Call for a Paypal boycott

[misus180]

I'm brutally frustrated with Paypal, problems involving Paypal and the way they choose to handle problem solving.

Today I tried making a purchase using Paypal and I got the following error message:
"You have exceeded your per transaction limit. To lift this limit, click View Limits on your Account Overview
page."

Well I tried to buy a 80€ item (way lower than the limit) and the limits don't show up on my account anymore.

What has happened is that Paypal has blocked my account prohibiting me from sending, receiving or transferring any funds.
The reasons why are still not known and judging from what I've read it seems as it happens rather randomly. Apparently it's Paypals internal security system looks for abnormal behaviour and send accounts straight to jail without a trial. Abnormal behaviour seems to anything from trying to make a purchase to creating an account and validating it.

After doing a little research I found that this is a quite common problem, something that Paypal later confirmed in an email sent to me.

Naturally i was looking for an explanation for this problem and I was also interested in hearing what plans Paypal has to solve this issue. As a seller I'm deeply concerned that this issue will scare customers away and as a buyer I'm just plain pissed.

The first thing I was told was that my account was blocked for security reasons and that it may have involved unusual behaviour (may have???). Then my contact proceeded to tell me that "this is not a reflection of you or your account
activities". Than what the he&/ is it a reflection of? Is it a random act of security? What happened to probable cause?

Then he started giving me advice on things I could do to prevent this from happening thereby admitting that a normal purchase attempt is what caused the account to be blocked. Of course none of these suggestions makes me happy as seller who has really put en emphasis on making the checkout procedure as smooth as possible on my site.

First he suggested that I would "top off my account" meaning that I would transfer funds from my bank account to my Paypal account. This will take three days. Hey remind me to make a big banner on my store front saying that potential customers must first transfer funds and that we'll be happy to have them again in three days.

Secondly he suggested to add another card. Add card, validate card, wait for validation code. Bye bye customer!

Then he suggested that I would make sure that I was making the payment from my country of residence (where the account was created). Well I live in another country now so I guess I should go back to the country where i used to live whenever I need to buy something using Paypal.

Well let's say you're that very special customer with enormous patience and no demands on service. Then you better hope that the seller has the same amount of patience. But according to my Paypal contact that's not an issue. "We advise that you contact your seller and inform them why the payment has not been completed yet. If the seller accepts payments through PayPal they will be familiar with your situation"

Luckily I had no funds in my Paypal account but I've read about people that had money in their account when this happened and that blocking the account meant that they couldn't get to their money. Is this Hitler Germany or Stalin Soviet? I'm not a lawyer but this must border on criminal activity?

To sum it up I believe that this is a problem of great magnitude and the worst part is that I see little initiative from Paypal to solve the issue. If anybody knows anything different please let me know. If not I think it's time to move away from using Paypal. Take to your guns and boycott the beast.

[uddhava]

Good luck with boycotting.
Our account was also "blocked" and Paypal needed extra info to lift the block. But it was quit simple to do so, so no big deal here

[sgtbash]

Our account was blocked the other day also, its happened before more than once.

It only takes a quick verification and change of password to get it back.

I think its good that paypal do it - there is so much paypal fraud going around I'd rather they block my account for a moment while they check its me than try and find out how some dude has spent not only all my paypal balance, but my bank account balance also as its linked.