The quick succession of the disputes from the time of you starting your paypal account would determine raise a lot of red flags as your account would be deemed to be very high risk. It is the same with real life payment processor too. The holding your money for 6 months is not so that paypal can earn your interest because the interest from $1.95 would not add up to anything worth talking about. The whole purpose of the hold is pretty much to allow your customers to request for a refund. Since your account does not have anything in it, they basically just do not want to do any business with you now and forever because of the risk factor involved.
Have you checked out the reason behind the dispute? My client had no problems. In fact I had logged from another ISP (since mine was down at the moment) and that is what started all the problems. After this I followed all their instructions, so the disputes were from their side and not from mine. As far as holding money is concerned, just check out and you'll find many instances where paypal is holding a couple of hundreds of dollars per account.. multiply that my hundreds, thousands if not more and you can figure out the sum they have at any given point of time and the interest they earn thereon.
Please PM me your situation in more details. I think I can help you if your money is not related to any fraud!
buileminh and .Sopranos - Thanks, but I've already contacted Paypal and hopefully things have been sorted out