Consumer complaint received 2023-12-08
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: VA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Other banking product or service
Issue: Closing an account
Sub-issue: Funds not received from closed account

Complaint:
Hi. My name is XXXX XXXX. So basically PayPal has been holding my funds, {$2600.00} to be exact even before my account was permanently limited which is the problem that I'm having now and also another concern that has been brought to my attention that I will bring up towards the end of this complaint. PayPal claimed after I changed my number on my profile it triggered some sort of an " internal security '' block within their system. I bring this up because for over a month I tried transferring my funds to my original bank to avail. Fast forward a few weeks and they randomly out of the blue, temporarily limited my account with XXXX warning, nothing. I submitted all the proper documents to verify my identity as they requested and it got " restored. '' Transferring the rest of my funds from my PayPal balance still did not work. After that, the very next day I log in to find out that they had permanently limited my account and said they will release my funds in 180 days with no warning, no further notice and the explanation that they gave me when someone from the executive branch reached out was absolutely fabricated or straight up lies in some aspects. I actually filed a complaint a couple weeks before this happened with the XXXX  prior to having my account permanently limited because of fund transferring issues that I had mentioned earlier and someone from the executive office of PayPal got back to me after a couple of weeks later thru the messaging portal on PayPal. 

The communication was extremely inconsistent, infrequent, promised to give me a call. I gave him a time, date which he asked me to do and I received no call. He also claimed this happened, the " internal security block '' before the permanent limitation because he was saying I was using a proxy browser but that's completely untrue as the browser I use actually doesn't have that. It's something you to manually set up within the browser to activate that feature so that was completely inaccurate. I don't know if there's a que or when I'll receive a response but I hope I do hear back soon because I've been dealing with this whole ordeal for over a month now and I've really been stressing out because of this and nobody at PayPal, even people in the higher ups want to help me. I believe that they policy they have in place ( the user agreement ) is not as black and white, at least for my situation as it's made out to be. I truly believe that their goal was to freeze my money to gain interest thru my funds by holding it for an unknown period of time and invent false reasons to " internally block '' my account thru their system, then hit me with the final flow by permanently limiting my account. Another reason they claimed my account was permanently limited was due to their claim of " excessive disputes '' filed, but what makes no sense to me is that they approved them. How are they going to approve them and try to use it against me later? Furthermore none of these disputes were illegitimate. The amount of disputes do not negate the legitimacy. They told me they gave me a warning but continued with the activity. False. They did give me a warning, I'm an honest person I'll give them that so I ended up actually closing out a current claim I had and even let the merchant I was disputing with take my money to make sure my account was in good standing. The thing that paypal does is leave out context and detail. Look at the end of the day, my money should've been out a long time ago, before my account had any " problems '' to begin with. 

I guess the other major concern that I really do want to prevent here is after doing my own research and finding MANY MANY cases like mine, after waiting the supposed " 180 '' days PayPal tells you to wait to have your funds released, many people 's funds were either never released or had their funds completely stolen from them and left them at XXXX. Why I'm concerned is because I actually couldn't find a single example online of someone actually being able to retrieve the rest of their PayPal funds after the 180 days. So even if I accepted this completely despicable disgusting action by PayPal, I don't actually believe that they'll even release the rest of my funds to me after the 180 days have passed since there are no prior examples of it online and trust me there are hundreds of forums of people discussing about how their account and funds frozen. These aren't isolated incidents. A class action lawsuit was filed against them before as well. So they have a clear track record of practicing shady consumer business practices. I already filed a complaint with the XXXX and nothing was done to help my situation. Someone from the executive office contacted me which was completely useless since they're not on my side and have explicitly told me their decision on my account is final. I really need someone outside of paypal to step in. I also can't afford to afford an attorney. My final option if a settlement can't be reached here is to file a smalls claim but I really want this resolved before it gets to that point where it won't cost me more money than it has because the funds on hold isn't just some little money. It's XXXX cents. That's a lot of money to hang over someone's head for a lot of alleged things that they only alleged to me. They have yet to provide me any actual proof that I've done any of the things they claim nor given me the option to appeal. I really need help on this to come to a resolution and really the only resolution is for me to be able to have access to my funds and transfer them to my bank so I can wipe my hands and be done with this thieving, immoral, despicable company.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief