Lost Once Again in the eBay/PayPal Labyrinth

Well, once again the "automated" buying and payment systems ran me through the wringer. I won an auction for an item on eBay for $40, and I used $27 of eBay Bucks as part of the payment, with the rest to go from my PayPal account. But PayPal for some reason flagged the transaction as "risky," and instead of using my balance, they sent the seller an e-check connected to my bank account. This meant the remaining $13 would not get to the seller for 3-4 additional days. Somewhat understandably, the seller was not happy about that and started talking about cancelling the transaction and re-listing the item at auction. I talked to PayPal, who claimed to be unable to determine any details of why their software marked my payment of $13 as "risky." They agreed to cancel the payment entirely, so that I could go back to eBay and send the payment again. However - eBay then just continued to show my original payment as being processed, without any update of its status for the next 2 hours. I finally called eBay, and they said they could not change the status. They said the only options were to ask the seller to cancel the transaction and then either invoice me directly through PayPal or re-list the item with a Buy It Now price equal to the amount for which I had originally won the auction. I asked the seller to invoice me, and he agreed, a little reluctantly, I thought, and said he would send the invoice tomorrow. (I suspect he wanted to re-list the item at auction and possibly sell it for a higher price.)

So now I guess we'll see if I get an invoice... And then we'll see if PayPal allows me to pay it out of my balance..

Start putting funds into PayPal.

Never had these sort of issues myself, but if I did I would keep a little slush of funds in there just in case. Transfers in are easier than transfers out.

Start putting funds into PayPal.

Never had these sort of issues myself, but if I did I would keep a little slush of funds in there just in case. Transfers in are easier than transfers out.

I always keep some money in my PayPal account, and there was plenty in it to cover the payment I tried to make.

That's weird.

PayPal is a pain.
A necessary evil on eBay and many other online transactions.

I don't have much good to say about them. Crooked sheisters if you ask me.

The currency conversion alone ought to be criminal. They wanted about $17 over the posted rate the last time I considered buying a new Simpsons brush. Ended up not getting it I was so disgusted with PayPal about it.

I once saw a charge on my PayPal from an Eastern European country. I called them and said it wasn't me. They wanted me to contact the site the charge came from. I got upset and gave them the 3rd degree. They wanted me to wait several business days to get my money back too. Uh, nope. I got kicked up the chain of customer service representatives until an actual person who was authorized to communicate via free thought and go off script took care of everything in about 30 seconds.

The script reading irritates me almost as much as the automated systems all these places have on their phones.

I know a systems engineer @ paypal..I'll have to see if they were having any issues..