Pp alternatives for buying and selling?

[P.I.C.T. Tactical]

I sold something for over $500 and PayPal, after 17 years decided to hold the funds. I called three times and got a supervisor and I told him I have been buying and selling on there for 17 years and give them plenty of business. I spoke slowly as he was clearly from Sri Lanka and I explained that he could have one of two options ; either hold the $550 and not take the $17 PayPal fee or release the funds minus the PayPal fee now. He said he couldn’t help me. So, I refunded the seller RIGHT THERE and closed my account of 17 years. They aren’t holding any of MY funds anymore.

I dont sell sell or buy a lot and I’m happy not to support jobs in foreign countries so does anyone know of any decent alternatives?

[Ecapnation]

That have buyer protection? Nope, unless you go old school postal money order.

Most buyers will flat out refuse anything else.

[Toestr]

There is another service (which I can't remember the name of at the moment) that also has buyer protection, but they are also owned by PayPal so disregard that if it's recommended to you.

COD is also an option but still doesn't offer anywhere near the protection of PayPal. All COD does is guarantee that you get SOMETHING for your money, not the actual contents or condition of the item.

You've basically limited yourself to etransfers at this point.

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[Cunha]

Paypal is by a long shot the best electronic money transfer service that exists today, it is the only one with buyer and seller protection that handles disputes in any fashion basically.

US Postal money order is your only other good alternative, where you have documentation that the money was received and the MO itself can state what the money is for.

But it's not a convenient payment method when it comes to disputing, since the money is in the hands of the seller and there are no funds for paypal or other people to take back.

Best bet is to do US postal money order and only transact with people you trust.

[Euphie]

You could always do it the way many of us did before paypal, by using a paintball pro-shops third party service where you send them the gun and money and they verify it is what was claimed and then send it to the respective party but, the issue with that is the fees and double shipping are almost certainly more expensive than Paypal is

[P.I.C.T. Tactical]

Wow appreciate it guys. I don’t sell enough stuff for it to be a problem but I’m definitely not going to support foreign jobs while PayPal makes interest on my funds all the while I’m on the hook to ship over $500 of product to someone out-of-pocket. Their policy is when you’re new this is how it goes and I reminded them that I’ve been buying and selling on there for 17 years. Meh no skin off my nose.

[BrickHaus]

Yeah it seems odd, maybe the buyer was a new account? I just sold 3 items and instantly got payment for all of them. I have seen them hold funds when either the buyer or seller is new, or doesnt have a linked bank account. Once you are verified they dont hold your funds.

[P.I.C.T. Tactical]

I apologize sincerely, I hate to break my word in any form or fashion. My suspicion is that they’re doing this every time they can use an excuse to do so so that they can hold the funds making interest on it for 21 days. I had never run into this issue in 17 years and now I’m seeing that they have a whole section for you to go to online when they hold your funds so I suspect I’m not the only one they’re pulling this on.

Still feels good not to support foreign jobs.

[woouulf]

Selling with PP has changed a bit, sometimes the buyer has to give the name of who;s getting the funds, if they dont then the funds get delayed... Most people just click and send and walk away and not notice for the extra info needed.. I have had to contact them to find out why the hold.. Once they long on to PP they notice the missing info and ask me for my name and city...its all good after they enter it. This is on orders of 500.00 and +..

[caylegeorge]

I had this same issue when I sold a Karni last year - they held the funds for about 2 weeks. was a pita.

[Rainmaker]

For what you are getting (PayPal buyer/seller protection, ability to talk to a 3rd party human being mediator type, user interface, reputation of PayPal, blah blah blah...) I honestly don't understand what the problem is, even if you have to wait a couple weeks for payment hold... I mean, it's not as if PayPal is in the business of scamming people out of their money, so...? The alternatives are far more limiting, and require you to have even more trust in your buyer/seller. To each their own though.

[P.I.C.T. Tactical]

I can see the appeal but as a small business entrepreneur I am making decisions I have to live with. To tell someone who has given you revenue for over 15 years and never ripped anyone off that policy is that the funds are held, just doesn’t work for me personally.

If I have a customer of 17 years and I take a day out of the blue to finally start questioning their word, with no evidence mind you, I probably won’t keep that client .

[P.I.C.T. Tactical]

Selling with PP has changed a bit, sometimes the buyer has to give the name of who;s getting the funds, if they dont then the funds get delayed... Most people just click and send and walk away and not notice for the extra info needed.. I have had to contact them to find out why the hold.. Once they long on to PP they notice the missing info and ask me for my name and city...its all good after they enter it. This is on orders of 500.00 and +..

Ahh. Yeah I spent an hour of my day trying to understand what he was saying after being on hold and I made the decision as a business owner that I would never do that again. I waited on hold for the supervisor and I gave him every chance to rectify the situation. He did not. So I now sold the item to a local MCBer I met at Supergame and PayPal lost revenue. I realized I was using PayPal for my PlayStation and Hulu subscriptions etc, which I could just use a debit card for.
Paypal is essentially the only choice for some, but personally I sold my item, I didn’t pay anyone any fees and PayPal lost monthly revenue for the rest of my days. Shrugs.
And I still can’t think of a single reason I need a business account with them either.

[DocsMachine]

I honestly don't understand what the problem is, even if you have to wait a couple weeks for payment hold... I mean, it's not as if PayPal is in the business of scamming people out of their money, so...?

-Basically this.

The big trick you have to keep in mind is that everyone tries to scam PayPal. I don't mean customers, though there's a lot of them, too- I mean hackers and professional crooks.

PayPal handles billions of dollars a day- each day, every day. That's a huge and juicy target.

I have no doubt that PayPal undergoes literally hundreds of thousands of break-in attempts every single day, hackers looking for loopholes, exploits, back doors, poor passwords, you name it. There's also professional crooks, money-launderers, drug dealers, fraudsters and lists and lists of others, trying do do anything as simple as just convince you to send them $40 for an item that doesn't exist, to trying to sell an empty PS5 box 200 times before they get caught.

When they're putting your funds on hold, that means they have some reason to believe one of the parties in the transaction may not be entirely legit. Or they're just being careful to ensure they ARE both legit.

Yes, it's annoying at times, but what would be more annoying is for more and more of those crooks to get away with their scams.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

It's worth noting that everyone has heard of the phone scams to try and convince old ladies to send money for whatever reason? The reason those people have to try and convince the ladies to go and get actual cash and physically mail it, or to buy gift cards and send photos of the numbers and keys, is in large part thanks to Paypal's anti-fraud measures. (Along with those of Western Union, Zelle, Venmo, Apple Pay, etc. etc.)

AND, as Rainy and others have noted, it's a service where I can buy something literally on the other side of the planet, not have to worry about exchange rates or mailing a physical check- or waiting for said check to clear- and it only costs something like 3% of the value of the transaction... Yeah, if they want to hold the funds for a few days to make sure I'm not the fraudster or being defrauded, it's worth the hassle, in my opinion.

Doc.

[Euphie]

I have got terribly frustrated with Paypal before, but I always come back to basically this. It is pretty reasonably priced for all of the services it provides, it is still a big evil publicly traded company that is more focused on next quarters return rather than the long term health of the service, but that is true of all it's competition too, and you get less bang for your buck

[Foster]

Word.
Anyone born after GenX can say they agree, but will never truly understand what you just said.