Small change embarrassment

June 15, 2009 7:12 PM

Small change embarrassment: After buying an eBay item I had $4.20 in my Paypal account. Unluckily my eBay seller fees were charged at the same time for $4.35. I now presumably have a negative balance of -$0.15 in my account. I have added $10 from my bank account (which has money in it sufficient to cover all this) to Paypal, but it will not clear for a few days. What will happen to my Paypal account.
posted by bad grammar to work & money (7 answers total)

AFAIK it just takes the charge from the bank account you have on file. I haven't put any money on my paypal account in a few years.
posted by andendau at 7:20 PM on June 15, 2009

In my experience, PayPal will attempt to recover the negative balance through the other funding options you provided (bank account, credit card). Shouldn't be a big deal.
posted by karizma at 7:23 PM on June 15, 2009

In about two days, your account will have $10.15 in it, with the $.15 coming from either your credit card, or more likely, your linked checking account.
posted by bensherman at 7:27 PM on June 15, 2009

Something like this happened to us recently, and it delayed one transaction while we waited for the negative balance to be resolved--it took a couple of days for our transfer to be fully processed. But it was no big deal.
posted by not that girl at 7:47 PM on June 15, 2009

I've had the same thing happen to me and it was simply charged from my linked checking account. You can now also have a credit card as a backup in case your funds are low in your checking account. There was a day when this WOULD have been a big deal and PayPal may have taken overzealous steps without communication - nada. However, for the most part, PayPal is a far different company now that they're owned by eBay. Night and day, really.
posted by Gerard Sorme at 8:13 PM on June 15, 2009

It's happened to me several times over the years. I think you'll be unable to use your paypal account to make purchases until you clear it up. Thankfully paypal doesn't assess overdraft fees.

In the future, if you want to resolve this quickly (as in instantaneously) re-fund the account with a credit or debit card.
posted by wfrgms at 11:36 PM on June 15, 2009

Thanks!
posted by bad grammar at 4:35 AM on June 16, 2009