It's been 22 days since Walmart canceled my order and Paypal still holds the money

[BlazeHedgehog]

I recently moved from Nevada to Colorado. Upon arriving in Colorado, I discovered my new computer monitor was broken during the trip, but it was outside of the return window and I never registered the warranty. I decided to eat the $183 and order a replacement through Walmart on the night of October 31st.

Walmart immediately canceled the order and asked me to verify my identity, since this was considered a suspicious purchase. I verified my identity and tried to re-order the monitor a second time, and once again it was immediately canceled and I was asked to verify my identity. So I contacted customer support about it, and got my account flagged as safe. But when those two $183 orders were canceled, Walmart did not refund the money. I was told that Paypal has a hold on that money ($366 total) and the hold would be released in 10 days.

After doing some reading, I saw that Paypal sometimes holds money for up to 21 days in extreme cases. It has now been 22 days, soon to be 23, and the two $186 canceled orders are still in my Paypal and the money has not been returned to me.

What am I supposed to do here in order to get my money back? Talking with the Paypal AI Agent it offered me the ability to cancel those transactions, but will that return my money to me? Will it cause a problem with Walmart? I don't want to take unnecessary risks. This money is vitally important to me.

[kernowlass]

@BlazeHedgehog 

When you pay a company then it is often pending or awaiting authorisation until that company processes your order and captures the pending payment.

If they don't process the order and capture that payment then the pending status times out at 30 days post-payment and returns back to your funding source.

Sometimes the merchant can void the transaction on their side in which case you may get the funds released more quickly.

[BlazeHedgehog]

Hm. Well, I'll give it another week, then. When I talked to Walmart support about it on the night of the 31st, they tried to pass the buck on to Paypal and say they were the ones that had to release the hold. I think they even offered me a special transaction ID I could give to Paypal in order to speed up the hold release process, but the Paypal AI agent didn't seem to have an option to interpret that.

I really wish Paypal had real customer support.