PPC Submitter : Wednesday, July 27, 2011, 22:41
PayPal Permanently Limited My Account
Paypal sent me an email saying my account was limited because it was linked to another acct that had violated paypal’s acceptable use policy and customer’s who violate paypal’s acceptable use policy are permanently limited and therefore my acct was permanently limited…(which does not follow logically)
Below is the letter I received-
“We are hereby notifying you that, after a recent review of your account
activity, it has been determined that you are linked to other PayPal
accounts that have violated PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy.Customers who are permanently limited for violating the Acceptable Use
Policy are barred from future use of PayPal and its services and are not
permitted to open new or additional PayPal accounts.Therefore, your account has been permanently limited.”
The account that my account was linked to was my daughter’s account, and she lives at home. Her account was permanently restricted on ebay after trying to sell the same guitar 3 times in a row. The first time her acct was restricted for 7 days for a vero violation and she was told to take a selling tutorial which she did. She learned not to say the word ‘replica’ in her ad. Then her acct was reinstated and she tried again after revamping her ad, and immediately her acct was restricted for 30 days for ‘limited selling history and past violations;’ so she phoned ebay and asked how to avoid ever being restricted again and she asked is the problem because she was trying to sell a guitar and they said it had nothingto do with the category so after the 30 days she tried selling the SAME guitar and was permanently restricted and soon after her paypal accout was permanently limited and soon after my paypal acct was permamently limited as i indicated above. For some reason they left my ebay acct open…perhaps an oversight on their part.
Anyways i contacted paypal and explained to them the above, they told me to fax the limitation dept with the above info, which i did, and then today i received an email from paypal saying that the appeal was denied-
“We regret to inform you that we cannot overturn the limitation on your
account. It has been determined that you are linked to other PayPal
accounts that have violated PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy. This is a
violation of the PayPal User Agreement and you will not be able to use
PayPal for any future transactions”.
Now I feel really violated. I have never sold anything, and only used my paypal acct a handful of times since 2006 to purchase some items on ebay. The thing that bothers me the most is that they wil not close my paypal account…they will keep my information and i heard they can do credit checks on me whenever they want. i feel sick to my stomach. in all my life i have never had an experience like this. i feel discriminated against..being restricted for being related to someone else who was restricted –how scary is that. what next? my neighbors? my cousins?
Anyways, i have not read anything in the paypal policy that says that if you are related to someone who is limited you will be limited too. i even called paypal after they limited my daughter’s account to assure that my account would not be affected given the way they just closed her acct so abruptly with an email and no chance of appeal etc and they assured me that i was a separate entity and had no reason to worry. Then after i verified my account by adding a bank acct on top of my visa, they limited me permanently…i called them back to tell them how awful that experience was, being assured and then limited permanently, and their response was “ im sorry that you were misinformed“.
So i called visa and my bank and told them my story and they are going to change my account information. Now i am wondering if i can call equifax and ask them if they can block paypal from ever trying to check into my account information ever again and am wondering if anyone has ever successfully appealed a permanently limited account, or successfully closed their account after it was imited by paypal or sucessfully blocked paypal from their life?
Thanks for reading, Anna
Submitted By:: anna d
Location: canada
Similar ComplaintsAccount permanently limitedI was selling some used computer parts on ebay, total items sold was 4. After receiving the payments which totaled $780, I tried to withdraw the money to my bank account. However, PayPal decided it was...
“THIS ACCOUNT HAS BEEN PERMANENTLY LOCKED”Message upon log in: “This account has been permanently locked with a £0.00 GBP balance. All information associated with this account has been blocked from the PayPal system and cannot be registered with another account.”...
Hello Anna, I am sorry to hear about your troubles. Unfortunately, your experience is not unique. Family members are often linked to each others accounts when similar information between them is being provided to each individuals PayPal account.
Living in the same household with someone who has had their account suspended or limited is not a “direct” violation of PayPal’s user agreement. However, section 9 of the PayPal user agreement broadly states that account holders “will not control an account that is linked to another account that has engaged in any restricted activities”. PayPal determined that your daughters account was a risk for one reason or another, and their automated system flagged your account because of some similar information which you shared with this “risky” account.
PayPal makes nearly all of their decisions regarding account statuses based on their automated system. Since they have millions of other accounts to deal with that have not been flagged for some “possible” violation, the easy way out for them is to simply limit your account and earn interest on the money for 180 days. PayPal claims that this is done to protect themselves from “reversals, chargebacks, claims, fees, fines, penalties and other liability”. The interesting part about this claim is the fact that once your account has been deemed a risk, you are no longer a customer to PayPal, just a problem. PayPal does not make it easy to resolve any issues with a flagged account. They purposely frustrate and confuse you in an attempt to make you “go away”. After all, its much easier for them to earn interest on your money for 180 days than it is for them to actually investigate your claim.
As far as blocking PayPal from making “inquiries” to your credit reports, this can be done by contacting each of the 3 credit bureaus and requesting a “password” be required for all inquiries. Of course, you will likely be charged for this. The credit bureaus kinda remind me of PayPal, greedy sap-sucking institutions who couldn’t possible care less about the consumer.