I am curious to what you sell and what the average sale price is? Also, what is your daily volume? From what I have seen the people who experience the most issues are the ones who do high volumes daily, ones that sell virtual products, and individuals who have lower credit scores (I know this because I have read some of the forums). The other thing I have found is that people who never have problems or very limited problems get faster/better customer service. The people that have multiple issues or recurring issues get thrown into this chain of unanswered emails, etc... PayPal also does not seem to treat people who sell virtual goods the same as they treat people who sell physical ones. Chargebacks are all but impossible to reverse on a virtual good with PayPal. Additionally, if you are doing large volumes, PayPal will ask for additional documentation to support your business, but at the same time lock your funds/account until they receive this documentation. That's fine if they asked up front, but the problem stems when they do it randomly while your site is active and essentially cut off your business.

While there are several thousand success stories like yours, there are several thousand fail stories like this guys. I agree that PayPal wouldn't be around if their failures were greater than their successes. The issue is that when they fail they tend to fail in a big way which affects businesses and individuals greatly. If you read the stories, they all have the same underlying theme. PayPal selects account for review (random process no problems on the account before hand), requests additional documentation, freezes funds/ability to receive funds while conducting this review, wait several days, and finally PayPal responds back sorry we find you are a high fraud rate (or other similar reasoning), account closed, wait 180 days (6 months) to receive any money in your account. During this period it appears PayPal does not bother to respond to you via email or phone and when they do you get a mixed answer.

If this ever happened to me I would be a little pissed as well. I have had a PayPal account for over 8 years myself and have never had a problem. I send and receive money just fine all the time. I did have a customer several years ago that this happened to though. While we were waiting on PayPal to respond, I did some digging and that is when I started seeing the same story over and over again.

My customer sold computer equipment, he was doing large volumes of over $2000 or $3000 a day. Never had a complaint, chargeback, reversal, etc... Receives an email one night at around 3am EST stating that the volume on his account had triggered a fraud alert in PayPal fraud division. They immediately froze all funds in his account (luckily it was only like $5000, as he always made a point to transfer funds out each day or two) and stopped his ability to send/receive. The requested all kinds of additional documentation (shipping files, incorporation paperwork, tax returns). He faxed it all over within 1 day of receiving the notice. They responded that they would get back to him within 5 business days. In the meantime he still could not send/receive or withdraw funds. At the end of day 3 he received an email from them that stated their fraud department had determined his risk was too high and that his account would be closed. His money would be transferred in 180 days to his bank account on record. He tried calling, got a very nice guy on the phone who tried to help him, but still to no avail. It was like once it was stuck in "fraud review" it was destined to be closed. Again, no chargeback, reversal, refund, etc... started this, simply a random fraud review. Long story short he involved his attorney, attorney wrote a little letter to PayPal, sent certified mail, and within 3 days of them signing the letter, his money miraculously appeared in his bank account.

Anyway, sorry for my rambling. I agree with you that PayPal provides a wonderful service, and anytime I have ever had a problem it was resolved quickly and efficiently. But I have seen the other side of the coin as well and it appears that there is one department within PayPal (fraud/complaince) that appears to run afoul of the rest of the company and thus generate a large number of complaints.