Hints for Paypal resolution?

November 14, 2022 11:25 AM

My wife had her Paypal account locked while trying to complete a sale and it's not at all clear what she should do about it.

She sold an item by mail for ~$1,000 through a website that specializes in brokering private sales of this particular item. The site uses Paypal to process transactions and she had to provide all kinds of information -- shipping labels, personal bank statements, photo ID -- to Paypal to complete the transaction. A week ago everything seemed okay and she mailed the item. Today she received an email saying she "can no longer do business with Paypal":

After a review, we decided to permanently limit your account as we’ve determined that this account is linked to one or more PayPal accounts that currently have unresolved issues.
[...]
If you have funds in your PayPal balance, we'll hold it for up to 180 days. After that period, we'll email you with information on how to access your funds.

As far as she knows she doesn't have another Paypal account. There's no link in the email to appeal/contest. Does anyone know what the problem might be, and how best to escalate with Paypal to resolve it?

posted by no regrets, coyote to Shopping (3 answers total)

PayPal is in trouble for trying to implement draconian policy changes for, in my opinion, laudable goals — such as curbing misinformation and hate speech.

Which has led to a stock crash, and there are also all kinds of rumors of a liquidity crisis.

I think it's anywhere from possible to likely they’re holding onto your wife's money as well as money from many other small to medium level accounts to make their balance sheet look better, and to avoid having to borrow increasingly expensive money for operating expenses to get through this crisis.

If so, they’ve chosen a pretty good time to be able to get away with it, since I can no longer advise you to take it to Twitter, which up to now has been a primary tool for ordinary people to hold big corporations accountable.
posted by jamjam at 12:51 PM on November 14, 2022

I've had this happen twice. Once it was with an organization I worked with in which an affiliated organization across the country with a similar name got flagged for something - I can't remember what - and so PayPal froze all accounts that had a similar name or any relationship. We sent it to a lawyer to resolve, and I recall it was resolved quickly.

The second was when I bought melons from a farmer using PayPal. I legit was purchasing melons that you eat but I put in the comments of the transaction, "for melons" and it got flagged and my account was frozen. I blamed Matt Gaetz. In that case, the account was eventually unfrozen.

It sounds like your situation is closer to the first one, so may need legal representation. Also, this is a d'uh, but of course triple check that this is a legit email from PayPal.
posted by Toddles at 2:55 PM on November 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Update: She spoke to customer service by phone. No, there's nothing they can do; no, they can't tell her what happened; no, she can't speak to anyone else. All very frustrating.
posted by no regrets, coyote at 1:20 PM on November 15, 2022