Paypal froze $70k+ in my account.



Just got a call from them, they're releasing $40k of the remaining $50k held in reserve.

Not happy about the time, especially since pre-orders accounted for only around $35k of the funds held.
 
Just got a call from them, they're releasing $40k of the remaining $50k held in reserve.

Not happy about the time, especially since pre-orders accounted for only around $35k of the funds held.

Is your account back to normal now or did they impose a minimum or a rolling reserve?

Just got an email saying that the fuckers want 40% over a 60 day period because we're high risk with our 0.5% dispute rate. Total mindfuck.
 
60 days?! .5% is an acceptable rate.

I have to rephrase that: 1.5% is the dispute rate, the 'claim' rate is 0.5%, the number of refunds / chargebacks is more like 0.2% as we provide tracking information for the shipments. Most customers use the dispute function to communicate with us and ask shit like 'when does the shipment arrive?' or 'could you please change the address?'. That's why most disputes won't get escalated to a claim, but they block our funds.

Are you using Paypal or Paypal Website Payments Pro?

We're just using the regular Paypal API function.
 
We do similar volume and I guess my question would be: what was the precise reason given for the account being locked - Excessive chargebacks? Too many high risk transactions? (ie. half your transactions were from sketchy countries).. something else?


Time for me to sound like a Paypal shill only because we've never had these issues before. I'm sure if I did I would change my tune, but their API and their transaction rates are superior to anything else we've worked with.



10 questions to ask when evaluating any online payment processor:

1. What are the rates, or additional fees that will be charged when I accept the following cards? Corporate, Business, Signature, or Rewards cards

2. What are the rates, or additional fees that will be charged when I key in a credit card manually, or accept a credit card online?

3. What is your gateway fee and your authorization fee? Do you charge additional gateway fees and/or authorization fees?

4. What fees are charged when I refund a transaction? Do I get any of the original fees paid refunded to me?

5. Is there a contract term? If so, what is it? If I close my account prior to that term, what are the fees associated with the early termination?

6. Do you do any bill backs or are all charges related to all transactions billed in the same month? Or is it possible that I pay more fees for the same transactions in two separate months?

7. What is your statement fee and web access fee?

8. Is there a monthly minimum processing requirement and/or fee?

9. Do you charge an annual (or monthly) fee?

10. Do you charge a PCI compliance fee?
 
We do similar volume and I guess my question would be: what was the precise reason given for the account being locked - Excessive chargebacks? Too many high risk transactions? (ie. half your transactions were from sketchy countries).. something else?

Time for me to sound like a Paypal shill only because we've never had these issues before. I'm sure if I did I would change my tune, but their API and their transaction rates are superior to anything else we've worked with.

The email we received didn't state anything:

[...]The decision regarding your reserve setting was based on the review of several factors related to an account, which include but are not limited to the following:

Upon your request, we will review your PayPal Account after 6 months[...]


We have scheduled a call with one of their senior people.
1.5% dispute rate, 0.5% claim rate, even lower refund / lost claim rate. Transactions are coming from a few legit countries. The only fuckup on our side was that one of the accounts (we're using 2 linked accs) had like -300 negative balance for a few days after Paypal decided that every single transaction of a day was fraudulent. The main account however had enough funds during that time.

We'll try to negotiate the rolling reserve percentage down and might get them to agree on a minimum account balance.
There is no way that we'll be working with a 60 day, 40% reserve.
 
I can't believe you had to go through all that bullsh*t to get your money. Wow this scares me because I am planning on selling some stuff online soon and I don't think I have much choice but to go with PayPal due to their easy platform for the customers? :(

Just glad you got your money though! :thumbsup:
 
I can't believe you had to go through all that bullsh*t to get your money. Wow this scares me because I am planning on selling some stuff online soon and I don't think I have much choice but to go with PayPal due to their easy platform for the customers? :(

Don't do it... just don't. And if you have to, make sure that you calculate your risks beforehand.


We'll try to negotiate the rolling reserve percentage down and might get them to agree on a minimum account balance.
There is no way that we'll be working with a 60 day, 40% reserve.

Update: they told us basically to shut the fuck up and continue sending buyers. We might get the chance to get our case reviewed in 6 months.

Thank you but no.