September 30, 2004

A Victoy against PayPal

I found a trick that worked for me to get my account closed and get my money back. I filed a complaint with TrustE and they acted - and it worked!

As you know - PayPal doesn't close accounts. They "Limit" the account forever. They steal your money for at least 180 days and often forever based on stories we have all heard. And by keeping the account open they still have access to your bank account, credit cards, and you are subject to their changing user agreement. I deciced to put and end to it.

Here's the link:

http://truste.org

Here is my complaint:

I have asked paypal to close my account and they have refused to do so. I want to close my account and terminate my user agreement with them. I have called them and I recorded the phone call of them refusing to close the account and terminate the user agreement.

Here is a link to the recording:

http://marc.perkel.com/archives/000394.html

I am not done with PayPal yet. It's not over until they change in a permant way. But for those of you with frozen and limited accounts - I suggest you do what I did - it worked for me. Victories come one step at a time. This is a step forward.

Posted by marc at September 30, 2004 05:40 PM | TrackBack
Comments

Hi, I'm too trying to close my account, but I'm not sure I understand how you went thru the TrustE web?
can you advise?
do i just file a complaint as a consumer?
any help, thanks

Posted by: jennifer at September 30, 2004 06:24 PM

Yaay Marc!

Posted by: Alex Libman at October 1, 2004 01:49 AM

Congrats Marc.
Your right 1 step at a time, till you can stomp them.
Now its your turn to make them pay. The recordings are great, and permanent fixtures to you site.

LOL

Posted by: Ed at October 1, 2004 05:39 PM

Victoy?

Posted by: dancho at October 1, 2004 08:41 PM

I submitted my complaint with truste org. but have not heard back? does it take awhile?
I also filed a complaint with nebraska attorney general and that seemed to help.

Posted by: jennifer at October 8, 2004 12:15 PM

Hi Marc,

Ok, you are going to die when I tell you what paypal did to me. Can you email me direct so I have your email address and forward you the emails paypal sent me.
thanks

Posted by: jennifer at October 18, 2004 11:26 AM

Go MARK
get them asshols!
get ebay too

Posted by: Randy at January 30, 2005 09:25 PM

You rock man. I sent a complaint to TrustE so let's hope it works! Thanks for doing this, you made a very great point.

Posted by: Brian at April 16, 2005 11:33 PM

Hi, I hate paypal and ebay. Look what Im going through. its like completely stressful to deal with these people. I am now using stormpay but I just got word that they are worse. My advise always withdraw your monay asap before they can reverse it. I also run an adult website, and paypla found out , they said that my account was close but now someone form a month ago is comoplaining about they want a refund. So all the sudden it say limited account. So here's what I found out , you can go down to you bank and either close your account and reopen it with a new number (which is a major pain in the butt) or they told me I could fill out some stop payment paper work to stop all electronic transactions form paypal. Problem solved??well I hope so Im going to the bank in the morning before they decide to dive into my savings and help themselves always siding with the completely crazy clients. I mean I really dont believe that all customers are right you know. You cant return an itme after that long bvecuase you shouldnt have spent that much. Screw them I will open a new account if I have to. It s 35 dollars and well worth it.

Posted by: k9walker at July 11, 2005 02:35 PM

Hello Marc,
All I can say is Bravo! We too are going through our own personal hell with E-Bay and PayPal. We have had the exact same thing happen to us as happened to you but I will take it a step further. Our Paypal accounts can not be accessed by us anymore whatsoever. PayPal will not pay back a customer out of the account that they are holding for one hundred eighty days without written permission as you have been advised. They will go into our personal bank accounts (which in some cases are affiliated with some of our business accounts) and pay the customer from there. Our bank charges $22.00 dollars for every time a transaction like this occurs. So in essance PayPal is utilizing not only the money that they have on hold in our account but other funds as well (double indemnity). We have the same issues with E-Bay also. They have shut us down for items and issues that they have absolutely no proof (with no recourse) of and then when we have been reinstated shut us down again because (we have family members who are utilizing the auction format) our family members have continued to sell on E-Bay while we were shut down and they consider that an affiliation. All of our family members have seperate auction sites but we had umbrella'd them under one name as subsidiaries for tax purposes. Now we all can not do business through E-Bay or PayPal. My wife is disabled and finally found a way for her to make money from home. She was feeling useful business-wise again after she was forced to retire 8 years ago. Now they have taken this away also. I am sorry this post is as long as it is but it could have been pages longer as well. In conclusion, something really needs to be done to protect the sellers rights as there is nothing in place to do so at this time.

Posted by: Dave Whitley at September 4, 2005 02:15 PM

Marc,
I have similar situation like you with PaypaL and I am ready to give them a good lessson.

Posted by: Basudeb Dey at January 14, 2006 01:43 PM

Paypal has screwed me in their restricting of my account. Have done good business with them for several years and one transaction where a refund was requested, they froze my account saying they needed verification of who I was and that the item was sent. Doesnt the fact that the customer wrote them saying they wanted a refund because they didnt like the item they bought prove the item was sent? And doing business with them for a minimum of 3 years prove who I am with them. I am very displeased with them and am in the process of currently trying to get my funds unfrozen and returned to my bank account so I can close my paypal account. I didn't realize there were so many people being done wrong buy such a crooked company. I do wish all of you including myself that have been done wrong by paypal get justified soon as our rights are being violated by them. They are crooks and full of fraud practices. Thanks

Posted by: Adrian at February 15, 2006 03:02 PM

You know what's funny, there is a way to use paypal and receive your money. The problem is though, it's a 'Trick'. Funny though, for me to receive money of which i've earned properly, I have to 'trick' paypal. I have to almost 'scam' them to receive 'MY Money', but it's not for scamming purposes, it's for receiving 'MY' money that I earned, MY MONEY!... What kind of a company is this?

Posted by: Shizank at May 14, 2006 05:32 PM

Thank you mark! I just now sent a complaint thru 'TrustE'. If it works I will do my best to spread the word. If it doesn't, well, atleast I tried to do something about it. My funds *around $1700!* were also seized for 180 days.

Posted by: Jordan Kramer at June 13, 2006 12:33 AM

I just filed a complaint with TrustE also. So Shizank, how did you trick them into getting your money. I'd be very interested in doing that.

Posted by: Tim at August 5, 2006 04:05 PM

Hello Mark,

I too spent over 60 days dealing with PayPal. I finally had to stop being nice to them and tell them Id hired legal help, gave them 5 days to make a descision. On the 5th day they made one, in my favor, yet froze my acct, this was almost a yr ago. PayPal is making money off Illegal transactions and I HAVE PROOF OF THIS. Does anyone know a lawyer who will pursue this? Essentially they charge a fee for money transfers,, yet they themselves dont care where the money comes from,, ei other countries and scam artists,, hello money laundering charges?. Can anyone help me in this regard. I can be reached at Scout98239@peoplepc.com
Thanks for the site and lets not give until PayPal is put out of business.

Jay Chadwick

Posted by: Jay Chadwick at September 9, 2006 02:22 PM

Report all of your PayPal related complaints to the following FTC.GOV (Federal Trade Commission) website link..

https://rn.ftc.gov/pls/dod/wsolcq$.startup?Z_ORG_CODE=PU01

FTC do not take action unless they receive a fair amount of complaints so please spend 5-10 minutes time to fill their form with your complaints and let's make anti-paypal community grow much bigger, more invincible. PayPal must be shut down with our little efforts !!!

Posted by: Anti-Paypal eBay Seller at September 28, 2006 11:27 PM

I need a lawyer to fight paypal for me. I am being charged a chargeback of 3000$ from a month ago and they won't do anything to help me.
Does anyone know someone that can help?
email me at prana009@hotmail.com

Posted by: Ryan at November 3, 2006 08:27 PM

I am having a problem with Paypal and will be looking into ways to make my complaint with the Federal Trade Commission as well as "in-house" complaints made with the CEO of Paypal and EBAY (same woman with the first name of Meg - forgot her last name). I think Paypal/EBAY have gotten too big for their respective britches and Meg needs to be taken down a Peg. Reminds me of the old days of MA Bell telephone company and the buttons printed that said, "We don't care - we don't have to!" In any event, I will keep you all posted.

Posted by: Gretchen Galstad at December 12, 2006 01:48 PM

Yah same thing happened with mine. I don't have much money in my paypal and I don't even sell anything but still they have limited and I do not know why. I think its because of the gift certificates that my friend used when he got his account. So i completed the steps and they asked for the passport and I sent it. After that, since I am 14, they said underage and they have got my 50 bucks for 180 days since I am underage. This is bullshit.

Posted by: Rishi at December 31, 2006 12:46 AM

Im in the same problem as the above customer! However, im dealing with much bigger sums of money $6,200 dollars! Im 16 and paypal have frozen my account for 'suspitious' activity. Just because i suddenly start selling lots of stuff makes it suspitious?? So they have this money frozen and i have to send them information including passport! What shall i do? If i send them the passport and they find out im 16 do they keep my money? or do i get it back in the end after some time? My other option as i see it would be to alter my the date of birth on the fax ill send paypal. Please help me guys!

Posted by: sam jones at January 30, 2007 12:46 PM

Hello, please let me know how I can file a complaint againt PayPal as they have frozen my account and I didn't do anything wrong. I listed some items for sale on my ebay account, some people paid for them and when I went online to paypal to retrieve my money so I could send out the items sold, Paypal limited my account so I could not get the money out. I had to ship the items with my own money and even though I did that, they still have not removed the limit from my account, telling me I need to provide proof of the items in which I did already like 5 times. Then they said they could not verify my location although I sent them a copy of my bank account to show them my business address. Everytime I gave them what they asked for, they asked for something else. It has come to a point to me that it is obvious Paypal has no intentions of giving me my money and I have already sent out the packages to my buyers. So I lose....Please email me and let me know every place I can contact to complain against Paypal. They need to be brought down.

Posted by: Fatimah at February 21, 2007 02:38 PM

I am also one who has gotten a bad deal from paypal. I just decided to try to do something about it, if possible. I had two account, one was frozen for no reason, then they gave me bad links in their 'checklist' and then, after I told them of the error, they permanently limited the account. Then they permanently froze my second account with no reason or asking for info, freezing $800. I've tried to contact them multiple times, but only get the same automated response. When I called, I was told that they didn't know how to fix it! This is ridiculous and something has to be done. I worked with them for about 6-7 years! I hope someone can find a viable solution. I'm going to try some of the suggestions mentioned. Hopefully something will work. I thought it would be illegal for them to permanently maintain bank records.

Posted by: Robert Robson at April 22, 2007 12:12 AM

I hope to start a website devoted to sellers "against paypal". I absolutely despise their service. I have burned three times. The latest is something that should never happen...the buyer has the item AND a full refund. I am sick about it. The last so called customer service SENIOR agent "Casey" was so ridiculous that I cant even begin to relate all of the STUPID comments she made. It did not matter that I can prove that the buyer has both - they dont care. The following is long but the 'jest' of my experience. I posted it in numerous jacksonville FL forums.
This story will prove the dishonesty of one of your local probably soon to be city council members. This has been a nightmare for us - although trivial for an outsider. It has been a long process and I can finally prove it with a paper trail. Please read through to the end, the body of general story sounds petty but what has ultimately happened is pure dishonesty and may be nothing short of fraud.

I really do not know if this is the proper way to relay my story and with a lack of anywhere else to turn....here goes:
I am an Ebay seller located in Michigan. Unfortunately for me, one of your local city council candidates (I found this out later after much research) was a buyer of an item of mine. I will attempt to condense this and stick solely to the verifiable facts only. I realize that my opinion is not relevant here.
They (I will refer to the Holts as "they" because I never knew which one, or both I was communicating with at any given time, both actively participated) won and purchased a used Kirby vacuum from me. I shipped it (and a belt separately per request). It was in great shape when it left my location. I am a seasoned seller with a great reputation and certainly would not have shipped them or anyone a crappy item. Obviously, I would have to deal with Paypal & negative feedback were I to do so.
I started receiving complaints before the item arrived. Upon arrival I was told it did not have all of the attachments needed. I would not have known this, it was not my vacuum but had belonged to a bachelor. I simply listed it with a description of the attachments included. I was told to pay for the attachments they wanted. I declined & asked them to ship it back for a full refund. They came up with every excuse imaginable not to return it along with it was so badly corroded that it was useless. I eventually had to file a claim against them to force them to ship it back. They were unwilling to do so. I found it very odd that they refused to ship back a vacuum that they claimed was nothing but a piece of junk.
After a while it was finally shipped back to us. The purchase price plus their shipping charges were automatically returned to them. They were very angry about the return and did not provide any packing material at all. The vacuum was severely damaged in shipping as well as deliberate destruction to the head of the vacuum. We filed a shipping claim with UPS.
We were never told the status of the claim so my husband (Brian Gould) made a call to the UPS Store located in Jacksonville. The owner treated him horribly and claimed that we refused shipment of the vacuum back to us. In the tracking UPS automatically puts that info in when a package filed for a claim. We actually had to sign for this item and it is verified in the tracking info. Anyway.... the owner went on to state that he "knew Ray Holt personally and he was issuing a insurance claim check to him and there wasn't anything that we could do". There is without a doubt a 'Good ol' boy' connection there.
Ok, well Ray Holt knew that was not his money. He could have been decent and returned the money to us. He chose INSTEAD (we are fairly certain he was advised by the UPS Store owner) to take the vacuum. This way there was no cash exchange and what he thought would be no accountability. It was only through the diligence of my husbands inquiries that we found this out.
So, Ray Holt has our vacuum, and a full refund. I'm quite sure they find this all amusing but it is stealing - cut & dried.
I sent many emails trying to get these people to be decent. They twist everything and make themselves look like angels on earth. Up until this point, I could not prove with paperwork what they have done. All I could prove was that they were refunded.
The total was about $170 - not much money to many but a lot to me. It has been a nightmare. I have had an on-going communication appeal process with Paypal trying to resolve this and it is like talking to a brick wall. I just want the vacuum or the value of the vacuum returned.
Did anyone read this email? Does it matter that a local politician can be proved to be dishonest? Does anyone care?
It should matter. It seems there is no accountability anymore. Would it matter if it was a larger sum of money?
I hope someone will listen, it proves what this persons true character is - and that he thinks he is above the law. And, Im certain now that he must have wide-spread influence. Im just a little person - but I wont give up. I have copied & pasted the Paypal refund. The UPS tracking number that shows in the end that it was picked up by Ray Holt is: 1Z R48 W66 42 2135 0344
Kind regards, Terri Jo Gould - Owosso MI This transaction has been refunded.
For further details please see transaction 78W11798747534229

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Total Amount:
$170.00 USD
Fee Amount:
-$5.23 USD
Net Amount:
$164.77 USD

Date:
Mar. 17, 2007
Time:
15:09:49 PDT
Status:
Refunded

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Item # Item Title Qty Price Subtotal
300090813648 Kirby G5 Vacuum + 10 Attachments & Carpet Cleaner NICE! 1 $140.01 USD $140.01 USD


Shipping & Handling via UPS Ground
Note: UPS cannot ship to P.O. Boxes
(includes any seller handling fees): $28.39 USD
Shipping Insurance (optional): $1.60 USD

Total: $170.00 USD

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Seller Protection Policy:
Eligible


Attn. Sellers:
You must ship to the address shown below to be protected under PayPal's Seller Protection Policy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Shipping Address:
Nanette Holt
145 Lake Run Blvd.
Jacksonville, FL 32218
United States
Confirmed

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Payment From:
Nanette Holt (The sender of this payment is Verified)
Buyer's ID:
holt432
Buyer's Email:
nanetteholt@gmail.com
Payment Sent to:

terrijo@michonline.net

Posted by: Terri Jo Gould at May 11, 2007 11:41 AM

I am so glade i found all this information on Paypal.They froze my account also for no reason.
I have been told to copy all fax,and email and send it all to the Attorney General in Nebraska, Cal,and Connecticut (im in Ct.)Im not sure why anywhere but in my state.
I will be at my bank in the morning asking about the paperwork to keep Paypal from withdrawing any money from my account.
I sell GPS units on Ebay & have never had a complaint!I have signed up to accept credit cards & checks on my own. These units cost up to the thousands of $$$. It is a must that I have a way for people to use their credit cards.
I wish someone would file a class action suit against Paypal like they did a few years ago.
I will also file with TrustE.
Thank You all very much.
Ted

Posted by: Ted Martin at May 13, 2007 08:35 PM

I am checking out information on a possible NEW CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT against Paypal.The lawyer primarily wants people in California, however he said if it gets big enough he will go bigger, so if you are in another State, just make sure you tell him which State you are in.
I am in Connecticut and am waiting for email from him.I will post all contact information here when I receive it.He will need as many people as he can get.

Ted

Posted by: Ted Martin at May 14, 2007 11:49 AM

Hi Mark,
It will be faster and easier for you to post this information.

This is the link to the Paypal lawsuit. I have sent her email and received an answer.
Tammy is collecting emails and information to turn over to her lawyer.
The link will take you to her story and contact infomation.
http://news.com.com/5208-1017_3-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=1544&messageID=261099&start=0

I hope to see it all posted here soon.

Thank You,
Ted

Posted by: Ted Martin at May 14, 2007 01:28 PM

Hi Mark,
not idea if you want to know this but 2 anti trust lawsuits filed against Ebay

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m05/i04/s02

Ted

Posted by: Ted Martin at May 18, 2007 09:58 AM

We just got home from small claims court in an effort to sue paypal fopr the frozen account of my husband's. The magistrate wouldn't even hear our case. We have to appeal the decision. Paypal froze our account of $500 and will not release it. They've given us many reasons/excuses. We have tried to find and attorney to help (class action lawsuit) to no avail. Any suggestions
Dawne

Posted by: Dawne Prochilo at May 31, 2007 08:52 AM
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