Paypal warning! - do not use paypal for large transactions you will get ripped off!!!

IMO just don't use any service like paypal .
Con-artist ruin it for everyone so when paypal sees a large amount of money they get suspicious .

 

Well there is really no other way to do it online, unless you have a magical alternative, but you have to have the middleman.

 

Paypal arbitrarily blocked my Australia account when I received my first four figure sum.

While they had a legitimate reason [some bogus paper work to fill out to ensure I'm not bribing someone or something] the fact they never thought to inform me of this restriction until AFTER I received the money was BS.

 

Hmm, what ever happened to good ole checks .
At least then if a pissed off customer wants to take all of your hardwork for free they have to convince law enforcement / banks that you did somthing wrong .

If someone has a credit card they just call their company , tell them to file a chargeback and poof all your work is for FREE

 

better than in Non Paypal US governed countries. There you simply can only transfer back 700 bucks at all and then you have to validate your persona. Interestingly that is documented extremely well on the page, so unsure how it is in your case

 

In my case I was 'verified' with 'no limits'. If it was documented, it was very well hidden.

 

So, in the case of the OP, the Indian guy gave you some good advice. When paypal limits your account, you can still log into it. You can call customer service, but they have limited ability to help you because they do not have direct access to your account, this is for your protection and theirs. You need to use their resolution centre. I have had them lock my account twice, once I needed to provide ID, which I have. Another time they asked for this ID again, so I referred them back to that same idea I had provided that was still valid and saved. A different support level happens through their resolution centre, and they will mark security things that need to be done to open your account back up with no limits. Sometimes this is as simple as filling out their updated secret question and information list, which help the person over the phone recover your account and verify your identity. Instead of calling around and trying to take legal action, which only makes it seem like your trying to scam paypal, and is a legitimate concern for them - go into their security resolution centre, update everything and fire off an email, it should clear your account in 24 hours, or they will contact you to ask for more information if required. This WILL fix your problem faster than calling their support line as again, those people on the phone don't have access to your account for your and their protection.

 

Yes PayPal is actually renowned for keeping peoples money for as long as they can legally (or claim as a mistake) to gain interest from your money.

 

They gain enough interest from the 3.9% + minimum fee on transactions + 2 - 3% currency exchange rate
Thats how paypal operates and expands their business.

I've yet to see a case where it was not user caused or security impacted that an account got locked. And as mentioned above, the correct support path is commonly able to resolve it in no time, while annoying the phone support to hell is not gonna get you anywhere but a mental clinic!

 

Paypal is like the 2 stupid goons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9twTtXkQNA

 

Unfortunately its not all bad intentions. PayPal has grown to be a baranoic middle man. It's like the bodyguard that pulls the gun in a drug deal if anyone sneezes.

To an extent, I understand them. They are where they are because of paranoic people that need a twitchy gunman to watch over their online transactions, on both sides. But as a customer, this has become horribly annoying, I mean, I also had to fire that gunman after he shot my #1 customer in the nuts just because the guys iPhone vibrated!

 

When PayPal first emerged, I remember hearing these stories a lot. For that reason, I held off on using it. In the U.S., however (if I recall correctly), they actually got recognition and therefore moderation from the government. I've noticed that most of the people here saying that they've never had a problem tend to be from the U.S.

Sorry, I'm not entirely familiar with their policies in other territories. Hopefully soon other governments will step in and begin moderating their activities as they would any other bank for their country.

 

Trust me, there are plenty of US users with complaints. Count me in that list. I'm just lucky I never trusted them with enough money to hurt me.

 

That is the problem that Bitcoin magically solved. Well, not so much magically but mathematically (but that's kind of the same to many people). That's the reason why I mentioned it on this thread. With Bitcoin, there is no middle man (but instead some really fancy cryptographic methods that allow you to safely distribute the "middle man" to a peer-to-peer network).

 

I would entrust Paypal with my entire budget before I trust a cent on Bitcoins.

 

All i know now is that I will refuse to use Paypal, if people want to send me money I will give them my bank details and they can wire me the money, or in the case of buying something online I'll just use my debit card

Also I went to the resolution center, it's about as useful as a chocolate typewriter that swims upside down under hot water. The actions it says I need to take are all ticked off already. There is nothing more I can do except wait which pisses me off

 

It's a bit safer to have a low limit credit card for that. Don't want to be in a situation where some other untrusted method earmarks 5 digits on your bank account, do you?

 

My bank phones me if a transaction over a certain amount (which I can set/change any time) tries to go through, and I can either confirm it or decline it.

 

i had a similar experience with paypal

but i am actually happy they blocked my account because it seemed genuinly hacked.There was an extra bankaccount added to my paypal account, which wasn't my bank account

so i did everything paypal wanted, exept one thing. They wanted all info on the added bankaccount. After telling them multiple times that it wasn't my account they just stopped responding.

I have called them and gotten quite angry, one hour later my account was fixed, the added account was gone and all was well again

 

Darn... got to move to the UK... I had to raise hell at the bank when I opened my account only so the guy would give me a debit card that was locked so it would decline if the balance of the account went under zero... (something they support, federal law requires they offer, yet they really don't want you to have because they love to charge $40 overdraft fees on $2.99 transactions.)

 

So go through them again, if it gets you YOUR money back and YOUR purchase resolve why wont YOU spend 5 minutes doing this, since you already put a few days into this post, consumer complaints etc. There is a solution. Go, make it happen.

 

If he's already done them, doing them again won't change anything...

 

This has actually happened to me when trying to upgrade. My bank explained that the activity was considered suspicious because it was a large sum of money and the transaction was overseas (I'm the the USA).

 

Paypal limited me with £300 in my account so I got the person who sent me the money to chargeback and send to another account leaving a nice debt in my account for paypal to settle.

 

Not quite sure bitcoin is going to take off with all the drugs trade happening in it

 

Wow hearing this I am really glad that for the last transaction from the US I did not opt to use a paypal account. Mind you I did it for different reasons but haring what's going on there .... sheesh. How am I supposed to trust someone with my money if they reserver the right to lock it down at any time and not be helpful about it?

Thanks for leting the community know this. I hope everything turns out well for you.

BTW - from what I gathered the aset store uses PayPal pretty exclusively, right? Ist there another way to get paid by Unity other than PayPal? Just curious....

 

As far as I know you still need a middleman to buy/sell bitcoins. Not to mention it's a good idea but in real world it's quite bad as a currency. It jumps up and down more than a cat after laser pointer, it's very easy to hijack the wallet from "average joe", thus very insecure. I suppose it's good to buy and sell drugs but other than that not much use.

 

You can get a check (US only) or a wire transfer, though those have a $15-20 fee and are quarterly rather than monthly, and have a minimum $250 transfer.

--Eric

 

Bitcoins arn't very anonymous. Not many people that deal with hacking etc actually use them. They might use them for bitcoin mining slaves etc, but they never actually cash it out to real $$. You can track every payment.

 

Paypal have really been trying to piss off all their customers lately, your lucky it was only £300, i got burned out of a grand

 

That sucks you had to go through this. Hope you figure something out. I run a recording studio, I try to get my clients to use EMT(email money transfer). Its so easy, so fast, and safe and only $1.50 fee. Only once my money got stuck in cyberspace, and I called my bank and they reimbursed me.

 

Being in the EU the check falls flat but actually wiretransfer doesn't sound that bad. Above a certain amount the PayPal fees exceed 20$ easily as well.
Thanks for clearing that up.

 

There aren't any fees when using Paypal to receive payments from the asset store, though.

--Eric

 

Not for receiving but from what I've gathered there are fees for withdraws from an account.
Depending on the amount it's quite a lot IIRC.

I haven't looked into it deeper, though as I didn'T actually *need* PayPal so far.

 

Hi! Please send me an email directly: beth@unity3d.com.

I am sure that we can get this sorted out for you.

Thanks,
Beth Thomas

 

OK I have send an email to you, I have also attached proof that the money has left my bank account today (gone from earmarked to sent). Heard nothing back from Paypal.


ohh just noticed you live in Brighton, I used to live there... in Seven Dials

 

I've never heard of such a thing. No doubt there are transfer fees involved here, but UT is paying them, so it's coming out of their 30%.

--Eric

 

You're right. I mixed that one up.

 

I've recently made a large payment with Paypal and they also reversed the payment (and limited my account) too. But the worst thing is that they took the money from my bank account! I'm just gonna stop using Paypal. They are surely investing that money until they will decide the day to return my money back.

 

I've done an excesive amount of research on this, you'll be waiting at least 3 months until you get that back IF you get it back. Good luck!

 

I've had similar problems with paypal in the past, my bank was able to solve the problems, perhaps is time to do it again...
Never in my life, i will use that blatant paypal again!

 

Lets make a side scrolling arcade style game where we fight paypal employees and then fight their CEO as the final boss, when he is defeated all the money returns to the world and the economic crisis is ended.




(Just kidding, that would be a terrible game idea.)

 

would be a nice game idea, especially if the gameplay was made like in Postal. However, seeing that playpal has enough money to hire a lawyer, you might be looking at "cease and desist" notices, copyright infringement, harassment, "threats" lawsuits, etc

 

Nop if the game doesn't attack directly any big greedy name. The message could also be well transmit in the form of metaphor. XD

 

I've never had a problem with PayPal and I've transfered 5 figures between US Switzerland. But if you forget your password and login you can forget it (or take them to court). Their fees have gotten stupid since eBay bought them though. It's still much cheaper than directly wiring money between bank accounts.

A couple visited me while I still lived in Europe and we went on vacation and it wasn't a day before they block his charge card because of suspicious activity.

That's SOP for US banks with foreign charges. The little joe smo spending pennies on his short vacation he saved all year to take is humilated overseas with declined charges and wondering if he's going to be broke and stranded on his vacation.

As far as Chaoos problem goes I wouldn't even be wasting time personally talking to PayPal. It's not his job.

Go to your bank and have them personally handle it and they are likely the ones that reversed it no matter what they told you. The banks job and the law requires they recover that money for you from PayPal if PayPal had it.

The money is probably in limbo in a national central bank used to do these kind of international transfers. I did a wire transfer once from my bank account to the US and the money was lost for 3 monthes in a bank used for internation transfers in New York City (surprise!). If I haven't worked at UBS then I may had never found out about these intermediate transfer banks. The money just would have been lost because I had to request that UBS fetch that money back from that transfer bank once I found out about it. That transfer bank was going to sit on it.

The bank that handles international transfers between the UK and Denmark (and it just may be a German bank or French bank given how the EU operates) is where your money is likely help up. I really doubt it's in PayPal's bank. 10 business days (actually 5 is plenty but banks usually insist on 10) for you to start badgering your bank.

 

I thought I was getting somewhere.... until I got this

"Dear *********************,

Important information:

We regret to inform you that we’re initiating the closure of your PayPal
account because of certain activity that took place relating to your
account. This measure is necessary to protect us from potential financial
losses.


Your right to appeal:

We always perform a thorough investigation before deciding to initiate the
closure of an account. However, we appreciate that from time to time
misunderstandings can happen. If you wish, you can appeal our decision.
Just get in touch with us and let us know. You can do so by logging in to
your PayPal account at www.paypal.co.uk and clicking 'Contact Us' at the
bottom of any PayPal page.

This measure is necessary to protect against the risk of bad customer
experiences and financial losses, in view of certain activity related to
your account that we have reason to believe has taken place.

Your account balance during the account closure period:

This decision means we must oversee the appropriate movement of any money
currently in your account. A gradual approach to account closure allows us
to part ways, while considering any liabilities that may arise. Our aim is
to review any valid buyer claims lodged against you. We must allow enough
time for claims to be filed as these can take several months to be reported
and resolved.

How will the process work?

We’ll hold any money currently in your account in accordance with section 2
below. We do this because it provides sufficient time for most claims, such
as chargebacks, to be filed by other parties. These claims can result in
financial loss. If your account balance is below zero, you’ll have to
settle the amount owing on your account to avoid further action.

Our first review at 30 days after you received your last payment will
calculate our exposure and we’ll release any excess money to you at that
time for withdrawal. We’ll communicate this to you at the time. This review
can result in 3 different outcomes as detailed in sub-sections 2(1)-(3)
below. We’ll always communicate the outcome of our reviews to you.

1. We’ll release your entire remaining balance to you for withdrawal.
Please note that if you choose not to withdraw the money at that point we
reserve the right to re-coup any money at the next review; or

2. We’ll release a part of your remaining balance to you. If this is the
case we’ll inform you about how much money can be withdrawn. We’ll then
conduct another review 30 days later that will repeat the process detailed
under section 2; or
3. We won’t release any money to you if we deem our exposure to be greater
than or equal to your available balance.

Your account may be reviewed up to 5 times; at 30 day intervals until day
180 from the date of the last payment received. If any money remains in
your account at day 180 it will be made available for withdrawal at that
point.

Accounts with a balance owing to PayPal:

If your account shows an amount owing to us, you must add money to ensure
that the balance returns to zero. Please note that we reserve the right to
recover the amount by legal means.

A copy of our User Agreement can be found by clicking ‘Legal Agreements’ at
the bottom of any PayPal page. Our right to close your PayPal account, and
the retention of money, are covered in our User Agreement under sections
10.2 and 10.3.

Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review

Copyright © 1999-2012 PayPal. All rights reserved.
PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. Cie, S.C.A.
Société en Commandite par Actions
Registered Office: 5th Floor 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg
RCS Luxembourg B 118 349"


I am sooooo tired of constantly sorting Paypal's S*** out and sending documents every 2 months! It feels like a second bloody job having a Paypal account. They will be getting several angry calls from me tomorrow evening

What am I supposed to do now? not only do I have to wait forever, I also now have no way of people to send me money for any work I do for my job. Work have just sent money to my Paypal account (it automatically goes to my bank), it came through on Monday and I got my bank to blacklist outgoing Paypal transactions permanently from my account.

I also have further proof (in the form of a letter received from my bank) that the money has left. and I am £1016.13 into my £2000 overdraft. Is there anything I can do with this letter to get my money back? or can Unity somehow double reverse the transaction from Paypal so this can be sorted? I don't mind faxing my bank statement and a copy of the letter received if you guys need it.

 

I would peruse legal action if possible... If you cannot give paypal some "Exposure" Email the BBC and every other major media outlet in the UK and Europe.

This is not the first time this has happened and wont be the last.

Oh and BTW -

If you need work let me know

 

Jeez, what a disaster..I feel for ya.