[mopedcrasher]

I've been searching high and low on the internet for someone who's been through the same experience as me with Paypal, namely having their account closed because of credit. Now, I have straight up bad credit... But I never thought this would cause any problems selling on Paypal. They never said it would. So after a particularly lucrative 3 weeks ($5k in profit) I ended by selling 8 Toshiba M200 Tablet PCs... This was a big red flag that caused my account to get frozen. They asked for tracking numbers and supplier verification to unfreeze the account, but 2 days later I got notice they were closing my account and holding all funds for 6 months. I got the same message you did regarding Equifax. Luckily, I've managed to get $3,000 released (money i need for tuition) thanks to the silicon valley better business bureau... but forget all that. I have a question for you.... Did you ever get an account back or find out what kind of a credit score is acceptable? See.... Just today, I started up an account under my brother's name... he doesn't have bad credit, but he really doesn't have any credit. I never thought that would be a problem until I found your post. Have you found anything new from Paypal?

See... I'd be happy to kiss them goodbye, but I was making GOOD money thru eBay up until my closure on Monday. I would do just about anything to be able to continue to sell. Unfortunately, I just don't see myself getting anywhere near the sales I was getting without offering Paypal. And now, reading your post.... I'm scared to get business going and get frozen all over again... Lately, I've been doing quite well... My other job is in a restaurant. Just last week on Paypal, selling these Toshibas, I made $2,000 profit within 6 hours... That's more than I make in a MONTH at the restaurant... there have also been a few other sales for expensive products like Cisco routers where the profit will be $700-$1000 for just one unit. I mean I'm not trying to boast or anything... just get the point across that I will go to any length to be allowed to continue to sell on eBay.... I just don't really see what my options are... it seems like credit score really has nothing to do with it. You were selling computers, I was selling laptops. I think maybe they just don't like young people with not so much credit selling thousands of dollars in computers where we could be raping the computers for parts or whatever. Chargebacks are a very real liabililty for Paypal in this area. Anyhow... I would like to speak to you more....
I just discovered this website and may not be logging on much. Would appreciate you sending an e-mail to bgotsens@verizon.net or AIM to MopedCrashr.
Thank you
-Ben Gotsens

[nado]

I've been hearing more and more bad things about paypal, can't wait until Google brings out their version.

[cheng]

Also had problems with paypal. Ben, just sent you an email.

[ericesquire]

I've lost over $3,000 due to PayPal

[cheng]

eric did you get it back after 6 months?

[waveformpc]

You better be careful using your brothers name - they will find a way to connect you, and if your brother doesn't have a credit score, they will shut you down. They terminated my account, and I cannot use them ever again. I asked them what they define as "acceptable" credit, but they stated that they can't reveal that information. In essence, it's a giant scam - by them not defining the term, they can limit or close your account at any time for any reason.

On top of that, the message I recieved - in regards to my account being limited -had nothing to do with my credit. They said I was receiving a high number of complaints or something. They finally revealed that I had not received ANY complaints about 3 or 4 weeks later, and the REAL reason my account was terminated/limited was because of my credit score. Basically, they lied to me and used "complaints" as a false reason to hold my money.

Now, the whole reason they hold your money is to protect themselves against chargebacks associated with credit cards and ACH transfers. Credit cards DO hold a maximum chargeback date of 180 days after the purchase, while ACH transfers are limited to 90 days. ALL of my funds were received via ACH transfers, NO CREDIT CARDS. Therefore, my funds held absolutely NO risk to PayPal after 90 days. In accordance with the injunction, PayPal CANNOT hold funds beyond the date of reasonable risk - in my case, 90 days.

Given that, I got it back after 130-something days, after numerous complaints, contact with the previous class action lawyer, and threatening to file suit based on the injunction violation (which holds a penatly of $6,000 per day per violation - in my case, 130 days with two violations), in addition to punitive damage of a similar amount. But, I never persued it any further than that... Oh, PayPal did issued a lengthy apology note, I guess to try and convince me not to continue with the suit, but luckily for them - I didn't have the money or resources to continue.

Did I mention, I hate PayPal?

[ericesquire]

Nope, never retrieved my funds.

[mopedcrasher]

I got pretty lucky... Mastercard uses a 5 day cycle for credit card purchases.... ie, upon purchase, the money is deducted from your account and the company has 5 days to retrieve it, otherwise it is returned to your account. Well the company I purchased the M200's from operates on a 10 day cycle.... so, at the time my account was closed, it looked like my account had $9,700 so thru the better business bureau, I managed to get $3,000 released.... however, only $3,500 of it was mine. The company came back to get there $6,200.... and I had already gotten my $3,000 now there is jst $500 left in the account, which I owe to eBay anyway.

Regardless of all that.... it is devastating to not have a means to sell stuff. My main concern here is, if not Paypal then what?

I don't sell enough stuff to warrant opening my own webpage... and a lot of the stuff isn't very exciting, like Cisco switches, HP procurves, laser printers, altho sometimes LCD monitors and laptops... so the only way to sell most of my stuff is to list them on pages with very high traffic (like eBay.) I sell off damaged box inventory and stuff that has been in inventory too long... I do this just for one company and the money has been good and very little time commitment, just however much time it takes to setup the auction. I was looking to expand and do this for as many companies that are willing to let me work for them... but without a payment method that consumers trust... this whole thing kind of stopped me dead in my tracks.

I know there are other sites I can sell on, but eBay seems to be the one that gets all the traffic... and if you want to sell on eBay you got to accept Paypal... I'm open to other suggestions... but I get the impression that if someone's looking to buy, say, a Cisco Catalyst 2950G.... they're either going to go to eBay, or a major retail site like buy.com or the like. Can somebody please tell me I'm wrong?

[Sarafina]

mopedcrasher, you made 5k in profit in three weeks and say you don't sell enough to justify a seperate website?

[mopedcrasher]

Well the stuff I get is very random.... I get damaged box and refurbs on whatever happens to be around... It's not the kind of stuff that someone would be like "Oh I need X or Y part so I'll see if Ben has it"

I just don't have nearly enough inventory that it'd be worth it... like that 5k in profit came from 5 LCD monitors.... 1 Cisco 2851... and 8 Toshiba Tablet PCs.....

Now if I put some of that stuff on eBay, many people would see it, but that's a pretty small product line to build a website for. Who would come to my website? I need the traffic of eBay.

How much does it cost to be able to accept credit cards independently of Paypal? Buyers don't seem to be very fond of Bidpay.

[pentupentropy]

There's good and bad in paypal. My wife has had over 1000 transactions now smoothly, but I guy I wwith at globix lost over 300 bucks because they found out his US address was a work visa and that his home address was in the UK. Why this mattered I have no idea, but they're weird like that. I thought ebay buying them changed a lot of that but this post is making me wonder. There are lots of other "paypal" like operations, but you really need to look up reviews of them before you use one, especially all the overnighters who use something that you need a paypal account to make active. 4th party schemes are retarded.

FOr those of you looking for an alternative, there are sites like http://www.paypalsucks.com/ that list some, but the problem with a lot of those sites is that they are marketing for other services, which isn't really a great way to do business either. Check on those sites as well before starting any accounts with them. I often thought about starting my own service, but it's hard to ocmpete with paypal's rates because they are so large they can charge 2.9% and make better than 40% profit on that.

Starting an account with a transparent gateway like authorize.net is costly in large platform schemes like that, and while the software is reasonable to run it (about 1200 USD), the 600/mo or so to host it is also a big cost when you have no way to really attract businesses ecept the people who are pissed off or absolutely can't use paypal.

Interestingly enough, the software I saw is very nice, it has it's own shopping cart, ebay carts, billing for users, multiple funding scenarios and can actually do something paypal previously didn't until recently, like take credit card payments from non-members. AGain, the cost is just too high for me to want to get involoved, because if you only signed up 50 people a month, you would be paying a ton of money and be required to keep your service going at a loss.

Should anyone here be interested in splitting the cost, I'd be willing to discuss it, but I'm not rich and I'm not going over $100/mo or so in bills. Again, when you figure in the costs associated, it's not really worth it, but if someone wanted to put up 500/mo to my 100 and let me make it up by doing the web development and sys admin stuff which is worth well over 500/mo, I guess I'd be willing to discuss it.