PayPal, and a warning for gold buyers and sellers

I'm not sure how many times you sell GP to gold buyers a day, or how much but you've probably noticed that most of them use personal payments and not goods & services payments in order to avoid fees that everyone gets mad about.

A few days ago, I have been permanently limited from PayPal after receiving too many personal (gift) payments in a day and perhaps too much for PayPal's liking, resulting in my account being limited and me having to provide some info to PayPal which I did with no problem, however being truthful doesn't always works and now I'm banned from PayPal because I've apparently broken their user agreement, which was true technically.

After countless calls with PayPal, they basically told me that they this kind of limitations very serious as PayPal is essentially a bank and this can make them lose their banking license, and even asking them to restore my account back to normal and removing my ability to receive gift payments, they denied and said there's nothing I can do about it.

I'm posting here because I know that many gold sellers use personal payments when paying to their clients and I just want to warn you, and everyone else to be extra cautious when doing this, because if PayPal catches you then you'll be banned for life.

So, essentially I got banned for life from PayPal with my personal info, bank account locked up in there without the ability to remove them which means I can't even make another account, which in 2017 is just cruel because everyone uses PayPal nowadays

 

This information is pretty well known, and has been for years. Most gold sellers don't accept gift payments, mainly because it can't be disputed. So if a payment was reversed (through a bank), I believe you can't open a dispute on the payment through paypal because it's a personal payment. There is also the possibility of getting limited as well, yes. It's unfortunate it happened to you. Paypal deals with a lot of this, so I can see it from their perspective. I'm also banned from using paypal too so I understand your pain.

 

I meant personal payments as when the gold shop buys GP from the client, sending the money to them as personal payment

How did you get banned? Same situation?

 

That's what I meant. I believe they send the money to you however you prefer it to be sent, but doing so to simply side-step fees is a good way to get limited. Think of it as using a proxy to not get advertisements on a website that thrives off advert payments.

They banned me from using their service because I only dealt with personal payments.

 

Unfortunately all transfers via paypal can be reversed or claimed fraudulently. Apart from that, everything else you say is spot on. It's fairly common knowledge among vendors.

I don't understand why OP is perm banned, unless he's broken other rules over and over again in the past (with other paypal accounts etc), as I know a handful of people who have simply had their ability to receive and send gifts revoked.

 

@Hern Paypal did this to me and @Time To Buy - We were able to strongarm them into lifting our limits. When I went through the phone they claimed it would not be reversed but gave me an email. With that email I told them it was incredibly unprofessional to limit my account without any evidence as to why (it turned out to be too many personal payments as described here, so no fees). Even with 90 percent of my personal payments being 100 percent legitimately from friends + family, they limited me. I told them it was incredibly unprofessional and that I had a large online blog and youtube channel (I don't lol) and that I would forever advertise against Paypal and tell my readers/viewers to use Google Wallet instead of Paypal.

12 hours later my account is restored. Then TTB does basically the same exact thing and we get his account restored too.

Most of my transactions were personal loans/ repayments or payments to vendors from Ebay or other websites. TTB did A LOT of business on his Paypal too though and was able to get his account restored. So do not lose hope eternally I would say. All it takes is getting the right person to look at it and you can very likely gain a second chance.

Thankfully Paypal, while sometimes being hard to get through to, is nowhere near as cancer as Jagex.

You two should both try it, you have nothing to lose. Call them and ask why you're limited. Hopefully you get given an email. If you don't I can locate it for you. Tell them you have a big blog + youtube channel and that unless you get VALID details as to your ban, you will start telling people to boycott their product and move elsewhere (Google Wallet seems to piss them off hehe xd).

Now obviously I don't know if that actually scared them or if they were just feeling generous. HOWEVER the makeup of my account versus TTB's account was likely VERY different. That leads me to believe they may have actually been spooked by my threats of advertising another product. I mean, obviously I will never know if it was effective. It was just something I came up with to come off as a highly disgruntled customer. And in fact, I was pretty miffed because the original limitation of the account was a load of bs.

Here was the correspondence I got when it happened to me:


We recently noticed an issue with your account.
What's the problem?
We would like to learn more about some of your recent transactions.
Because of this issue, your account has been permanently limited. We
understand this may be frustrating and inconvenient but you'll still be
able to see your transaction history for a limited time.
You can get more details about your account limitation in the Resolution
Center. For more information, please contact us and we'll do our best to
help.
You'll be able to withdraw money from your account within 180 days. We'll
email you when it's available. We just want to make sure that you have
money in your account to cover any payment reversals.

After my email plea:

Our review is complete and we have restored your account.

We appreciate your patience and thank you for your help in making PayPal the safest and most trusted online payment solution.

Thanks,

PayPal

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

 

You think that even after I told them through e-mail and phone that the person was sending me those payments was supposed to send through goods & services and not personal payments, and I had no idea that they were personal payments?
From what I've seen, the agents put notes on your accounts as why you're limited, perhaps they just put "limited due to abuse of personal payments" than a full descriptive explanation like I gave them, I'm going to try this.
They didn't give any e-mail, but I'll just e-mail their normal customer support

 

Try [email protected]

 

Thank you, I'll give them an e-mail and give a similar story to yours

 

Yup just be as professional as possible and say it won't ever happen again. But that if you don't get clear-cut evidence you're going to advertise against their product on multiple platforms. You have more bargaining power than you'd think.

Like I said I have no idea what actually unlocked my account, and never will. But TTB + me had drastically different usage habits on Paypal and the same blanket statements worked.

 

They answered pretty quickly, and wanted me to call them as they'd feel it was better.
I just said that I don't talk English very well and can only type/write because I don't want to fuck anything up.
I also said that they could block my account from receiving personal payments, so let's see how this goes.
And also used the youtuber/blog thing

 

another reason why u definately dont want to recieve personal payments is the seller protection. If you recieve as friends and family you have zero seller protection and a chargeback will be as easy as stealing candy from a baby.

 

So far so good, I can't even access the Resolution Center because I'm essentially "banned" from PayPal but I'm confident that this will go through

 

Yup, that works in your favor because you can even more easily claim you have no idea why you're banned. I couldn't access the resolution center either and I pointed this out with them and how upset it made me that I couldn't even see the "evidence".

 

I sent them an e-mail that I couldn't see my resolution center, and just a few minutes ago I got that message.
Not sure if it's an automated message or something, as it's the same one that I originally received when it got first closed

 

Thanks for posting this.

 

Every transaction via Paypal can be reversed, yes even gift payments. Yes indeed, not via the "open chargeback" option but there is a very other easy way which i'm not gonna post for obvious reasons.

To get back on track of the subject, Paypal will mostly "gift" lock accounts rather than ban them. They will do this with accounts that have a lot of transactions. gift locking is just Paypal taking away the ability of receiving gift payments and when a person will try to send a gift payment to an account that is gift locked it will give the sender the "This recipient cannot accept personal payments" error. Reason why Paypal hates this is not because they are a bank or that it's against laws or whatever baloney they will give you on the phone, it's cause of the fact that sending as a gift is taking away money from Paypal. Gift payments make Paypal 2% of sent amount while services and goods payments make Paypal anywhere between 3.5% to 4.5% depending on country, amount and other variables. This is a loss of 20c on average (estimate) per $10 sent via Paypal. Do the math, if you receive $1000 in a month (for example) you pretty much stole $20 from Paypal by abusing their gift method. While indeed this isn't alot to a million dollar company, keep in mind you aren't the only one who abuses this so Paypal potentially looses out on MAJOR amounts of money this way.

 

I got my ass canned for almost similar reasons. Tried to submit all documentation to appeal it but they denied them and now I have no PayPal account as they just notified me it is a permanent limitation. So I am out of an account and have no way of accepting payments.

I came across this guide: Ebay & PayPal Incognito Stealth eBook PDF

Supposedly it teaches you a way to get back on, but wouldn't PayPal find out? Am looking for a way to get back on as the people who pay me only use PayPal.

 

You can dispute any paypal payment regardless on type

 

This is old news just send as friends / family