Help! How to release PayPal holds?

Hi everybody,

I have an eBay store from which i have been doing quite well from for some years and up till recently also a SaleHoo store as well. All the boxes are ticked (almost) good feedback score, large customer base, great suppliers ect. So should be 'living the dream' so to speak. The only problem is PayPal holds me back from doing better, in their wisdom some time back they decided my account should have a rolling reserve set. So this means every incoming transaction they hold back 8.0 % no big deal, but over time this builds up to a large sum of money, this is drip feed back to the account over a 3 month period. So after eBay PayPal fees, purchasing limited stock my usable funds are piratically zero. Have written to them to remove this restriction, their reply is yes it is your money but because you sell high risk products (electronics mainly) we hold a percentage back in case of returns and refunds. But these also come out of the funds that are available to me. So to be able to move forward with my business i need to access all of my funds when i need to. So my dilemma here is do i open another PayPal account also linked to my eBay account (if that is possible) and have my payments go into that account and let this one rest for 3 months until the funds are all released, or is there another way around this situation, any input would be great.

Thanks

That's a decent sized burden to be dragging around behind you when you're trying to get cash flow built up. You can actually have 2 PayPal accounts, one business and one private, but in your case they would both be linked to ebay and therefore, both subject to the same hold, so that won't work.

Short of them lifting your limit, and to be honest I wouldn't waste my time with emails trying to get that done. I would be calling them and talking to someone in person. I've always had far more success, and quicker success, when dealing with them on the phone rather than through email.

Should that attempt still fail, you can look at adding alternative payment options. Offer EFT, now most people will still prefer to use PayPal because of the safety aspect, however you can try to coax them to EFT by offering a cheaper price and faster shipping for direct deposits on your items. Maybe a discount off a multiple item purchase or even a 5% discount off their next purchase and so on.

You'll more than likely need to get a little creative, but you have to give them a reason to use the EFT payment option over PayPal with an incentive or two, without making it look too obvious that you are trying too hard to keep them away from the PayPal option or they can then get suspicious and you can lose the sale altogether.

Your best solution, call PayPal!

Hi Mark,

tried contacting by phone but after 2.5 Hrs on hold gave up. So sent another email again

What you're experiencing is completely normal; if you had a merchant account through a bank rather than PP you'd be paying more than that, particularly while your chargeback ratios were being established.


Frank