PayPal Warning

Recently, a client of mine sent me a payment via PayPal. It was quick and easy and I thought it was a great idea. Then another client of mine wanted to send me a payment via PayPal as well. Since he's been hard to collect from I jumped at the chance, he was even nice enough to pay for PayPal's charges for me.

Great, I thought, maybe I can get all my clients on PayPal, this is easy and convenient. Then I transfered the money to my bank account which, unfortunately, takes 3-5 days, the one drawback.

Suddenly, I get an email from them today, Saturday, that the transfer has been put on hold. It is under "investigation" but they can't tell me why or when my money will be released. Or even if. Now I have to contact my client and find out if he knows what is going on and can he send me a check instead. I was planning on that money being in my bank account on Monday now I don't know if I will ever get it at all.

So all I can say is NEVER transfer money via PayPal if you have any other method. They can put a hold on it at any time for any arbitrary reason they want and will not inform you of what that reason is. Nor will they say when, or if, the hold might be lifted. I said how can I avoid a problem in the future if I don't even know why the money was put on hold. She just repeated the same robotic phrase which is common these days and would not deviate from script.

So, I've written 2 emails this morning and called tonight when nothing happened in 12 hours have not heard a thing about any of it. So DO NOT USE PAYPAL FOR ANYTHING AT ANY TIME EVER!!! Your money can be grabbed by them for any reason whatsoever and might never get to you, it's a total crap shoot. And odds are not good, this is only the fourth transfer on PayPal I've ever had so it isn't something like a one in a hundred occurrence. Probably better off sending the money by carrier pigeon. They certainly won't be used by me any more.