From: Sherie I think your site is great. We have had an account with paypal for years and then we added a new account and tried to verify it and they froze and restricted it. It has been two months with many phone calls to then (no answer), a fake fax line, finally got through, and verified and still they have not unrestricted our account. So, as far as I can see they are stealing funds from customers and can't afford to pay them back. To all you customers who think they are so great, wait till they freeze all your funds for no reason and block access to YOUR money and do not respond for months to you, and then you be on the right side of the gate. I believe they are committing fraud.

From: The Hillers In August 2000 PayPal double dipped the same amount from our bank account to cover a purchase we made for nearly one thousand dollars... well we were away and when they realized what they did, they credited the paypal account not the bank account the mistaken double dipped funds were taken from...so we went into unauthorized overdraft and found not only no funds in our account on the way home, but every monthly charge for bills they okayed racked up a $28 fee... grand total of $ 420.00 in fees and accumulating interest...PayPal never replied to a piece of mail sent via overnight delivery... and sent a bullshit email.... so when I found info from others on eBay about now not accepting PayPal and started investigated... made some calls.... well the story became very bleak no recourse in the end.

From: J Our firm opened a PayPal account in 2001, and I attached my personal credit card to the account and hooked our company checking account to the Pay Pal account. I noticed a few wire transfers around the holidays that seemed suspicious and upon investigating, found $1,350 was taken from our checking account and $6,500 was charged on my credit cards, all fraudulently. The PayPal corporate culture is clearly indifference and stonewalling. Repeated phone calls, e-mails and letters have gone unanswered. It has been a month since I first communicated with Paypal and no communication has come back. PayPal's customer service rep did all but accuse me of theft and basically said it had to be my fault. I think it is a crime that a company that probably has a good business model and is PROBABLY a legitimate company has such poor policies, procedures and customer service.

From: AOL I have had a unauthorized withdrawal (by paypal) from my account because they "suspect fraudulent activity from the person I sold a 2500 item to" I have called and filed a claim with travelers insurance and told them paypal has coverage for us up to 100,000 They were very nice and gave me a claim number. Travelers claim number for commercial accounts is 800 238 6225

From: AOL User oh my god this is HORRIBLE, today I received a payment of $825 and with out any notice i went to log into my account and it says BLOCKED even though the payment was from some ebayer, I cant believe this. I am calling paypal, i called the manager she transferred me to CUSTOMER SERVICE, then i did put on hold for 10minuts then some one answered and he said i cant help you with this i will transfer you to another department that can help you with this, and i am still on hold since 30minuts no answer WHAT KIND OF CUSTOMER SERVICE IS THIS, after getting $1600 in my PAYPAL account the account get closed WITH NO REASON this is just horrible, can you help me with it anybody?! even though i did over 50transaction in one week on ebay and i have good feedback. i just cant believe this.

From: Peter Halvorson I didn't think this could really happen to people. Then it happened to me. Just today! Background: I was a PayPal Verified Premier account holder. I had 275 confirmed transactions. I have been a member virtually since they began. Never had a problem. No disputes. I was primarily a seller but am now mostly a buyer on eBay. My feedback rating is +2439. How my PayPal account became closed: 1. On 1 Feb (Friday evening), I got an e-mail from PayPal saying that my account had been "Restricted." No advance warning or phone calls. I filled out the PayPal appeals form on-screen and asked them "Why?" 2. Like everyone else, I got the standard boilerplate non-response. Subsequent messages to PayPal returned the same vague pabulum. 3. On Monday, 4 Feb, I called the toll-free customer service number. The person explained that I needed to fax in a photocopy of my driver's license, a copy of a utility bill, & a copy of my credit card statement. I again asked "Why?" and he couldn't tell me. I said, "If there is fraud occurring on my account, shouldn't you tell me details so that I can notify the appropriate authorities &/or my financial institutions." These words fell on deaf ears. 4. After stewing in my juices for awhile, I finally faxed in all of the documentation that they wanted on Friday, 8 Feb. (Please keep in mind that all this time there were auctions closing upon which I was the high bidder. Many sellers would only accept PayPal.) 5. I called PayPal again on Monday, 11 Feb. They said that their fax machine was down over the weekend, they had just gotten my documentation, and they wouldn't be able to review my paperwork until Wednesday (13 Feb). 6. On Thursday morning, 14 Feb (today), seeing that my account was still restricted, I called PayPal again. I was informed that I had to re-fax original documents (some of the previous ones were online copies because I manage all of my accounts on the web). I faxed originals in to them 15 minutes later. 7. This afternoon (just a half-hour ago), I called again to check on the status of my restriction. The PayPal person said that they hadn't gotten my fax. I volunteered to re-fax it. Then she said that the investigator hadn't gotten in yet. Then she asked me to hold again... 8. ...which brings me to this point. When she comes back on the line, she says, "You don't need to fax us anything else. Your account has been closed." I was flabbergasted. When I asked "why" she said that it was because I had been referring non-existent people to PayPal just to collect the $5 referral bonus. I said that I hadn't referred anybody to PayPal since back in the year 2000, and that referrals were very common back then as it was a method on their part to build up the customer base. She agreed that I hadn't referred anyone since 2000, but said that their investigator had come to the conclusion that I was making bogus referrals just to cash in. Needless to say, I was/am dumbfounded. Back when PayPal was a young upstart, I had gone out of my way to refer buyers/ friends/ relatives to PayPal as a great new way to pay for things online by credit card. Sure, I made a good sum of money off of those referrals, but not a single one of them was bogus. My suspicion is that PayPal tried to contact some of those users now (two years later) and found some of the e-mail addresses to be dead / deactivated / abandoned (whatever word you want to use). And since PayPal didn't get a reply from those folks, PayPal concluded that they were made-up and that I was a fraud. Wow. I still can't believe it. And to make matters worse, I now have about a dozen sellers waiting for me to pay them via PayPal. Some (esp. overseas/intl.) will ONLY take PayPal. My eBay feedback rating is going to take some serious negative hits in the next few days. This sucks big time. The PayPal people told me that their decision CANNOT be appealed. The gal on the phone said that her supervisor wasn't in today (what? they only have one supervisor) so I couldn't talk to anyone else but her. Fortunately (for her), she hung up on me before I could let it sink in and get irate. I was still in shock when the line went "click."

From: John Feldman Just another story of someone who really has had a number of bad experiences with PayPal - i.e. - frozen account, bad customer service, really invasive into my personal life. I used PayPal with eBay, and have since stopped using eBay altogether. I was simply lucky that PayPal froze my account when there was only a few cents left in it. Well, keep up the effort. I'm glad to see that I'm not alone. I'm also quite amazed that eBay doesn't force PayPal out of their auctions. I couldn't be the only person who's left eBay as a result of PayPal. The income does add up. In the past three years, I've recreationally bought and sold perhaps $150,000 of merchandise at various online auctions. So I might imagine how much commercial business PayPal has turned away from eBay. Thanks, and good luck.

From: Steven Arnold In 2000, I got an email from a customer saying an eBay purchase didn't arrive. I said, fine, I'll issue a refund when you fill out the insurance claim. Instead, the customer filed a fraud claim with Paypal the next day. Paypal's own TOS at that time required an insurance claim to be filed first. Paypal locked my account, but not before I removed all the money. Still, auction payments came into the account even though I told Paypal to stop accepting them. Paypal told my customers I had received their payments, but I coundn't get to the money. I had to send stuff out for weeks with no money coming in. I opened a new Paypal account and managed to get the recent payments (about $300). When Paypal realized what happened, they sent an angry email saying "we will take whatever steps necessary to recover the money." Three minutes later, I received an email stating that a customer had paid my (second) account with a fraudulent credit card. The buyer who started the trouble was later kicked off eBay for shill bidding. If Paypal had only abided by their own terms and required the customer to fill out the insurance claim, the whole mess could have been avoided. Instead, Paypal nearly drove my business into the ground over a $15 dispute.

From: Daryl Mihara PayPal has the worst customer service(If they took tips from Fry's, that would be an improvement!). You are not taken care of by one person who deals with your issue from start to finish and subsequently you get will get the same "canned" response multiple times and of course it has nothing to do with your question. Here is some background on my credit card problem I have with PayPal... I wanted to use my credit card to pay for an auction. After all, there are about a million sellers advertising "pay with your credit card through PayPal". Yet, when I tried to find the option under the "funding options" field there was none. I sent literally 50 e-mails back and forth with canned messages, differing response, and excuses that made no sense. I am still sending e-mails to PayPal to see if anyone will have an answer for me. I sent an e-mail to the person whose auction I won to tell her I was having problems paying by credit card. She told me that she recently upgraded her account to a "merchant account" to accept credit cards and she was rightfully concerned - why should she pay for a service that doesn't work!!!. Is PayPal committing fraud by charging their customers for a non-service? My credit card is in good standing and I've NEVER made a late payment. So what is the problem?!?! I asked them if I would EVER be able to use my credit card and they responded with - "In your case, you may be able to use your credit card to fund your future PayPal transactions." The operative word being "MAY". So I asked them if there was a way I could tell if I could use my credit card before I bid on an auction. They gave me a canned response that didn't pertain to my question so I sent it out again and I'm still waiting for a response. I just transferred ALL of my funds out of my PayPal account and I plan to close my account once the transaction completes. After reading on your site, I think I'll try Billpoint. I wish I would have found your site before I got a PayPal account!!!

From: Tim G I am completely disgusted with paypal. I have been using paypal since 1999 when they first started and really never had any problems until fairly recently. I have done well over $20,000 with paypal and my record was 1100+ positive experiences (or whatever they call the things) when one day I logged into my account after not making any auctions for months to find my balance $-2435.00 after leaving about $1000 for buying things on ebay, so it looks like the $1000 had disappeared along with almost $2500 more! I called paypal and they said that a credit card that they processed for $900+ back in November of 1999 came back stolen, so the money was yanked out of my account (no calls or emails or anything!) along with a bunch of processing fees. I had the address of the person I sent it to out of my files in about an hour. I called paypal back and pled my case, here's their info, here's their address (In INDIA of course, so I am sure there is nothing they could do), so go get the baserds! ;) You simply won't believe what happened next. I get a call while I'm driving in my car on my way to lunch, on my cell phone, a long distance call. I hardly ever get any long distance calls on my local cell phone, I've NEVER given the number to anyone. I realized I put it in on my paypal account for my contact number, so possibly it was them? I answered to hear a very irate woman on the other end who wouldn't identify herself. She said if I did not send the money that I stole from her credit card back on paypal within 24 hours she would have me arrested, and sued for God knows what. I asked her who she was and how she got my number?! She said all she had to call paypal and they divulged this info to her over phone. She read my address, and a bunch of info about how many transactions done on my paypall and how I was a thief! I was, as you can probably understand) a little upset at all of this. I called paypal and they said there was no possible way she got this info! I said, "Well there buddy SHE JUST CALLED ME, and told me that she talked to your department and got the info". I abandoned that account and now have another one just to accept payments and deposit them to a secondary bank account I have created JUST for paypal. As soon as the money is deposited in this account via paypal I withdraw it and put it in another safe account in a completely different bank! Haw haw, looks like paypal won't get me this time! DO NOT TRUST PAYPAL WITH ANY OF YOUR MONEY!