Hoping a Paypal executive sees this & reinstates my account. Paypal is a publicly traded company, & destroying businesses like mine that was making Paypal tens of thousands of dollars per year HAS TO BE A CONCERN to stock holders, etc.
United States Business Owner here.
I sell hard drives that ship directly from the Western Digital warehouse to my buyers, & board games & trading cards that ship from my inventory. Every 3-6 months, my account has been limited for review, & every single time the account specialist reviewing my documents have approved, giving the green light, congratulated me on the growth, & reinstated the account, as recent as March. A rolling reserve was placed on my account a year ago, citing high risk factors. The rolling reserve takes a % of every payment received, & holds it for 45 days. My held funds reached as high as $20,000, & now sits at over $15,000 at the time of this shocking account limitation out of the blue today when I received this email:
We have reviewed your PayPal account and, due to the excessive risk involved, we would like to begin parting ways. As a result, your PayPal account has been permanently limited and there will be no appeals to the decision. Effective immediately you are no longer able to receive payments using PayPal. Funds remaining in your balance will be subject to the below disbursement options. We looked at several factors to determine the high level of risk associated with your account. These factors include:
· High risk industry - You are selling merchandise or services in what we consider to be a high risk industry.
The following disbursement options are available for any funds remaining in your account:
Option 1:
If you owe refunds to any of your buyers, you can use the money in your PayPal account to refund them.
Option 2:
Money in your PayPal account will be held for 180 days from the date of the limitation. After 180 days, we'll email you information on how to receive your funds.
Merchant Review Department
It just doesn't make sense! So is selling hard drives or even any electronic, considered "excessive risk" / "high risk industry"!? It's as if 1 Paypal employee woke up on the wrong side of the bed with a quota to fill to look like they are making Paypal safer, & they just arbitrarily closed my account!? How can it be explained that every single account specialist approved & reinstated my account for 2 years of limitations every time my sales grew to a new level, but now today a bad apple in the bunch overrules them all? Even if hard drives are considered a "high risk industry", that is the point of the rolling reserve they put on my account a year ago - to offset it entirely! They literally are making interest on five figures of funds they tie up for 45 days as insurance against chargebacks / etc. Never has there been any situation that caused even a cent of my rolling reserve fund to be needed to pay for any issue!
I literally did over $500,000 in payments received last year alone & multiple account reviews along the way. Average payment received is $150 or so. Thousands of happy customers, & there are a total of many 3 unauthorized transaction cases opened from buyers totaling less than $1,000. There are zero disputes escalated to Paypal, & maybe 5 that I resolved myself with a replacement or refund. Total claims & disputes in the account history is less than $5,000 - OUT OF $1 MILLION in sales now, & again, there is currently a $15,000 rolling reserve on my account, so why would I suddenly lose my account for selling products (hard drives) that are in a "high risk industry"!?
There is no way Paypal executives would approve of throwing away customer's like me who are making them $15,000+ a year in fees (& growing), & who knows how much on the interest of my rolling reserve funds. How many others are they doing this to? Why!? Did my competitors like NewEgg.com & BHPhoto who sell hard drives on eBay & have much larger paypal accounts, order Paypal to kill off a pesky little guy like me who prides himself on top customer service as a priority, so their corporate clients could have the competition eliminated on eBay!? It seems as sinister as this. Why do the extreme & just wipe out my business, when they could simply increase my rolling reserve to 2X the % & twice as long, so holding twice the money to protect against the "high risk industry" they claim I sell in. Why not tell me no more "high risk industry sales", but allow me to stay a Paypal member so I can keep selling my rare collectible board games & trading cards? Why wipe me out completely as a customer? How is there not a more reasonable alternative? I've seen other horror stories, & responses are "There are 200 million accounts, they don't care", but that response is absurd. Board of directors, shareholders would care! A pattern of reckless disregard like this adds up & affects the bottom line!
I need answers!
