PayPal sucks

[RyaNtheSlayA]

So today I get a wonderful email in my inbox:


Hello *blank*:

We're writing to let you know about a change to your PayPal account.

Starting 7/17/2011, money from payments you receive will be placed in a pending balance for up to 21 days. By doing this, we're making sure that there's enough money in your account to cover potential refunds or claims.

Even though you can't access the money right away, please ship orders quickly and communicate with your customers. After 21 days, you can withdraw money from each payment as long as the customer hasn't filed a dispute, chargeback, claim, return, or reversal.

The money may be available sooner if:
We can confirm that the item was delivered.
Your buyer leaves positive feedback. (Applies only to eBay items)
This change isn't necessarily permanent. We'll review your account every 35 days and re-evaluate if we should continue to hold your payments. If we decide to stop holding payments, we'll email you to let you know.

Why are my payments being held?
We reviewed your account and determined that there's a relatively higher than average risk of future transaction issues (such as claims, or chargebacks, or payment reversals). We understand that it may be inconvenient to have your payments temporarily held but please know that we didn't make this decision lightly.

Before deciding to hold payments, we consider many factors. These factors include account and transaction activity, the rate of customer disputes, the type of business a seller runs, average delivery timeframes, customer satisfaction, performance and history.

Questions? Let us know
We understand you’d like to have immediate access to the money you receive and we’re here to answer your questions about this change to your account.

For more information and tips on what you can do to avoid having your future payments held, please see our Frequently Asked Questions. To speak to a Customer Service representative, log in to your PayPal account and click “Contact Us” at the bottom of any page.

Thanks,
PayPal


Now keep in mind, that I've never had any disputes, my eBay Feedback is 100%. I ship and pay as promptly as I can. I sent an e-mail to them about this, I basically got a copy-pasted "You agreed to the terms and we can do what we want" reply. Even though I pointed out that there were no grounds for the limitation and asked for explanation.

That said, once my payment comes in I'll be closing my PayPal account.

[BoringSupreez]

Hey, it may suck, but there's no better alternative out there.

[Flake]

No, I'm going top agree with OP on this one. If I get an email like that, I'm out too. That is pure BS - you're supposed to ship before you get your money?

[BoringSupreez]

No, I'm going top agree with OP on this one. If I get an email like that, I'm out too. That is pure BS - you're supposed to ship before you get your money?

But there's no good alternative! If that means shipping before receiving payment, well, what else is there to do? Just not sell on Ebay at all?

[final fight cd]

for those backing out, what else can you use?

[Xeogred]

Indeed, it's hard to find other alternatives.

I can definitely say from experience though, Paypal customer service is nonexistent. Very, very hard to deal with if you run into some issues with them.

[Hobie-wan]

Damn, so you can't even use the part of the money that is for shipping the item to the person? That's a buncha crap.

[irixith]

If you live and deal in the US, there are plenty of option -- just like so many other services on the internet who seem to believe the US is the only country in the world.

Lifehacker just did an article on alternatives.

Dealing internationally though, nobody is anywhere close to PayPal.

[vlame]

https://www.serve.com/

[Ziggy]

I haven't heard anything bad about Google checkout or whatever it's called. Although, I haven't heard much about it period.

Ryan, that almost sounds like a phishing email.