PP froze my account. (concentrated buyer exposure) They asked me what im selling, i said i offer software services , they asked what is the product , what do i deliver, i said i deliver code , they asked for the service agreement, i said well you'd have to ask the buyer that. They asked me to send them the last 4 invoices , i did. long story short , It was PITA to refund my bread , getting paid with STRIPE is better now. WHAT a damn hassle! I got the buyer on the phone W/ PP.PP said to me only thing i can do i is refund the last 4 invoices and get paid outside PP. Buyer said there is NO issue at all we are very happy with seller services. PP said to buyer: "nothing you did or can do". PP said to " they'd hold my bread for 180 days" then said hold for 90 days OR i can refund the 4 invoices , each time i called i spoke to someone different, they said it was their system, not my fault or the buyer , buyer made no claims at all.. Luckily, the buyer was cool enough to help me. I had to call PP each time todo a refund. Lift HOLD, refund, with then on the phone, repeat. What a damn HASSLE! i set up stripe the next day and its all good to go now! good lucky with PP. they can hold your shit without informing you and you can't do jack shit. And i had people to pay! I am kinda pissed but happy i got paid all my invoices. Does this mean i can't write a blog post about what happ to me? maybe this type of shit is normal with PP.
PayPal froze my account (for concentrated buyer exposure). They asked me what I'm selling, I said I offer software services. They asked what is the product, what do I deliver, I said I deliver code. They asked for the service agreement, I said "well, you'd have to ask the buyer for that". They asked me to send them the last 4 invoices, so I did. Long story short, it was PITA to refund my bread.
Getting paid with STRIPE is better now. WHAT a damn hassle! I got the buyer on the phone with PayPal. PayPal said to me only thing I can do I is refund the last 4 invoices and get paid outside PayPapl. Buyer said there is NO issue at all we are very happy with seller services. They said to the buyer: "there's nothing you did or can do". PayPal told me "they'd hold my bread for 180 days", then for 90 days, OR I can refund the 4 invoices. Each time I called I spoke to someone different.
They said it was their system's fault, not mine or the buyer, the buyer made no claims at all.. Luckily, the buyer was cool enough to help me. I had to call PayPal each time to do a refund. Lift HOLD, refund, with them on the phone, repeat. What a damn HASSLE!
I set up Stripe the next day and it's all good to go now! Good luck with PayPal. They can hold your shit without informing you and you can't do jack shit. And I had people to pay! I am kinda pissed but happy I got all of my invoices paid. Does this mean I can't write a blog post about what happened to me? Maybe this type of shit is normal with PayPal.
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It's probably worth pointing out that every online payment service I've ever encountered has incredibly one-sided terms that allow them to screw the merchant more-or-less at will. Even if the service itself doesn't feel the need to use them, the card networks typically require them, so any service backed by card payments will almost certainly have them.
PayPal is notorious for this kind of thing, obviously to anyone who's been around relevant online forums for a while, but then PayPal is also the 800lb gorilla of the online payments industry so it's hard to assess how representative the nightmare stories really are. I don't know enough about the parent poster's story to offer an opinion, but I've seen plenty of vitriol directed toward PayPal from other merchants whose accounts were frozen but who subsequently turned out to have been clearly in violation of reasonable PayPal terms and either hadn't read those terms or had read them but hoped no-one would notice the prohibited behaviour.
I've also heard nightmare stories about many other providers, including about the shiny new startups of recent years. But again, without knowing the context and the overall scale of their businesses, it's impossible to make any objective judgement about how likely it is to happen to you if you're a merchant who is just trying to collect payments and does nothing wrong.
