Paypal warning! - do not use paypal for large transactions you will get ripped off!!!

News & General Discussion
1

…AND you will lose your Paypal account

I caved and purchase the Unity Pro 4 pre-order, I went through the store and then used Paypal (I always use Paypal for buying things online) and the transaction appeared to complete, got my license number all was good… or so I thought. about an hour later I get an email from Paypal

“Your account has been limited until we hear from you.”

Oh right, what ever I think, until I get a second email

“36P322349G9037511 Payment Reversed” WTF this isn’t right. I check my bank and the funds have been earmarked to go out, Checked the email it is the Unity transaction that has been reversed, yet my money is ear marked to go out of my bank (I can’t use that money, in the UK money gets earmarked to leave the account its like its gone, but it still shows a balance, but the available balance shows as if the moneys gone).

So I call Paypal, not only have they blacklisted my bank account and “I can never use that account on their systems again” but my money has been earmarked to leave my account (meaning it will vanish in a few days, bank can’t do anything until it’s gone) and my Paypal account is limited so I cannot send money to anyone, or withdraw the money.

I have called Citizens Advice Bureau and they have written me up a legal notice to send to Paypal (I will go and collect it tomorrow) but apparently a lot of people have been having problems and Paypal has been illegally withholding money (Illegal in the UK anyway). So far people have gotten there money back after 6 months IF THEIR LUCKY.

I am NOT pleased, that was money I could bearly afford to pay out, but I like Unity so much I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. I’d feel the dent in my bank account for a month and have to pay off the overdraft but meh, it’s a one off purchase for (i hope) 2 years. Now I have no money and no Unity >:(

So if your thinking of purchasing a Unity license, or infact anything else I strongly advice you DO NOT use Paypal

I am not some Paypal hater (of which I have just found out there are many) I always found Paypal to be useful, and saved my putting in my card details all the time. I’ve only once had someone get into my account and it was resolved within days and the money returned, this was a year ago. But now after this and after finding out what they’ve done to other people I’ll never be using them again >:(

I don’t even know what to do in regards to Unity now, I’m going to be stuck with the free version :rage:

1 Like
Question about Paypal warning
2

OMG! I hope you’ll be able to withdraw all ur balance soon.

3

I don’t know how much power this “citizens advice bureau” has, but if that happened to me in the US I would be getting myself a lawyer. As this is happening to many people I would also consider a class action lawsuit.

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I’ve been using PayPal for years without major problems, though there was a spate of reversals for my players a year ago or so. On that occasion it was the bank that saw the money going to PayPal and automatically assumed it was bad “OMG - paypal - panic!!”. In the case of my players they saw the money going “out”, and couldn’t understand why PayPal had listed it as “reversed”, despite them being in full communication with their bank and PayPal. Eventually what happened was that the money reappeared in their bank account and it was reversed, yet they were stuck without my game… so both buyer and seller (me) were left without any way to do business.

Hopefully in your case it’s just a mistake and it will eventually be resolved. As I say, I believe PayPal is fine as long as you only deal with PayPal, but since your bank was involved that’s always where things seem to go downhill.

I bought Unity Pro + Android Pro + iOS Pro all on PayPal, but I did so with funds that were already in my PayPal account, not with them having to be taken from a card or bank account first. Though I have to say this is the first time I’ve seen any problem with the money going via a bank account (presumably by direct debit) - my experience was limited to problems where the money is passed to PayPal via a credit card.

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It’s overall not advised to use paypal for large sums unless you’re a business. It’s not rare to hear paypal accounts getting blocked/limited after sending/receiving large amounts of money. Their support is weird too. Sometimes they will help but other times they will lock you out of the system.

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If you earn into your paypal more than X then paypal think you’re being fishy earning money dodgily without paying tax and other stuff. I understand why they limit your account and you can remove these limits if you supply paypal with proof of yourself, you need to send them bank notices, national insurance, passport images ect. I know because ive had a similar problem and it ended in paypal sending me solicter slips threatening to send me to court because of a problem on there side :slight_smile: They’re cunts if im honest, but there isn’t many like them we can use so we have too.

Owh did I mention, whatever money is in your account once they lock it THEY get to keep, they just bottle that money up and get interest on your earnings, great huh?

7

Thanks for the warning. But are you saying you tried to overdraft your account? (To me this means you would not have enough to cover the initial transaction)… I’m not sure I understand.

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Yeh we don’t really have that over here, besides even If we did I now don’t have the money to initiate a law suit anyway.

I am extreamly annoyed, no Unity and no money, and to top it off no Paypal account which means no Ebay. All my subscriptions go through Paypal, so those will all bounce. I have my web host, dedi servers and the lot that use Paypal for subscriptions. I have to go through them all now and
add my debit card manually and hope I don’t miss any.

My bank lets me overdraft to -£2000 and had an available balance of £1571.89 so yes, there was more than enough to clear it.

I have called Paypal they are addiment that the fault is mine, I am now locked out of my Paypal account (well I can still log in but can’t do anything, except funnily enough “receive money” isn’t blocked, however “sending money” is. My bank MAY be able to help once the money has gone and they may be able to reverse it themselves but they are not sure until the money has left.

Citizens Advice Bureau has quite a bit of power here, they can write letters, phone people, give advice, call people on your behalf, legal advice and offer free lawyers. The woman I spoke to said because Paypal is an American company it will be a lot harder to take action. She also said she has had 9 calls about Paypal just today from others with similar problems, she said if they were a UK based company they’d have had all there assets seized and have been closed down years ago for fraudulent withholding of money.

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Did you talk to your bank? Did they tell you anything about the state of your money? You got to watch out for banks, they will try to fine you for all kinds of things. I had a secondary checking account with a balance of a few hundred dollars, I went to join the US Navy and because I didn’t do anything with the account I was charged fees, like inactivity fees, I ended up with a negative balance which I refused to pay, I talked to a legal adviser in the navy and he resolved the issue but I ended up with a zero balance. Moral is, banks are sneaky, don’t trust them. (massive run on sentence, don’t care)

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Thankfully over here there are very VERY stringent laws governing banks and businesses, they must inform you IN WRITING if and when they are going to take any fees or money, I pay £10 a month for something called ‘control’ which prevents the bank from taking any fees or charges from bounced direct debits, overdraft charges or any other charges (we don’t have inactivity charges here)

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Just one question though what happens on the Unity side of things? they already sent me a key and I activated it right away (the whole process took less than a minute, i was very impressed!). I closed Unity when I was informed of the reverse and haven’t used it since. does it automatically revert to the free version?

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I heard of paypal snafus like this before where a person gets the product and paypal reverses the transaction, the company usually demands a return of the product or they have to hash it out with paypal. You should contact a unity customer support representative. Better to be on the same side.

13

Paypal has a maximum backup limit that you can set and the highest it goes is $1,000 (at least for me). $1,500 would break that limit unless you had set the limit higher somehow. I’ve tried buying things and went past the limit by a little but it simply stopped that purchase and nothing bad really happened. Maybe you’re in a different situation though because of the higher money amount? I hope you get this sorted out.

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I’ve had some issues with Paypal too. Someone tried to pay me once and they locked it up for no reason for like 2 weeks. The payment was being ‘investigated’. When you email them and say WTF, then they just say, as we said sir, it’s being investigated. WTF is there to investigate, someone is paying me for MY services with THEIR money.

Also by the time I receive the money in my account from Paypal, and everyones had their cut, I lose like 8%, and it takes 7 whole working days to appear!! What a rip off!

15

Kool yeh I’ll wait for them 2 email me as the email i got the receipt from is a noreply email . I just assumed it’d automatically revert Unity to the free edition seeing as it’s a license and Unity checks online when you fire her up (or at least I assume that’s what happens)

16

I got that limit lifted, I sent Paypal all the documents, passport scans and stuff, everythings 100% cocha and above board, This is why I’m double pissed off.

17

I would assume you can use Unity without any internet access. Maybe Unity does check when there is internet access, though.

18

I’m astonished about the situation… I pass ~2-3000 Euros every month through my Paypal account and never had any problems. Did they motivate their actions? Did they tell you WHAT you have actually done to get your account seized?

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Unity should give this man a free license. At least for 3.5

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Its because he hasn’t validated his personal information and proved hes earning through paypal, Its a form of fraud (From paypals view). you might not actually be earning through paypal.