Anyone have paypal experience? [long]

[vj87]

I made a few payments a couple of days ago by family and friends method, direct from my paypal balance

Today (sent yesterday apparently but have not been able to check emails until today) I recieved an email saying

Dear X ,

To assist you, PayPal uses antifraud systems to detect and prevent fraud.

A review of the transaction below raised a suspicion that it may have not been authorised. As a result, we've reversed this transaction.

Transaction Details
Transaction Date: 13 Aug 2017 XX BST
Transaction Amount: $XX USD
Seller's Email: XX



If you have questions or believe that this transaction was cancelled in error, please log in to your PayPal account and click the Contact Us link.

Yours sincerely,
PayPal

But I absolutely did send by family and friends method, so no idea why its saying 'sellers email'?

But ontop of this, Paypal has limited my account and put a freeze on my entire balance. They were asking me for photo ID, address proof, business details, proof of postage and proof of itinerary. Now. I have only ever sold ONE physical thing on my paypal account. It was something for 10 pounds. With it being so low priced, I did not get this tracked as I figured if the buyer said they didn't recieve it I would just suck it up and refund, as tracking and such would have been pretty much the same as the price of the item. I do not have a business, nor do I see how they could think this. I called up and the guy told me it was an automatic system thing and took off the part where they were asking for business details and itinerary oart. But I still had to put in the proof of postage and such for the 10 pound item I sold on ebay. Apparently he could not remove that part and if it was not filled out, my account would remain limited. So today I went and posted something to myself, just so I could get a reciept from the post office that I could upload. This was accepted by the review team.

THEN, they decided that I had to put in details of payments I have recieved (from people from here incidentally) and what I sold to them. Wasn't sure what to do here as payments had also been sent via family and friend method...so I just said virtual items to friends...and as such there will never be any proof of postage as the items did not exist physically.

I now have to wait 2 business days for a reply to tell me if my explanations are good enough. Meanwhile I have like a thousand quid stuck in paypal (funnily enough, this freeze on my account didn't happen until I after topped it up with my wages...direct from my bank, the same bank that has been on the account forever), and no way of knowing what bullshit they will come up with next to try and stall me.

So I want to know 2 things really. How was a family and friends payment (well 2 actually...) reversed the day after it was sent? I know it is possible to reverse family and friends payments IF you go via credit card company as someone did it to me on here years back (though once an investigation is done this was reversed) but this takes a good few weeks or so to do this. In this case, I paid the person via my paypal balance, so there is no way at all to reverse it even if it all went wrong...as paypal refuse to dispute F+F transactions which is why they are considered safe. So how on earth has a payment been reversed within hours? No actual case has been opened either...there nothing at all on my end. Have asked other person involved if theres anything on their end.

Secondly, why would paypal decide that family and friends payments I had received had actually been something I sold, and what does it have to do with them anyway? Has one of the people I sold to chargebacked me? Again though, this would take a while and the payments have not actually been taken out of my account so I doubt its that...maybe it flagged my account or something having payments from different countries (I am in the UK and I think buyers were in US) but even so, it was family and friends, and unless the buyers actually had an issue then I dont see what it has to do with paypal.

I just don't understand any of this. And will not be using paypal again for a very long time after this. They have fucked. me. I only topped up my account to finish making a purchase, and to buy a new phone. And now my cash is stuck and they seem to be making up any reason to keep this going as long as possible :/

[Alexis]

I havnt had this specific issue with paypal but a year back i was sending my mum weekly payments to pay off a car i bought from her via F+F they basically accused me of money laundering through paypal, and expected all kinds of paperwork from me.

I found it best to be as calm and polite as possible as they are more likely to try and bend the rules for you, plus if you call up and get one advisor and they cant help, try again the next day as a different advisor MAY be able to or be willing to instead.

I ended up speaking to three different people over the span of four days to clear up my issue, but i got there in the end, the major problem with paypal is that a computer puts on the flag of your account and then you have to go though all this stuff to get them off, and usually a person has to help but not always will be willing

[Mama Bear]

It's probably more suspicious that you'd only ever done 10 pound and were now doing 1000. I can understand how they would see that as behaviour unusual to you, and may try to protect you. I hope it all works out though.

[vj87]

I wish I hadn't done it now, and just paid for the phone with my card on paypal. But my husband recently had issues with his card bering declined (but enough money was in bank) when making large purchases and ended up having to manually transfer the cash to his paypal and then buy what he was buying. So I thought I would just do that..

Still had no answer

Maybe it is a protection thing. But then...why would incoming F+F payments matter?