Paypal error when purchasing laptop?

[AdamTH]

I have been saving up for months by transferring money to paypal from my bank account for a laptop I need for college. My classes start august 20th. This morning the final payment cleared which brought my total paypal balance to $820. I went over to lenovo.com and added an IdeaPad y570 to my cart for 749.99. I then selected the 3 year base warranty extention which added $64 to my total. My total after a %40 coupon and free shipping was $813.35. I logged into lenovo checkout via my paypal account and tried to complete the transaction and lenovo is saying that my Paypal account doesn't have enough funds. This is a complete and utter pile of BS and if Paypal doesn't fix it soon I will be requesting a check and closing my account permanently. 

[PayPal_Frank]

Hi AdamTH,

Welcome to the community! 🙂

I'm sorry to hear about the issues you experienced. As you had plenty of money in your PayPal balance for that payment, I am also confused about why it's saying your PayPal account does not have enough funds.  I have a theory but you'll want to contact Customer Support to find out for sure.

Some large merchants use something called Orders and Authorizations.  Instead of instantly being paid when a buyer makes a purchase with them, the merchant is requesting an authorization to put the payment through at a later time.  This feature can be helpful for merchants if they need to make adjustments to shipping, back-orders or if they just want to wait till the item is shipped to bill the buyer.

One of the big differences with PayPal authorizations (and this is also true for many card processors and internet merchant accounts) is that the authorization is actually for an amount higher than the payment.  For a merchant using PayPal authorizations, the authorization is actually for 115% of the payment amount up to a maximum of $75 (higher for some merchants) more than the payment amount.

So my theory is that if lenovo is using PayPal authorizations and they're requesting an authorization for $813.35 then there would need to be at least $888.35 USD available in the account or a back-up payment method would need to be authorized for any amount over the PayPal balance.

Sorry for the long winded explanation but I hope that makes sense.  I hope you already found a solution to the problem by now.

- Frank