8 Years With PayPal - I Just Got Screwed...

Unfortunately, most clients or freelancing sites utilize other payment processors.

All I can do is call them up and hope they do something about it (which from what I'm currently reading... they usually don't).

You can use freelancing sites until you sort things out, they will of course take a cut but you won't have to deal with this cr@p and also can use their escrow..

I am interested in the "other sources" some of you have alluded to in your responses to the OP.I know of the existence of PayPal but have no knowledge of the alternatives.. :confused:TIA!

Hi Corey,

After selling 1000's of WSO's and many successful product launches, as others have noted this happens with PayPal all the time (unfortunately or fortunately depending how you look at it)...

DEFINITELY call them and get past level 1 and speak with a manager and authority at PayPal to give you their specific logic.

Last time this happened to me, PayPal put a 90 day hold on my funds by email..then I called them to find out it was a 7% hold on my funds, and then after 90 days, those funds would be released in sequence.

Be patient, work with them, they will give you some specific logic on why the hold occurred, and that info has helped me in my business in preventing it from happened in the future.

It has also taught me not to have my income 'depend' on PayPal, so definitely have 1 or 2 backup processors in place, so you can flip the switch off of PayPal when things go south, but your business storms ahead as per usual.

Goodluck!

First off, you shouldn't be concerned with the experiences of other people, because their case is completely different from yours. Every case is different.

Second, you said you are doing freelancing work, then you told them you are selling digital products. Don't you see the disconnect in your story?

If your track record looks like you have been offering services, and you tell them you are selling digital products, then they might rightly sense that you are a big risk to their bottom line.

I hope you work it out with them, but I would recommend playing straight with them if you want a positive outcome.

I didn't know we are not allowed to sell through PayPal. The fact is Paypal has an option of choosing goods/services for every payment you make, that essentially means we can buy products and the other party can sell.

Cheers
HonestIM

I just got done reading an article in January's Website magazine that highlighted 4 new payment processing options. Here they are: Bluesnap, Wepay, Dwolla and Stripe. Hopefully one of those will work for you.

What level is/was your PayPal account? Personal? Premier? Business?

If your business is dependent upon managing your income through PayPal it should be a Business account. People often run into difficulties when they opt for one of the lesser categories.

All you read are the horror stories, and only one side of those.

Think about it. If you run into a snag and resolve it with a simple phone call, what's your motivation to talk about it on a public forum?

On the other hand, if you truly believe you got shafted, and the automated system doesn't fix things, and you'd rather squawk about it looking for sympathy, posting on a forum board makes perfect sense.

[Corey, I'm using the generic "you", not addressing you personally.]

Or, you get caught doing something shady, and you have a tantrum because the entity won't change the rules for you. Much easier to play victim than admit your sins and move on.

I don't have enough information to tell you if Paypal has it right or not. At this point, neither does Corey. All he has is a mechanical action and a computer generated form email to go by. Once he gets someone with some gravitas on the phone, he may not get the decision he wants, but odds are he'll at least understand it.

If you can try to be patient with paypal and don't argue with them (they can be frustrating but they are a valuable service). As others have stated try and get to someone in authority on the phone and try to work things out. If that doesn't work and they're determined to close your account. Then let them close it (just get your money first). Then simply wait a few weeks or a month then open a brand new paypal account. But make it a different type of account then you had before. So if you have a personal account now, if it closes... then open up a new account as a premier or business member. They may even contact you about it. But but if they ask you if you've been a member before, just be honest and say yes. That you are setting up a new type of paypal account.

I used to see this freezing of accounts a lot. It even happened to me once long ago. It was for absolutely no reason at all. What I started to realize at that time, was that if I left any significant amount of money in my paypal acount (which I used to do) they were more inclined to find some reason to start holding funds.

Once I realized that I started to instantly withdraw out of my paypal account whenever I got anything sent to paypal. Anytime I received any amount sent to paypal I would transfer it out (take it out) the same day. It got to where I would never leave more than 10 dollars in my paypal account. When I started to do that all those problems stopped and was never a problem since.