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"PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

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Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#31

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

MrThoughtful wrote: post #7

I thought the finance industry is highly regulated? Can a company really "hold any funds in your account for up to 180 days" just willy-nilly? And what does this mean: Fun bonus, they hold $80,000 I won't get back. Has anybody ever really been completely robbed by PayPal and never gotten their money?

It says they'll release it in 180 days, don't know why he figures he won't get it.

What's missing here is a description of what he was doing to generate that money. Maybe he was completely legit, but we don't know anything. Does he perhaps have a reason to think he won't get his money? Maybe he was getting a lot of chargebacks or some other negative metric.

https://www.headshotpro.com/ seems to be his business.

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#32

Post by geek_at »

mpeg wrote: post #22

Ok so I know a bit about this as I had the same exact thing happen to me in the past. The reason this probably happened is that their business was getting a high % of chargebacks from paying customers, paypal is not a specialist payment provider that wants to handle what they consider high-risk business like that, so they block your account and hold your funds for 180 days and during that time keep processing chargeb…

does that mean if a group of people don't like you they can chargeback-bomb you and get you banned?

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#33

Post by Mountain_Skies »

MrThoughtful wrote: post #7

I thought the finance industry is highly regulated? Can a company really "hold any funds in your account for up to 180 days" just willy-nilly? And what does this mean: Fun bonus, they hold $80,000 I won't get back. Has anybody ever really been completely robbed by PayPal and never gotten their money?

Know Your Customer, anti-terrorism, anti-drug money laundering, and many other laws have been enacted to keep "the bad guys" from being able to operate efficiently. Unfortunately, and perhaps even sometimes by design, these laws have created all kinds of loopholes that allow financial institutions and governments to prey on innocents, especially those who aren't doing anything illegal but sometimes things that are unwanted. It all does seem to be designed to strongly discourage the possession of cash and cash equivalents by anyone not in the right circles of power.

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#36

Post by helsinkiandrew »

epolanski wrote: post #15
MrThoughtful wrote: post #7

I thought the finance industry is highly regulated? Can a company really "hold any funds in your account for up to 180 days" just willy-nilly? And what does this mean: Fun bonus, they hold $80,000 I won't get back. Has anybody ever really been completely robbed by PayPal and never gotten their money?

> Has anybody ever really been completely robbed by PayPal and never gotten their money? On both ends of the spectrum of being an ebay buyer and seller. Once I sold a WoW account, and as soon as the buyer got the account charged back the payment. Another time I bought a piece for my motorbike. Never got anything. Asked for a chargeback. Got nothing. Did not use their service and I am still livid for their lack of tra…

Surely both of these had nothing to do with PayPal? (this is an honest question - I'm not trying to defend PayPal)

If the buyer did a charge back on their credit/debit card, PayPal gets charged and passes it on to you. Likewise if you as a seller didn't get the chargeback isn't that on your card company?

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#37

Post by danpalmer »

geek_at wrote: post #32
mpeg wrote: post #22

Ok so I know a bit about this as I had the same exact thing happen to me in the past. The reason this probably happened is that their business was getting a high % of chargebacks from paying customers, paypal is not a specialist payment provider that wants to handle what they consider high-risk business like that, so they block your account and hold your funds for 180 days and during that time keep processing chargeb…

does that mean if a group of people don't like you they can chargeback-bomb you and get you banned?

Yes, although in general this will happen with any payment provider. Stripe for example will decline your business after a certain point, and in a few cases have banned entire product categories that were having significant issues with chargebacks. There are payment providers that specialise in high chargeback rate industries, but they cost a lot more.

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#38

Post by Crosseye_Jack »

geek_at wrote: post #32
mpeg wrote: post #22

Ok so I know a bit about this as I had the same exact thing happen to me in the past. The reason this probably happened is that their business was getting a high % of chargebacks from paying customers, paypal is not a specialist payment provider that wants to handle what they consider high-risk business like that, so they block your account and hold your funds for 180 days and during that time keep processing chargeb…

does that mean if a group of people don't like you they can chargeback-bomb you and get you banned?

Pretty much, and if your avg payment is rather low you could end up owing PayPal money as you don’t just pay for the refund of the order, but you have to pay additional charges for the chargeback.

Let’s say your avg payment is $15, one chargeback means that not only have you lost the payment from the customer who charged back but as you now also owe the chargeback fee you technically lost the payment on a sale which wasn’t charged back.

Edit: just a quick note. Chargebacks are different than “PayPal Claims”, chargebacks are initiated by the card issuer, claims are initiated by the customer in the PayPal interface, so claims cost less than chargebacks, but PayPal will still ding your account if you get too many of them.

Edit the second: the 180 day hold is to cover not only chargebacks (which generally have a shorter period the customer can start one) but also PayPals own “protection program” claims which is 180 days iirc.

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#39

Post by jeroenhd »

geek_at wrote: post #32
mpeg wrote: post #22

Ok so I know a bit about this as I had the same exact thing happen to me in the past. The reason this probably happened is that their business was getting a high % of chargebacks from paying customers, paypal is not a specialist payment provider that wants to handle what they consider high-risk business like that, so they block your account and hold your funds for 180 days and during that time keep processing chargeb…

does that mean if a group of people don't like you they can chargeback-bomb you and get you banned?

If you take credit card payments on any platform: yes. The difference is in how much prior warning you're getting and how expensive paying for the chargebacks is going to be, but every major payment platform will either shut you down or massively increase prices if you incur too many chargebacks.

This is one of the practical reasons why credit card processors generally don't take porn sites as customers.

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#40

Post by Dalewyn »

geek_at wrote: post #32
mpeg wrote: post #22

Ok so I know a bit about this as I had the same exact thing happen to me in the past. The reason this probably happened is that their business was getting a high % of chargebacks from paying customers, paypal is not a specialist payment provider that wants to handle what they consider high-risk business like that, so they block your account and hold your funds for 180 days and during that time keep processing chargeb…

does that mean if a group of people don't like you they can chargeback-bomb you and get you banned?

Keep in mind that chargebacks are considered a nuclear, double-edged option. Yes, you can get your money back as a customer or abuse the system to financially cancel someone, but issue too many chargebacks and the banks will be more than happy to also kick you out too.

Chargebacks as they are intended are used only when all other attempts at resolving a dispute have failed, including the merchant refusing to issue a refund. It's the means of last resort and damages the credibility of both sides involved in the transaction.

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