A PayPal payment concern for eBay sellers maybe?

[Mongo 1]

This does not bother me, I have only purchased with PayPal recently, but... I sold one item on eBay last week, and received a PayPal payment for a tiny amount (under a fiver). All is ok, item sent and received, feedback all ok, then today I receive this email:

We're writing to let you know about a change to your PayPal account.

Starting 04/07/2012, money from payments you receive will be placed in a pending balance for up to 21days. By doing this, we're making sure that there's enough money in your account to cover potential refunds or claims.

Even though you can't access the money right away, please send orders quickly and communicate with your customers. After 21 days, you can withdraw money from each payment as long as the customer hasn't filed a dispute, chargeback, claim, return, or reversal.

The money may be available sooner if:

We can confirm that the item was delivered and 3 days elapse. This gives the buyer enough time to review the order and file a dispute if necessary.

Your buyer leaves positive feedback. (Applies only to eBay items)

This change isn't necessarily permanent. We'll review your account every 35 days and re-evaluate if we should continue to hold your payments. If we decide to stop holding payments, we'll email you to let you know.

I thought this was a bit strange, but at the same time its ok, as I would only ever sell something for a few pounds here and there.

I just done a quick google search, as you do, and came accross this article from CNN stating that eBay/PayPal are rolling it out to ALL sellers!

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/24/ebays-got-a-paypal-problem/

I also found this link to PayPal's own community forums, where there are hundreds of posts from unhappy sellers. Most of them seem to be since the start of 2012.

https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/My-Feedback-for-PayPal/Funds-Availability-Feedback/td-p/424987

Hopefully it is just rumors, but I thought I would give any eBay sellers on this forum a quick heads up about it.

[Coinery 1,157]

I think this policy has been a standard for a long time, normally affecting NEW sellers with small feedback! Could be wrong, of course?

[Mongo 1]

I think this policy has been a standard for a long time, normally affecting NEW sellers with small feedback! Could be wrong, of course?

Yeah, It is probably nothing to worry about. I can understand, that for a new seller, these restrictions are quite a good idea to protect buyers. It seems more like it is to protect PayPals profits though

Damn Google! Sometimes it can make you worry about nothing.

[azda 979]

I think this policy has been a standard for a long time, normally affecting NEW sellers with small feedback! Could be wrong, of course?

According to the paypal forum it also did the same with long standing ebays sellers with over 600 FBs and members for many years.