I just discovered, the hard way, that there is a new ebay/paypal policy change that is really very annoying and arbitrarily applied.
The policy, sent to me by an agent of ebay is this:
In other words.... they actually expect a seller to ship the item before receiving payment transfered from paypal. And then still wait some more days after that! Now, this is entirely unacceptable in my view- it asks the seller to part with the item and then wait for paypal to transfer the funds... at their discretion (they decide when to release the funds). So it leaves the seller without the item and without the funds.
Now here is the other bit that shows how poorly conceived this policy is: I contacted paypal about a hold that was placed and they said, oh no, we don't place the hold, ebay places the hold! So then apparently the company that holds your funds can't even control when to release them!!!
As for me, after incurring one of these holds I protested and got numerous brain-dead responses from various agents. In my case, I and the seller communicated, we both have ~100% feedback ratings on a number of sales, and were both willing to release the hold. I spoke with agents at ebay and paypal many times and they simply don't realize how silly and arbitrary this is, and how much business they will lose.
So... seller beware!
N.b. they won't say what triggers a hold, they just say "for a very small percentage of sellers" ... but I and my buyer suspect that it is a cost in excess of $1000. So you could try to skate under that but... my advice is to steer clear of paypal entirely until they (inevitably) realize how dumb this new policy is.
The policy, sent to me by an agent of ebay is this:
In other words.... they actually expect a seller to ship the item before receiving payment transfered from paypal. And then still wait some more days after that! Now, this is entirely unacceptable in my view- it asks the seller to part with the item and then wait for paypal to transfer the funds... at their discretion (they decide when to release the funds). So it leaves the seller without the item and without the funds.
Now here is the other bit that shows how poorly conceived this policy is: I contacted paypal about a hold that was placed and they said, oh no, we don't place the hold, ebay places the hold! So then apparently the company that holds your funds can't even control when to release them!!!
As for me, after incurring one of these holds I protested and got numerous brain-dead responses from various agents. In my case, I and the seller communicated, we both have ~100% feedback ratings on a number of sales, and were both willing to release the hold. I spoke with agents at ebay and paypal many times and they simply don't realize how silly and arbitrary this is, and how much business they will lose.
So... seller beware!
N.b. they won't say what triggers a hold, they just say "for a very small percentage of sellers" ... but I and my buyer suspect that it is a cost in excess of $1000. So you could try to skate under that but... my advice is to steer clear of paypal entirely until they (inevitably) realize how dumb this new policy is.