Consumer complaint received 2020-12-23
Product: Debt collection — Other debt
Issue: Attempts to collect debt not owed — Debt was paid
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc (CA)

Good day, during the XXXX  weekend, the XXXX  that me, my wife, and XXXX children ( XXXX, XXXX, and XXXX months old ) worked very hard to figure out how to make a large impact with our XXXX. We figured out a way to make a lot of sales during the week, and were excited about our new found success. During this time, PayPal decided to put a lock on my wifes PayPal account. The reason was that there was an account that I owed money on. I had used PayPal for a previous XXXX, and I owed them as the account went into the negative somehow. I was wrong for not handling the account properly at the time. I was in a bad spot, and my PayPal account had been an added debt on my end and I never heard from them, so the debt definitely slipped out my mind. So when PayPal saw that money was coming in at a faster pace, they held {$7100.00} of our money since XX/XX/XXXX. They felt that theyd found information that linked my account to my wifes account. They froze her funds, that had nothing to do with my old account, and demanded that I pay my debt, before they allow her to use the funds that we had earned during that weekend. We were using that money to finally spread some cheer to our family during a very difficult covid period where we are in California, away from family. They required payment, and we made the payment to the collection agency that they sold my account to. And then this is where the real problems begin. On XX/XX/XXXX, I make my payment to XXXX XXXX. I pay the debt in full, hoping that PayPal will receive information confirming the debt was paid. They will not remove the block on the account. They are using tactics that are completely unfair to hold funds that my family has earned. We emailed the paid in full letter to PayPal because they have said repeatedly that they have not gotten any confirmation from XXXX XXXX. Ive called PayPal many times. Each time, they bounce me around from department to department. They tell me that limitations is the only department that can help me. Then limitations department say that the collections department is the only one that can help me. Each department comes with a hold time of 90 minutes per department, per call, and nobody will help me. I have sent the paid in full form to XXXX and have been confirmed 5 times that it was received by various methods. I have also faxed, and uploaded this form to their systems. They confirm receipt but still do nothing to unlock our account. They have a reputation for having done this to many accounts Ive found. I have had to call and sit on hold so many days and have received little to no assistance. On Monday  XX/XX/XXXX, I spoke with a supervisor in the limitations department after the initial operator said they could do nothing to help me. The supervisor received my letter of payment and told me she submitted it to be verified and that in 10 hours, my issue would finally be resolved. And it wasnt. They wont refer to any notes on the account, or previous representatives to get to the bottom of it. Instead they continue to hold our funds hostage, even though the debt has been paid for almost a month. We had a supervisor from collections on XX/XX/XXXX, hang up on me because Id called him Bro. I admit that it should not have been the word choice, but I didnt mean it disrespectfully at all. I was attempting to show that I was human, and trying to have him level with me. He did not like that and XXXX, operator XXXX hung up. And then when he called my wife XXXX back, he attempted to help again by opening a case on the verification process for the form we sent in. When she asked him to speak with a different supervisor as he would not fulfill our request to have the paid debt removed ( he works in the collections department ) he hung up again, citing that we had received 3 strikes. Requesting to speak to someone else is a strike in their culture is a strike. Standing up for yourself when a supervisor at a place you do business with, is a strike against you. This supervisor literally told me that he doesnt have to help me and that by staying on the phone as long as he had was not something he had to do. He may have been having a bad day, and I understand that we were on the phone for a long time, but at that point, I was on the call for 3 hours and 58 minutes. The culture of this company is poor, and we have never been so humiliated in our lives. We wanted nothing more than to have the account reopened as we handled the issue that I created by not having paid my account up. Now they are also saying we have to provide new information on our social, which is fine, other than the service doesnt interrupt over this. We cant even do anything because theyre holding ALL of our funds. As a business, we have been unable to access our funds since XX/XX/XXXX, and are desperate to have the funds released as we paid our debt. I called XXXX XXXX with PayPal XXXX on the line and their supervisor XXXX said that to his knowledge, once a company sells a collection account to them, they no longer have any access or claim to it. Instead, PayPal is using bullying tactics to do all of everything else they want, which prevents them from being accountable. Its 2021, and theyre claiming that they cant even see the payment was cleared. Which shouldnt take two companies 21+ days to confirm. Please help us!