They were initially reluctant to tell me why there was a hold. When forced, I've been told several different things:
1. "It's nothing personal, it's a new policy and all accounts are now being held." This is of course BS, but it did manage to get me off the phone the first time. After I did a little more research, I discovered that they had been holding accounts for more than a year, but there was no hold on mine as late as October 2011. So I called them back to find out specifically what had changed about my account since October 2011 that now placed me in a high risk group...
3. "There's no consistency in the type of items you're selling." This seemed like total BS to me as well, so I pressed the issue and got the next reason...
2. "The hold on your account was requested by eBay. Let me transfer you." Ebay's response: "We're holding all accounts that have less than 25 total sell transactions. Oh, I see you have 26. I'm going to go ahead and get that hold lifted and I 100% assure you that the next item you sell will not have a hold on it." This actually turned out to be true. I had an item sell and paid for less than 24 hours after that call, and the funds were not held, but the next day I received an email from PayPal informing me that from that day forward, my account would be held.
3. When I called PayPal, they told me that they also required a minimum total sells of 25, and that according to their review of my feedback, I only had 17. I tried to explain that my eBay dashboard showed 26 sells, but they insisted that they could only go by a review of my feedback as a seller. In other words, you have to have 25 positive feedback ratings left. Not 25 sells. Now everyone knows that there are a lot of inexperienced buyers that simply don't ever leave feedback, and quite frankly, I've never pushed the issue with any of them. If they leave feedback, fine, if not that's their choice. I've certainly never received any negative feedback. Anyway, it doesn't really matter anyway, because...
4. That's not 25 total sells, that's 25 sells per year. Strike that. 25 positive feedback ratings as a seller per year. Which I don't have and probably would not ever normally have (if I hadn't quit eBay and PayPal). I just don't sell that much.
Bottom line. I don't sell enough to have my hold lifted. Forget that they have my bank account info, a credit card, I've been with eBay for 12 years and PayPal for 6 years, and I have 100% positive feedback as a buyer and a seller.
Though it looks like it's the 25 feedback ratings per year that got me, the reality of the situation is that their user agreement enables them to hold your account based on any arbitrary criteria that they come up with that puts you in a high risk group. They could decide tomorrow that all customers with green eyes pose a higher risk and start holding those accounts. Any there's nothing anyone can do about it... Except stop using them.
