We do a relatively large amount of volume through Paypal, roughly mid to high five figures per month. Have been using them for more than five years and have done about mid to high seven figures with them in that time.
Some of that is eBay sales transactions, some is merchant account transactions for online stores, and some is recurring billing for a subscription site.
We have had our account frozen several times with substantial amounts of money in it (like a whole month's worth) and had some stressful moments when we were trying to figure out how to get the cash out of there so we could pay our American Express bill on time.
Over the past 5 years we have had numerous designated representatives but all in all they were difficult to connect with and provided little value and I can't recall a single instance where they were able to go above and beyond to help us. (The same also goes for the eBay Powerseller representatives we have had over the years.)
We have had random instances where funds are flagged as being questionable and Paypal seems to be inconsistent. For example, just 2 days ago we sold 2 items on eBay totalling about $2500. Paypal/eBay said the transaction was approved and told us to go ahead and ship it, so we made preparations to do that. The next day they flagged the transaction and told us that unless we could provide proof it had already been shipped the funds were going to be pulled. Our options were to either refund immediately or just wait and see what happened, which is what we are doing. We just need to be careful because they could arbitrarily just take the funds in a state like this and we would be out both the cash and the merchandise.
Ultimately this sort of stuff has driven us to migrate our online stores over to Braintree.
If you are just doing consulting it shouldn't be too bad, just always remember that there is no amount of business you could do with them that would cause them to care about you as a customer.
Comments
We do a relatively large amount of volume through Paypal, roughly mid to high five figures per month. Have been using them for more than five years and have done about mid to high seven figures with them in that time.
Some of that is eBay sales transactions, some is merchant account transactions for online stores, and some is recurring billing for a subscription site.
We have had our account frozen several times with substantial amounts of money in it (like a whole month's worth) and had some stressful moments when we were trying to figure out how to get the cash out of there so we could pay our American Express bill on time.
Over the past 5 years we have had numerous designated representatives but all in all they were difficult to connect with and provided little value and I can't recall a single instance where they were able to go above and beyond to help us. (The same also goes for the eBay Powerseller representatives we have had over the years.)
We have had random instances where funds are flagged as being questionable and Paypal seems to be inconsistent. For example, just 2 days ago we sold 2 items on eBay totalling about $2500. Paypal/eBay said the transaction was approved and told us to go ahead and ship it, so we made preparations to do that. The next day they flagged the transaction and told us that unless we could provide proof it had already been shipped the funds were going to be pulled. Our options were to either refund immediately or just wait and see what happened, which is what we are doing. We just need to be careful because they could arbitrarily just take the funds in a state like this and we would be out both the cash and the merchandise.
Ultimately this sort of stuff has driven us to migrate our online stores over to Braintree.
If you are just doing consulting it shouldn't be too bad, just always remember that there is no amount of business you could do with them that would cause them to care about you as a customer.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.