"confirmed" vs. "cleared"

[SPECSUG]

All the items on my Paypal activity report shown as "completed" are totaled in the "Balance" column, but an item shown as "cleared" does not, making every subsequent entry in the Balance column inaccurate.  The payment in question was made on 31 December and, according to the payer, cleared his bank account on 03 January (26 days ago).  The downloaded spreadsheet and a memo from Paypal confirm the transaction. Surely any bank transfer should have cleared weeks ago.  How do I get Paypal to display the transaction as "completed" on the activity report?

I went on-line to determine the difference between “cleared” and “completed” on the Paypal activity report. The responses are typified by one that says that “‘completed’ means that Paypal has processed it but may not have received the funds for it yet”, whereas "‘cleared’ means that Paypal has received the funds, so the seller has received the funds”. This seems backward, in that the items on my Paypal activity report shown as “completed” are totaled in the “balance” column, whereas the payment in question (shown as “cleared”) is not included in the total.
 
I fully realize that a single small transaction is trivial, not worth my time or yours, and can easily be written off from a bookkeeping point of view.  But I am pursuing it for three reasons: (1) is sure looks like the money should not belong to Paypal, (2) this may happen in other instances, and (3) I am just stubborn enough to want to understand the Paypal process and language,

Hopefully someone can give me some further insight and direction.  Maybe even someone from Paypal will read this.  My attempts to contact Paypal were frustrated by an impenetrable phone defense, and when I ultimately got through to a person, he didn't have a clue what I was talking about.

Thanks in advance for help.

[kernowlass]

@SPECSUG

This is a user to user help forum, if you want paypal to answer your query you need to contact customer services.

When you pay a seller it is never instant > paypal CREDIT the seller and then paypal take the wait for the funds to transfer from the buyers funding source eg bank account. They mark the transaction as completed because for the buyer and seller it is, only paypal are the ones waiting for the funds to transfer from the buyers bank account to reimburse themselves.

HOWEVER paypal only take that risk normally if the buyer has a back up funding source linked to their paypal account as well to reduce the chance of a payment failure leaving paypal out of pocket....................so if the buyer does not have a back up card the payment may go as an echeque and the buyer and seller need to wait until it has cleared before the seller has the funds and can send the item.

[sharpiemarker]

@SPECSUG,

eChecks results in two transaction records in your activity history:

The first one, dated 12/31, when the buyer first made payment and says Payment From but the amount does not figure into the Balance column.  It's a placeholder for when the eCheck was first initiated.

The second one, dated 1/3, when the payment clears and says Updated From but the amount Cleared does figure into the Balance column.  So you have to look for the second transaction item to see that amount factored into your Balance.

View your history through the classic version, www.paypal.com/history, it is way easier to understand.

Hope this answers your question.