If you are looking to open a paypal account to help you with your online transactions my advice to you would be not to do it at all. It amazes me that such a big corporation such as paypal can cheat people out of their hard earned money and have no remorse for there scandalous ways.
My story is of a somewhat stressful one. It all started when I was on holiday in Morocco. I signed into my paypal account and everything was fine until I signed in again later on in the day my account had been made limited and said that my account had been signed in by someone else and that I had to proof who I was I have over £300 ($500) frozen. All I had to do is send them an email of my passport, drivers licence and poof of my address even though I was in Morocco I was able to do that with little problem. Then 1 week went by and I had not heard from them till I emailed them and told them I have done everything they asked. They said they did not want to do business with me again and my money would remained frozen for 6 months. WHAT THE HELL !!! can they do that? we will discuss this later on in the blog. Let me show you the email I sent off to paypal and then I will show you their reply.
My email
| hi i completed the check list as paypal asked me to do but i would really like to know when i can have my account back to normal because i have more then £300 and i really need that money soon please help me out as soon as you can because i finished the check list a long time ago and its taking a long time for you guys to get back to me cheers mate Paypal's response Dear Cem Ali Hur, Thank you for contacting PayPal regarding your funds that was placed on hold. I regret the inconvenience this has caused you. Allow me to clarify this matter for you. Please note that when PayPal decided to permanently limit your account due to the risk involved with your business, we will hold the funds in your balance for a period of 180 days in order to protect ourselves against the risk of reversals and chargeback. This means that when we confirmed that the item was delivered, the funds will be placed on hold for a period of 180 days. (It is 180 days due to this being the maximum timeframe that any buyer has to dispute a transaction with their credit card company, i.e. the maximum amount of time within which funds could potentially be reversed out of your account). For your reference, I have included the corresponding excerpt from our User Agreement. Section 10.2 of PayPal?s User Agreement: ?10.2 Actions by PayPal. If we have reason to believe that you have engaged in any Restricted Activities, we may take various actions to protect PayPal, eBay, a User, a third party, or you from Reversals, Chargeback, Claims, fees, fines, penalties and any other liability. The actions we may take include but are not limited to the following: 1. We may, at any time and without liability, suspend, block, limit, close or cancel your right to use your Payment Instrument or Account entirely or for any particular transaction, which may in turn suspend, block, limit, close or cancel access to your Account or the Services (such as limiting access to any of your Funding Sources, and your ability to send money, make withdrawals, or remove financial Information). We will normally give you advance notice of any suspension or cancellation but we may, if it is reasonable to do so (for example if you are in breach of this Agreement or we consider it advisable for security reasons), suspend or cancel your right to use your Payment Instrument or Account without prior notice to you; 2. Block your Account and/or hold any funds in the Reserve Account; 3. Refuse any particular payment transaction at any time for any reason and will only be required to make available the fact of the refusal and the reasons for the refusal and how you may resolve the problem, where possible, upon request and provided it is not prohibited by law; 4. We may reverse a payment (including, if appropriate, to the sender?s Funding Source), that violates our Acceptable Use Policy, or which we reasonably suspect of violating our Acceptable Use Policy; 5. We may contact third parties and disclose details of the Restricted Activities in the manner set out in our Privacy Policy; 6. We may request information from you or otherwise update inaccurate Information you provided us; 7. We may refuse to provide our Services to you in the future; 8. We may hold your funds for up to 180 Days if reasonably needed to protect against the risk of liability; and 9. We may take legal action against you. Thank you for choosing PayPal. Yours sincerely, Joan PayPal Copyright © 1999-2010 PayPal. All rights reserved. PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A. Société en Commandite par Actions Registered Office: 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg RCS Luxembourg B 118 349 I have sent them many more emails since then and I have had the same response all I could do at the time was send emails since I was in Morocco and have been unable to call them which was so frustrating but not as frustrating as actually calling them up in person. What really upsets me about the email they sent me above is in section nine they said they may prosecute me!!! Prosecute me for what? they steal my money and want to persecute me for it ohhhh made me so angry at the time. Calling Paypal. When I finally got back to England I could not wait to call them and give them a piece of my mind and hopefully sort this mess out. You would think such a well known company would be easy to call but in fact finding their number was difficult as they like to do everything by email. In the end I managed to find their phone number and began to call them ohhh my word! the answer machine was driving me NUTS!! you have to argue with the answer machine before you can can argue with the members of staff. The answer machine was talking to me like some kind of game show host it was annoying and it was asking me for the pin number I found with this telephone number on the internet WHAT THE HELL! What pin number? then I hung up redialled the number again selected another option and then that stupid answer phone ask me what my address and post code was. I had to speak to the answer machine and it was speaking over me. Eventually I got through which took me 10 minutes speaking to the answer machine I gave my details to the member of staff and told them everything from the beginning he did not seem to be interested in my situation at all nor did he sympathise with me. He kept telling me I was a security risk that it was against their policy for customers to use their paypal accounts abroad and that they were going to hold my money for 6 months. I offered to fax them my ID details and offered to meet them in their headquarters they of course said NO! I told him if I froze your money would you like it? he was so very rude and said we are not talking about me we are talking about you if you keep repeating yourself to me I will terminate this call I was on the phone to him for 30 minutes and he did not change his mind. How rude can you get they treat their customers with no regards I asked him for his name and he is called David so if you call them and get an Irish guy called David you wont get very far with him ZERO!! What can be done? If your paypal account has been limited and your funds frozen there are many things that can be done about it depending on where you live. If you are from America or Canada then you can sue them just take them to a small claims court maybe you could sue them for more just explain to the judge you are having stressful mental issues because of paypal not to mention the large phone bill that cost a fortune just to call them up and 9 times out of 10 you will win the case many Americans and Canadians have been successful who knows you might even get judge Judy on the case. If you are from the UK like me then suing them will be tricky.It appears paypal have been very cleaver at covering their own back and have pre plained every obstacle. Because the UK paypals headquarters are based in Luxembourg they cannot be sued in the UK however if the amount of money they have with held are more then £2000 then it would be worth while taking them to the European court for a fee. You can report them to watchdog which if the case is strong they will put up your story on the TV. Don't forget to report them to the office of fair trading who have more power then the police its pointless going to the police. Also as an extra you can report them to the FSA paypal seemed to be scared of them. I emailed paypal yesterday and told them they have been reported to the FSA they answered me back at the very same day (which they don't normally do) and said they will investigate my case further which means better results for me. Here are the links For the European court of justice http://europa.eu/institutions/inst/justice/index_en.htm For watchdog http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/gotastory/ For the office of fair trading http://www.oft.gov.uk/ For the FSA http://www.fsa.gov.uk/ What alternatives that can be used instead of paypal? A very easy question to ask because there are 100s of merchant services out there that don't charge a high 3.4% each transaction like paypal do nor do you have to worry about your money. Check out the links bellow for alternatives http://www.realexpayments.co.uk/business-solutions?gclid=CLGYgJmlv6YCFcxO4QodZ1xbHQ http://www.nochex.com/merchant-account/ http://www.retailmerchantservices.co.uk/rmscard_machines.asp?gclid=CMLh0L-lv6YCFc0f4Qod4z7kGg http://www.electronic-payments.co.uk/traditional_card.jsp http://checkout.google.com/seller/fees.html If you have had any problems with paypal then I would love to hear from you please share your story by commenting on this blog so everyone can get themselves more experience not to get into trouble with paypal so lets help each other and STOP using paypal altogether to make paypal obsolete. |
