Do not send or receive money with the subject line PS3. My account was just limited because someone I was trading items with paid me shipping for a PS3. Paypal is automatically locking accounts that receive money for PS3, even though this was clearly marked as "Shipping for PS3". Now they want me to jump through hoops, including: 1) Answering my phone at a specified time 2) Enter my business information (even though I dont own a business, this is REQUIRED or you wont have any chance of unlocking your account. I just put anything) 3) Tracking links for the past few transations (WTF, This clearly wasnt payment for an item, yet they require tracking!!) 4) Fax them proof of inventory The last one really kills me, as I have no way of doing this and its a clear message that this is because of the PS3. They are now holding 300$ of mine in my account unjustly. Making matters even more complicated is the fact that I opened the account years ago under my mothers name (with her approval of course). So now I cannot resolve this, she has even though she has very little knowlege of the problem. Im about to say fuck it and close the account, or do whatever the hell as this is now the third time paypal has screwed me unfairly. Just wanted to give a heads up there before it claims more victims.
make another account. It is perfectly fine with paypal rules to have more than 1 account. If you have account #1 linked with your checking account, then link account #2 to your savings account. This will let you make other auctions, getting your money out of account #1 may take a while and have much frustration, GL tho
But why don't they not like the letters PS3 if that relates to a console? ...Who are they to say what the letters 'PS3' mean?
After what happened with my last ordeal with paypal (locked my account because the BUYER was a new account and they thought that me and the buyer were doing a scam involving a laptop I was selling), I just said screw it. Bidpay works far better for me than paypal did, even if it isn't as fast. Not only is their phone service unreliable, but they don't even respond to email claims and just do form replies.
They started it because of people pre-selling PS3's long before it went on sale, now anything envolving PS3 is heavily scrutinized. Likley they dont want the bad media exposure but your right.
I need to remember this thread. Perfect to point people to when i want to sell something and they ask "why dont you want to do paypal???"
What a bunch of bull. Even if you are selling ps3's, why is that any of their business? They dont have any right to lock up $300 of your money like that.
My $.02: I don't know that there is a definitive correlation here between what your selling, rather how much you are selling for. Paypal starts to scrutinize transactions when a.) there is a surge of transactions, especially incoming. Traditionally has happened alot to people when they try to set up an account to accept donations. b.) there are large transactions (not sure what the threshold is here). Happens alot to people selling computers and whatnot. Since you can easily send money without ever identifying what its for, explicitly monitoring for certain words in the subject/description would be real innaccurate. Alot of credit card companies do the same thing (based on a and b above). Paypal is a soulless corporation and I severly detest everything about them. However I think blame should be put where it is due, on the scammers and greedy scum that cause these "policies" to be instituted in the first place, not the people who are trying to protect you. If you don't complete the transaction, paypal doesn't make any money. So they aren't intentionally trying to screw you. I am sorry to hear about your plight though. Haha...I take it you haven't read their TOS yet, have you? They essentially have the right to come over, dig up your great grandmother, have their way with her corpse all the while punching you in the face and defecating on your new furniture. Lesson be learned, read carefully what you sign your name to (or check a box that says 'I agree'). In the age of instant gratification, probably 98% of the people neglect to do this.
Actually I almost never read the fine print, I've got better things to do. I want my gratification now (I'm being serious). But by doing so, if whoevers service I contracted comes to screw me over, I just accept it and write it off as "they may be violating my great grandmother in front of me, but the cumulative time I've not wasted on studying some pompous lawyers legal rhetoric was time well spent elsewhere. Sorry granny". But to each his own. Look what can happen if you do read the fine print: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/23/2315211
Just because it is in the contract/fine print doesn't make it legal or legally enforceable (especially with the number of banking regulations that PP believes it can disregard). Good luck getting anybody official to care though.
jurisdictionally speaking, since PAYPAL acts within the Jurisdiction of the EU, it can be considered domiciled blah blah blah, and in short you can take them to court if their regulations are against 'real' laws. If you re a consumer, and not dealing with them in the course of your trade or profession, you can even sue them in the Member State you live in
I stopped using PayPal over a year ago when they did something similar with my account. I hate to weary you, but it took almost 9 months to get my money back and hours or frantic calls to PayPal. Their call centre staff in India were just reading scripts and NOT willing to go into any deviation from what they are expected to say (fair enough, but it helps nobody!) So DEMAND that you are put through to the head office. In the UK that means speaking to a representative in Ireland. The whole exercise resulted in me having letters coming in from a debt collecting agency for several months, who after reading through the correspondence and understanding my issue went back to eBay & PayPal and cleared everything. (I realised that eBay were a related company, so to get my own back I refused to pay my listings fee for several months - that was what finally lit a fire under them to get things sorted as I assume they realised I was serious. The collections agency was very helpful actually and gave me all sorts of advice I am sure most agencies wouldn't have - I got the impression I was NOT the first eBay / PayPal customer they had dealt with in a similar situation). It was very complicated, time consuming and despite getting my money back in the end I had paid probably 20-30% in lengthy calls for several months. Unlike high street 'banking' institutions PayPal is not easy to get hold of, seem to operate within their own rules, have generally poor customer service, demand all sorts of unrelated and difficult to obtain information and frankly appear to do all they can to retain your cash once they have it in their mitts. My advice to most people these days is to avoid using PayPal, but then again when it works it is a very good means of paying for items over long distances (exactly what collectors need). Good luck with sorting your situation out.
Update! After youtom sent them an email explaining that he received the item and there is no fraud they restored the account. WHEW. Still, man I really dislike their practice, but its the only common service collectors have as Parris said :\ So the point still stands, Dont accept money with the name PS3 on it, or its going to throw the automatic lock trigger.
Thanks for the info dude - Paypal are bar stewards. I plan on purchasing my PS3 from the States towards Easter. Although they are really cranking down in Customs over here.
