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Help with PayPal

Jason Huiting

Gold Member
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May 29, 2019
Messages
198
I have bought many knives using PayPal as payment but had not sold anything until last week. 9 days ago I sold a spyderco kapara here on BF, I took payment in form of PayPal. PayPal put a hold on the payment. PayPal claims that they use holds for new sellers, which sounds fair. PayPal claims that they pay out payments on hold after 21 days if the buyer doesn't make a claim of goods not received, 24 hours after delivery of the item if the tracking # is put in the transaction details, or 24 hours after the buyer contacts PayPal and says they received the item. The knife I sold was delivered 3 days ago with signature conformation and PayPal still has not taken the hold off of my funds. Can anyone tell me how long it usually takes PayPal to pay, how many sells a seller has to make until PayPal stops using holds, any advice about using PayPal in general would be greatly appreciated. After this experience I think PayPal is great for buyers, but not so much for sellers. I think I might be Hesitant to take PayPal as payment in future deals if others have had this experience with PayPal
 
PayPal generally bites the big one IMHO. I avoid them at all costs.
Rich
 
Most of us are long past this stage. PP does what PP wants to. The best way to get your answers is to ask them or google your ?'s. I can usually transfer money immediately after a sale. I usually leave the money with PP until delivery just in case a problem happens. Not using PP is an option but you will find it considerably harder to make sales. It's easy and most buyers are going to want the protection unless they know you.
Using it or not is up to you
 
We've used PayPal a lot. When we've had a question a quick phone call to them has usually gotten us answers.
 
On the other hand to Rich S's experience - I have used PP as a seller 100s of times with NO ISSUES. Hard to remember how many sales I had before PP stopped holding my $$s but as I recall only 3 or 4. I would be very reluctant to use the BF Exchange or eBay without PP.

The only cautions I can offer is tell buyers to keep any added info re: knives to an absolute minimum in their "notes", e.g. - BUCK 112 rather than Buck folding knife. Never use the word damascus - avoid the word knife or other blade indicators. If at all possible use the buyers PP address and use PP's print and ship service. These are ways to track deliveries to PP's satisfaction and avoid other confusion or the need for proof of delivery.

As I said - my experience has been 100% satisfactory.

Good luck with yours.

Ray
 
I had the unfortunate experience of calling them yesterday. They were about as helpful as a broken watch, lol.

We have on occasion had the left hand right hand deal to be sure but most of the time its helped.
 
On the other hand to Rich S's experience - I have used PP as a seller 100s of times with NO ISSUES. Hard to remember how many sales I had before PP stopped holding my $$s but as I recall only 3 or 4. I would be very reluctant to use the BF Exchange or eBay without PP.

The only cautions I can offer is tell buyers to keep any added info re: knives to an absolute minimum in their "notes", e.g. - BUCK 112 rather than Buck folding knife. Never use the word damascus - avoid the word knife or other blade indicators. If at all possible use the buyers PP address and use PP's print and ship service. These are ways to track deliveries to PP's satisfaction and avoid other confusion or the need for proof of delivery.

As I said - my experience has been 100% satisfactory.

Good luck with yours.

Ray
Thanks, for the advice. Like I said I am new to using PayPal as a seller.
 
I would call them again and ask for my money and be very firm about it
 
I'm a frequent PayPal buyer and only an occasional seller.

Haven't ever had any holds placed on any of my sales here or on EB, which in the case of EB was after a gap of over 10 years selling anything there and never selling anything on BF b4. I have had PayPal put a hold on a refund to me (as the buyer) from a seller pending clearance of the payment at my credit card company (about 5 business days) but received the refund immediately thereafter.

So, I can't say why they've put such a stringent hold on your sale(s) except (and I don't mean to insult you) that they for some reason do not consider you an acceptable financial risk and want to make sure that there will not be any reason for a reversal of the payment.

Unfortunately, the only explanation seems to be that you do not pass whatever standards PayPal thinks are applicable to your situation and, if you are going to use their service, you are just going to have to suffer their rules. However, if the issue is only that you are a "new" seller, this restriction should pass after you execute more transactions in the future.

The remaining question is how many more transactions that you'll have to execute to get out from under this restriction and it's something that I'd ask PayPal in your situation.
 
I had the unfortunate experience of calling them yesterday. They were about as helpful as a broken watch, lol.

They certainly can be that.
I had a technical problem logging on and opening pages and the best they could come up my was instructions on using a mouse :)
 
Never use the word damascus - avoid the word knife or other blade indicators
I've never had any issues with any knife-related terms, but YMMV. Damascus causes problems because they need to verify that the transaction isn't related to Syria, due to federal sanctions.
 
Google 'PayPal Wall of Shame', see if it's back up now that Google doesn't own paypal
 
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