[EyEPoD]

I've had so many problems with paypal in the past, but last year when I was building a system, Paypal was a must-have for audiogon purchases. SO I started an account, again. I did everything right and followed all the steps. I got my bank account verified, my credit card, my phone number, my email addresses, my home address, and even my social security number (insane I know). At that point I had the absolute least restricted account possible. I did everything that was available to provide verification.

This was 1 year ago. I have had about 20 transactions in that time. All went smoothly and as I hoped, conveniently.

Flash to today. I received 4 large payments yesterday from this forum and audiogon. I log onto my account and everything is great. Today, I get back from class and before moving the boxes to the truck to take to the UPS store I decided to check my email. "Notification of limited account access." I log into my account, and there it is. "Your account has been restricted." I no longer have access to any of my money. And right there on my account page is another list of things needed to be done for verification. Things that werent even availlable the day before. In order to access my money I need to fax in 2 bank statements, descriptions of all the items sold along with their tracking numbers, and last but not least I need to fax in 2 photo IDs.

Are you kidding me?

So I decided to continue this adventure on the phone. Well after about 3 hrs, 10 incompetent reps, and close to what Im sure will be 100 dollars in cell phone charges the best they could do was that they are able to lock accounts and require more verification at any time for any reason. They said because the specifics of the items that were sold werent included on the sent payment forms that I was now a "suspicious buyer." If you follow all the steps for verification (that insane list from above) it will take 7-10 business days to gain access to your account. No documentation existed ahead of time to indicate this kind of action would be possible. No where does it say If you recieve 5000+ dollars in 1 day we will require more verification. The only thing the rep told me was that in their user agreement it states paypal can lock any account at any time. Is this legal? Whats to stop them from adding special restrictions for black people, white people, disabled people, or old people. On the phone they could provide no specific reason as to why my account was restricted, only guesses. So when paired with the fact that they can restrict an account at any time, they can just use whatever reasoning they want and tell the complete opposite to the customer. The whole time my account (and my money) sits locked, and their paypal fees nestled in their pockets.


"Oh, and we will also be needing 1 tooth, 1 finger, and 2 of your toes for final verification."

Thanks paypal. Needless to say I refunded all the payments. I dont know what I would do if something like this happened outside the timeframe for refund. In any case I will never use this joke of a service again.

 

[tkam]

That sounds very odd to me I've never had to go through extra verification steps. I can't imagine why they would want bank statements, that raises a few red flags for me. That is unacceptable behavior on there part.

 

[gsferrari]

I just withdrew $500.00 from paypal...I have to wait until next month to get the remaining $900.00

Man this blows!

 

[EyEPoD]

You can verifiy your social security number to remove the withdraw per month limit. That was the last thing I had verified (and the last thing avaible to me to verify).

 

[Tim D]

Actually I was always afraid to use Paypal because I thought they *didn't* do enough check up. However I don't really know why you are targeted...how is your credit rating (free to get one too)?

 

[EyEPoD]

Everything on my end is first rate. I dont even have a credit history. My card linked to the account is a debit card. And my linked bank account is some special privleges account (because of my fathers large account).

The only thing they could provide as per a cause of the lock was that the money being sent to me was basically unlabeled. No descriptions of the items were included, and because most were through this forum, no kind of auction or sale number was given. I understand they need to take precautions, but if the lack of this information will result in a locked account they need to REQUIRE more information when sending money. I have done nothing wrong and am being punished.

 

[ServinginEcuador]

My first thought at reading this was that I hope this wasn't some scam to get all your personal and account info! Phishing scams are prevelant, and any email that supposedly comes from PayPal I ignore and log straight onto their secure site. I never, ever click on the links that come with an email as almost 100% are bogus phishing scams.

Best of all getting your money unfrozen and available again.

 

[myself, aka me]

I have one locked account because I don't have a credit card to verify with (It's the only way I could find to verify my account. Emails went unanswered aside from the usual autoemail). I tried to close my account but unfortunately it was already restricted access since I didn't (couldn't) verify it. I had already put a bank account number in but I couldn't remove it because it was restricted. Now my paypal account is frozen, and I cannot use that bank account anymore with paypal.

It sucks being a foreigner/criminal.

 

[Tim D]

I doubt it was anything personal given the sheer amount of transactions they must be handling now, what probably happened is your account ended up on some report generated by some financial SQL query.

How lacking were the payment descriptions? Did they at the very least name the item being bought or sold? I would consider that a sheer minimum and negligent of a party to not include at least the name (i.e. I would be hesitant as a seller to accept payment if the guy totally ignored a very minimum description/item name myself).

All the criteria that tries to guess at suspicious activity should be rightfully proprietary info. It isn't exactly the best strategy to outline in detail how suspicious activity is calculated to the tee (and I wouldn't be surprised if the reason the customer reps sounded clueless on this criteria was because they *are*).

 

[EyEPoD]

That is logical and I can uderstand it from that point of view. However It would be pretty simple to require more information when sending a payment. At this point you can simply put "Other goods" per their drop down box and leave the rest blank. It will process normally.

If their security programs have the ability to withhold someones money based on these transaction forms then paypal needs to add about 10 more required blanks to fill out when sending money.

 

[Tim D]

That does make sense, those fields should be required and complained about then.

As a seller accepting payment, I would not feel good accepting a substantial payment that doesn't at least name what is being bought, otherwise if they do CC-fraud or whatever, what claim can you really make? You failed to deliver some 'goods'? Of course suspicion should really be cast on whoever first failed to be descriptive...

 

[gurus]

Or it could be that one of the buyers paid by a stolen credit card or number. That would definitely lock up the account.

 

[GoRedwings19]

I know why your account has been locked. This has happened to me. Because I buy various items vaarying in amount from $10 to $xxxxx and sell, once you reached a certain limit they limit your account. This is due to a verification check they do where they phone you at home and give you a pin number. You then have to enter this pin number and your account will be unlocked with various forms of ID etc.

The reason they do this, is because by law they must check for money laundering. The steps I had to verify my account was not beening used for money laundering was nuts, but I did it.

 

[EyEPoD]

Why dont they give me the option to enter my pin then over the phone. They said my only option was to fax everything to them and to wait the 7-10 days for it to be processed.

 

[GoRedwings19]

I don't know how it works in the US but in the UK once you have recieved £4500 or more then you have to verify your account.