This morning I received an email notifying me they have permanently terminated my account due to sending or receiving "payments or donations for obscene or sexually oriented goods or services." They provided transaction information for the violation they were referring to, which was payment for either a text link or blog post to someone here for $10. Thinking this is a mistake that could be easily remedied (I don't deal in that kind of stuff, personally or professionally), I contacted PayPal by phone and was advised that it was strange I was given no opportunity to explain the situation prior to being disabled, and that I'd have to contact that department by email and ask for an appeal. I did so, and this is the response I received: There you have it. I've had thousands of PayPal transactions over the last "6 years, 29 days" and was a "Premier" member. I sent a $10 payment for a text link, now I've lost my PayPal account. It could happen to you, and I'm pretty disheartened about it.
Call them, but insist your call will be transferred to the person taking care of the issue. Make him/her explain what precisely is the action your account is terminated (they will propably try to say they can't give this info to you, but they actually have to, so don't be fooled by that). Then, based on that information track down everything you can provide regarding that transaction, like forum posts, screenshots of personal messages and so on. If they keep saying you have bought adult content etc insist they prove it. If they still don't open your account demand all info they have about you in their records mailed to you (at least in europe they can't refuse that). Also make it clear to them, that this info will be used as evidence if nessesary. You don't have to go to the court on your own against paypal, as both in us and in europe there are mass lawsuits made against paypal. You definately have a case here, so don't let them fool you.
The paypal address for the aforementioned transaction was billing [at] edkhosting [dot] com. They didn't freeze the account and said I should remove the funds, which was a few hundred dollars. I don't know where (or who) exactly the link was for because it was from the 29th of November which, ironically, is the last day DP has saved of my private messages. Not that it matters much at this point, since I'm sure their account was disabled before mine.
Similiar item happened to me. A link I had on one of my sites to another site, had nothing to do with Pay pal transactions at all. They however do not care and will not listen to you. I had a backup corporate account I used after this. Only problem, items Pay Pal previously cleared as OK all of a sudden were not ok on this new account. Almost immediately they terminated this account as well, for doing the same exact business I did for years with my primary account with them. I called and called and was able to get this account put back into good standing, I however had to remove many products and was quite limited compared to my original account.
man, that really sucks. I don't think this is all that uncommon so I never let my balance go higher than $1000. regardless, hopefully it all gets worked out and thanks for the heads-up.
Very concerning situation. I've been with paypal for about the same amount of time and I make quite a few purchases of blog posts, etc every month. More importantly, I have a number of clients who pay me weekly/monthly via paypal. Probably half of my monthly income comes from clients via paypal. I hope you are able to work something out with them. Very discouraging
You need to keep calling paypal and ask to speak to a manager everytime. Dont speak with the regular people because they cant do anything. When you speak with a manger DEMAND that he puts your account back "In Review", that escalates your case to the Resolutions department. Most of the dept are bad people but you may get one or two good people and once they get ahold of your case you should be alrite. Make sure your calling the US based numbers, even if your in the UK or Europe always call the US they can get things done faster and easier than in the UK. Worst comes to Worst, wait a week and say your account was hacked and you didnt make the payment but the hacker did. Claim there was a backdoor on your computer that let the hacker sign in from your ip address because he created a VPN. DETAILS! Pay ATTENTION TO THEM! I have had to deal with PAYPAL ALOT! You can read my first post on my blog about this, I've had over 500k in transactions with them, and they still shut my account down, the last time I couldnt get it opened and now I have to use my friends account. Let me know how it goes.
Bit drastic, and could find yourself being accused of fraud which it is.. Yes demand to talk to a manager, been there done that. I've been with Pay Pal forever, had lots of transactions, certain things they are clamping down and and it doesn't matter if you get a prick of a manager. I however would not lie to the extent of committing possible fraud with a payment gateway such as Pay Pal.
If you do this you have nothing left to fight them with, so I wouldn't recommend any actions like this.
I don't feel the need to be dishonest but thanks for the suggestions, I'm trying to call them again right now (on hold). I've missed $100 in subscription payments already : / What's the best alternative? Google Checkout?
This is beyond weird. How are you supposed to know if a site is in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy? Shouldn't they be focused on shutting down the other guy's account rather than yours? Is it actually a violation of PayPal's policies to buy a text link of a blog posting? There isn't anything illegal about that.
OMG...this is actually ridiculous. As you told, it may happen to anybody...It is wise enough to keep your dollars below 1000...
Spoke with an understanding representative via phone, he sympathised with my cause though said all he could do is foward a plea to the department handling the issue. He typed up something pretty long and advised he was sorry for the situation and that 99.999999999% of the time people getting terminated for the Mature Audiance Policy are really bad, but sometimes people get caught up in it and there's nothing they can do. He advised that he would send over his thoughts on the situation and advise they reinstate my account, though he wasn't optimistic about it. He also said that the person who I sent the money to didn't 'violate' their policy until a month after I had sent him the $10 payment, but that all accounts associated, or actually 'linked', to the account were terminated (including mine). He advised that I could re-open another account with a different email address and bank account if I didn't get a positive response from the aup department. An hour later, I got this email (again):
sorry to hear that mdvaldosta, paypal's support is quite indifferent and annoying so that won't be easy.. I had a bunch of problems and disputes with paypal and most of them were resolved not in my favour heh Anyway what was it that you bought?
Was a directory link I think. I've setup another bank account and will be getting another paypal address, since they're not going to reinstate my original (6 year old) account. Really disappointed in the whole situation, and it's a shame there aren't any really viable alternatives.
weird, as far as i know, paypal usually closes accounts related to scammy pyramid schemes, autosurfing sites, hyips and stuff like that, so only thing i can think of is that they thought it was the case..