waiting for checks to clear is awful.

I could understand this kind of treatment if I had a new account, or had a bunch of negative feedback, but this is not the case. It's like when someone in a class does something bad and won't admit it so the whole class has to miss recess unless that person confesses.

halp! *injects xanax into brain*

Craigslist also isn't really an option as I don't want to constantly have to meet up with people.

I really want to call paypal and yell to them all sorts of horrible things but I'm trying to be mature. They've already botched a cancelled payment that was supposed to be credited BACK to my credit card last week, which I still haven't gotten the credit for.

Edit: I googled paypal alternatives before posting this, but most of what I find has to do with selling from websites, and not ebay as ebay frowns upon using non-approved money transfer companies (yay capitalism)

Talk to someone at Paypal?

I've found that if I complain enough, people let me get away with shit.

  On 9/2/2009 at 1:54 AM, Braintree said:

Talk to someone at Paypal?

 

I've found that if I complain enough, people let me get away with shit.

See this would seem reasonable. But from googling about other people having this problem, it seems there's nothing you can do about it. I can't understand why the first item payment went through fine, and this one is being held. It's under 100 dollars. Also when talking to paypal on the phone last week about this credit issue, it was a very tedious thing and the phone operators seem to just be reading off a list of prompts for phone conversations, and seem to be very robotic in nature.

Maybe i should consider this once I calm down though. I don't want to call up and let some innocent phone support person have it when they don't deserve it.

But from reading other peoples dealings, it seems you can't do a thing about it until the person leaves feedback or paypal can verify delivery. Ugh, I hate loopholes.

I was contemplating using paypal for the Antarctica tribute if I can't get it on a decent online retailer. BUt now I don't want to . Maybe i'll use amazon or something.

Here's the complete policy from paypal (in the spoiler)

The things i put in bold are the only one's that I guess apply to me, as I haven't been active much in the past year and haven't gotten much feedback since 2007/8

The funny thing is the email I got from paypal. And it says in ALL CAPS "GO AHEAD AND SHIP"

*mows down paypal with a potato gun tank*

At least you get your cash after 21 days max, better late than never

rumor has it they earn interest off the $$$ sitting in your account, putting a hold on shit just lets them sit their fat ass on the money longer so they can earn more interest

while we're here, eBay always fucking underestimates shipping costs.

  On 9/2/2009 at 2:17 AM, hahathhat said:

rumor has it they earn interest off the $$$ sitting in your account, putting a hold on shit just lets them sit their fat ass on the money longer so they can earn more interest

You know I was wondering if there was some kind of scheme behind that. This HAS to pay off for them somehow. I can't see much benefit to "imporving ebay auctions" in pissing of your customers by holding their money. What do they care whether auctions go right or not, as long as they get their cut.

  On 9/2/2009 at 2:17 AM, hahathhat said:

while we're here, eBay always fucking underestimates shipping costs.

This is VERY true. I always use the usps website (i rarely use ups) when trying to figure out my shipping cost to put in the auction and round up a dollar to get the closest price to what the actual cost will be. That way I'm not screwing buyer out of money they shouldn't have to pay by getting the closest estimate possible. There's also flat rate boxes now a days which are good and bad.

There's also a large trend these days of doing an auction starting at ".99 cents" but having the shipping cost be like 40 bucks or more for something that obviously doesn't cost over 10 dollars to ship.

  On 9/2/2009 at 2:13 AM, Capsaicin said:

At least you get your cash after 21 days max, better late than never

True, but still. 21 days is a long time. Waiting for a check to clear takes less than that. It would seem counter productive for paypal to encourage checks. Anytime I've offered check payment it's been by certified check, and years ago i bought some higher priced items (synths) with certified checks as they are safe. But most people don't want to go through the hassle of waiting about 10 mins at the bank, which i admit isn't very fun.

It seems like this has no effect on your buyer - so you still get satisfied customers and good feedback, no?

In New Zealand we have an eBay equivalent called TradeMe - the default payment method there is the seller emails their bank account # to the buyer and then the buy uses online banking to transfer the amount to them. Pretty simple.

  On 9/2/2009 at 2:30 AM, analogue wings said:

It seems like this has no effect on your buyer - so you still get satisfied customers and good feedback, no?

 

In New Zealand we have an eBay equivalent called TradeMe - the default payment method there is the seller emails their bank account # to the buyer and then the buy uses online banking to transfer the amount to them. Pretty simple.

so you buy sheep with that or what

sheep and hobbits, yep

yeah it has no effect on the buyer that I'm aware of. if anything I guess it is supposed to benefit the buyer. But blah. This has just taken me by suprise. I've always preferred to keep ebay money separate from other money so it's never a money pit. Liek going into a casino with $100 and nothing else and only spending that, and any money you win, then calling it quits, so even if you lose, you're only out 100 dollars. With pay pal and ebay fees and such its always made more sense to me to keep that money with that money, but now if I'm not going to have that money for 21 days or until I get feedback, that makes that idea pretty much impossible so I guess it's my problem for wanting to do things that way *sigh*.

  On 9/2/2009 at 2:39 AM, analogue wings said:

sheep and hobbits, yep

what about gollummmumz and preciousessz

The fix is to add a "float" of your own money into the paypal account, say $50, and just write that down somewhere so you know the paypal account owes you $50.

  On 9/2/2009 at 3:20 AM, analogue wings said:

The fix is to add a "float" of your own money into the paypal account, say $50, and just write that down somewhere so you know the paypal account owes you $50.

No, I'm thinking the less of my money paypal has, the better. I'm just gonna have to re-do my finances sine I'm gonna be selling a lot on ebay now (started an ebay business with my boss). So i'm just gonna have to have my bank card on hand for these kinds of issues, and set aside money for shipping. Maybe it's a good time to stop smoking.

Edit:

From paypalwarning.com (thers also a paypalsucks.com and screwpaypal.com)

  Quote

How Does PayPal Make Money With My Money?

 

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, there are approx. 100,000 complaints outstanding at PayPal (Are any of these yours?). In many instances disputes can run on for months leaving people frustrated and out of pocket as they are unable to access their accounts. So what happens to the millions of dollars tied up in frozen accounts and disputes? Well, here is a clip from the San Francisco Chronicle that basically sums it up:

 

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose refused to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks class-action status on behalf of thousands of PayPal customers nationwide. A common allegation is that the company brushes off or stalls customer grievances for months and meanwhile freezes the customer's account and pockets the interest (So that's how they make their money!). No wonder they freeze so many accounts!

 

 

The Lawsuit You Need To Know About

 

As you will come to discover while browsing through the many horror stories posted on this site by current and former PayPal users, PayPal has some tough allegations to deal with. Allegations of mishandling money, unnecessarily locking funds, not providing adequate customer support, freezing accounts with no explanation and disregarding customer complaints, just to name a few.

 

In early 2002, Plaintiffs Roberta Toher and Jeffrey Resnick filed separate lawsuits against PayPal, Inc. These two cases were later consolidated into one lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

 

The lawsuit alleges, among several other issues, that PayPal has placed inappropriate restrictions or other limits on customers' accounts and engaged in several other improper practices. Based on these improper practices, the lawsuit sought damages for money unjustly held, negligence, and violations of consumer protection statutes.

 

Rather than dealing with a lengthy public trial and being forced to clean up their act, PayPal decided to settle out of court and pay $9.25 Million Dollars to Tens of Thousands of PayPal merchants who processed with PayPal between October 1, 1999 and January 31, 2004. (A mere slap on the hand for a company this size)

 

Instead of a Judge forcing PayPal to change their questionable business practices, PayPal agreed to pay the settlement and walk away from the entire allegation.

 

So what does this mean to current PayPal merchants? Unfortunately, this means that PayPal is free to continue operating in the exact same way it always has. Judging by the number of PayPal horror stories we receive every single day, it appears that the situation has only gotten worse since the settlement.

 

We highly suggest getting a Real Merchant Account to avoid becoming another PayPal horror story.

I think i'm starting to see the light here. I bought something last week, from a ebayer I had bought from before (gotham shoes *drool*) and when the auction finished they immediately sent a email saying to use their checkout process and NOT ebays (which is actually vaguely against ebay policy, but gotham shoes has been around for years and has thousands of positive feedback). Anyway it was a checkout process liek you get from a website, a typical *merchant* account. It's looking like this is the way to go. Now the thing is to find one that is trusted and take the risk of ebay closing my account for violating the rules.

Damn, I should have sued them back in the day.

yay, they're holding the funds on another thing that sold this morning. GO PAYPAL UR AWESOME!

After this string of ebay stuff, i'm certainly getting some kind of merchant account, this is ridiculous. There's 200 dollars in my account that I can't access until feedback is left.