Transaction declined but Paypal said I got negative balance!!!

[Lesmakeit]

Hi everyone,

I have encountered a serious issue with Paypal. Today I tried to make a transaction of £50 from my paypal (linked to one of my debit card). For some reasons the amount that I aim to transfer was wrongly on the page that I made paypal transaction (it was displayed as £650 instead and I couldn't change it). The payment didn't go through since I don't have sufficient fund, which is understandable.

HOWEVER, when I login to my paypal account, I just found that there is a £605 negative balance in my account! I don't understand why. The payment didn't go through so paypal didn't pay anything for me upfront, and there is no reason that there is a negative balance!

Similar things happen previously and I ended up paying fund to make my balance return to zero. But this time I am very sure that I should NOT adding money to my paypal account because the payment has been denied. Fund in my bank wasn't deducted. And Paypal should NOT charge me anything!

The email support of Paypal is pretty useless and slow in responding. Just wondering if there's anybody who ha experienced this before and how did you resolve it?

I might give a call to paypal tomorrow but waiting on the phone line is another dreadful experience as the waiting time is always super long!

[sharpiemarker]

@Lesmakeit 

Anytime you make a online transaction, a pending temporary authorization agreement to pay merchant with funds held (possibly the cause of the negative paypal balance) is created. even if payment fails, etc. As long as the merchant does not claim or capture the payment, the authorization will expire in no longer than 30 days and no sooner than 3 or so days and drop off and funds released or your PayPal account will zero out. Only when the payment is posted or completed are you able to dispute. PayPal can't cancel authorizations. The merchant can void the authorization if they're able to and release the funds, contact them to see if the order/transction is registering on their end to void it. Otherwise you'll have to wait for expiration.

[Lesmakeit]

It seems that it's not the case considering what happened to me. The merchant claimed that the payment didn't go through. But I am still asked by Paypal to pay for the money they paid upfront which I clearly did not authorise. So either it's my bank account or paypal is having an error. I am very concerned because this happened for several times and the amount is a bit shocking.

I am very annoyed that even I didn't hit the ''Pay now'' button in the Paypal pop up window (instead of that i just close the window) when I was about to make payment, Paypal still tried to push the transaction forward and them came to me that they paid for me upfront!