Reply With QuoteWelcome to the world of PayPal. Your micro-interest is theirs. Of course they claim it is for protection and that lot.
So I sold something on eBay for a couple of hundred, the buyer paid via PayPal and I sent it out, April 20th, tracked etc. The funds are pending and the estimated availability date is 18th May.
Is it me or does that sound ridiculous
Welcome to the world of PayPal. Your micro-interest is theirs. Of course they claim it is for protection and that lot.
Sounds like a Paypal cheque?
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
What does the PP notification say exactly?
As above, could be an echeque issue as the funds take longer to clear.
Otherwise it could be because the transaction is perceived as "high risk", Paypal do this in the name of buyer protection.
I sell several reasonably high value items every month, i have a business account, 100% feedback and never had a paypal dispute, and they still occasionally do it.
Initially I assumed I would have funds withheld for the first few high value sales (which would be fair enough) but it is still going on several months on.
Today I got a payment for £353 held as it was viewed as a high risk transaction for some reason - the amount is definitely on the lower side compared to my average PP transaction! It was a PP payment which had nothing to do with ebay. It seems to be caused by high value items, and postage to overseas location possibly. However there does not seem to be much consistency in the criteria triggering this, it does appear quite random.
It is just a tactic to make money on the back of the sellers. I just accept it and factor it in my cashflow as there is no other choice unfortunately if you are trading on ebay...
Note you can reduce the time the funds are held for by providing tracking info.
Last edited by .olli.; 28th April 2017 at 20:39. Reason: Added more stuff
I don't even know if it is purely about "high risk". I've had it happen to me with friends and family payments. No logical explanation.Originally Posted by .olli.
Same happened to me a while back, every transaction with money incoming was placed on hold for 21 days before they released the money. After a few more transactions under my belt they seem to have stopped now. I think you have to get past 25 sales that involve payment via PayPal to gain their trust.
It hacked me off because I had been a member previously with hundreds of transactions and had closed my e-bay and PayPal accounts down and after a few years reopened both, but they wouldn't recognise my previous history in either.
Morale is, if you don't use them, don't close them.
Not sure this is correct, as I definitely have more than 25 sales under my belt!
I have been trying to work out the criteria triggering it but there does not seem to be a clear pattern, sometime a payment for £1500 will clear straight away, and a week later they withhold a payment for a much smaller amount.
I got that in response to a customer service complaint from me to them. They are a law unto themselves.
They certainly are! (It sounds like I need to contact them and complain!)
Unfortunately with no credible alternative they can get away with it.
When I worked in the financial sector (not for PayPal!) we regularly moved our trigger levels around, as the fraudsters were constantly probing to find out where those limits/criteria were.
Had a similar issue a few months ago when buying. Purchased an item and paid in the usual manner. Item received without issue. A few days later I received an email from the seller saying the funds were on hold and the release date wasn't for another three weeks. He was understandably a little bit annoyed but Id paid using PayPal and the funds had actually left my bank account.
I logged on to PayPal and highlighted the transaction. I had the option to manually confirm delivery which I hadn't seen before or ever used. I obviously had the item so confirmed receipt and the seller emailed me within the hour to say the funds had been released.
Clearly a safeguard of some description which we both found strange as we had established accounts with 100% feedback, but chances are if your buyer confirms receipt within PayPal you will receive your money quicker.
If you sent it out with tracking you're fine. PayPal release the funds 7 days (I think) after it's shown as signed for by the recipient . It happens from time to time, sometimes a couple of times in a row then it won't happen again for months. There's no pattern. PayPal = random
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sounds like an e-check, I have one pending right now, and it warns me to not ship items until funds are cleared, (3rd of May). Total is almost €400.
It's all a collosal pain in the backside frankly, and why I rarely sell anything on eBay these days.
In addition to the very high charges they now levy (around 20%) in total, all the risk has been shifted onto the seller.
I have said for years that a strong, viable competitor is needed to break their virtual monopoly- a company like Virgin could seriously shake up eBay if they launched a proper auction site with fairer terms.
Nobody seems to actually like eBay as a company these days, it's just that there isn't an alternative at present.
I think the point is surely that there are lots and lots of alternatives when it comes to selling. Certainly, there is no similarly-scaled single global alternative to eBay but, if there was, then it would very likely be just like eBay and people would be saying that they want alternatives to it.
Real world, available right now, alternatives to selling on eBay (in no particular order): Specialist forums of all sorts, Facebook groups, eBid.com, Shpock.com, Amazon Marketplace (for some purposes), Ziffit.com, Etsy, Bonanza, Craigslist, Gumteee (yes, I know this is owned by eBay), niche websites (e.g. Chrono24, Autotrader), Music Magpie, Preloved.co.uk, Asos Marketplace, Zapper, conventional auctioneers (for certain items), Auctionata.com, Catawiki.
The only failing of all these alternatives is that they are either specialist/niche and/or do not have the global reach of eBay. But, despite this, they really are places to sell stuff other than eBay.
In short, when people say that there "just isn't an alternative at present" then could it be that they really mean that they just haven't made the effort to use the many alternatives that exist? ;-) (Notably this list has actually increased in size since the last time we had this conversation on TZ-UK).
If, on the other hand, one has tried some of the suitable alternatives and still not found success with them compared to eBay, then perhaps this is proof that eBay is still good value overall, despite its increasing problems. It's not as if there are not alternatives (including global ones) that the market could move to en masse if eBay was no longer providing what its customers (i.e. eBay vendors) needed from a marketplace.
Ultimately the market decides. It always does. Like it or not, eBay has only gained its global single-market dominance and continues to retain it because the market as a whole wants it that way: Buyers and sellers en masse want it that way. The moment that enough buyers and/or sellers feel that eBay is no longer doing what they need, it will lose its global single-market dominance. (I specify "single-market dominance" because, despite this dominance, it is clear that eBay's dominance cannot stop new competitors from starting up and cannot wipe out very longstanding direct competitors such as eBid).
Last edited by markrlondon; 30th April 2017 at 15:45.
I quite like PayPal (ducks for cover!) and that's both as a buyer and as a seller.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
They've been quite reasonable recently, a couple of things which I bought went AWOL and they coughed up the funds back to me immediately.
Can't complain.
Regards
Brian
Not sure. Last time I sold something on EBay I had to wait 2 weeks or so after the package was received to get my money. And I have >200 feedbacks in 10+ years but they only look at the last 12 months or so.
PayPal offer pay after 14 days as standard now. It schedules payments for 2 weeks after the transaction. It is supposed to protect the buyer. Even when I use eBay to buy from established shops it does this.
Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
Maybe it's different where you live (given these are local services) but by me the only thing that pops up is absolutely tat - "picture of my dog - 50p", "spider-man figures, heads missing - 20p each".
So put some stuff up for sale. Make it better. If it's not being used enough in your view (by your arbitrary definition) then it's the market's fault or choice.
Complaining that they aren't as good in some way is wholly irrelevant. The alternatives are there and real -- if people want or need them and choose to use them.
** edit **
To expand a bit more, it seems to me that comments like "it's not very busy is it" or "the only thing that pops up is absolutely tat" are like an appeal to a kind of magic -- they are meaningless since they don't specify a baseline that should be met. What is a 'proper' competitor to eBay? Is it something that looks just like eBay in terms of market reach? Well, as I said, there isn't one because there is no market need for one: eBay demonstrably suffices for the market as a whole for now. Furthermore, if there was a competitor to eBay that held a similar, worldwide, massive market share then, surprise surprise, it would look and act and smell just like eBay and people would be complaining that there should be an(other) alternative to it...
Some people seem to think that a worldwide-scale single-market eBay competitor would just take off if they somehow got the formula right or had the right backing. No, that's not true. Between all those real world, functioning, alternatives I mentioned, at least one of them must have hit a successful formula. eBid, for instance, has been running for many, many years, so seems to be getting something right. So why aren't they as massive as eBay? It's not because they are lacking a magic formula and it's not because they just haven't hit critical mass that will lead them to massive scale. The problem is that eBay is good enough. eBay got it right, continues to benefit from the network effect, and continues to function at a price that the market can and does bear, and so there is no motive for people to rush en masse to the many alternatives that exist.
If and when eBay overprice their services beyond what the market will bear or introduce too many bureaucratic hurdles for the market to bear then the alternatives will, almost overnight, see more trade. Until then, many of the alternatives seem to be doing just fine: Specialist forums like TZ-UK often seem to have very busy sales corners, for example. The real world, functioning, usable and useful alternatives to eBay exist and work. But there's just not a single worldwide mass market alternative to eBay because there is presently no overriding market need for one.
Last edited by markrlondon; 1st May 2017 at 11:35. Reason: Added more
Posting Permissions
