Consumer complaint received 2026-05-20 00:00:00
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam — 
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: TX

Complaint narrative:
On XX/XX/XXXX, following completion of contracted services and submission of an invoice for the completed services and materials purchased and used, my customer initiated a payment to me using XXXX. The funds for this transaction were taken from my customer 's account but instead of being placed in my account, XXXX elected to place a hold on the funds. They have taken the fee for the transaction but not completed the transaction as they were paid to do. When contacted, XXXX customer service makes outrageous claims like this being a common industry practice that is to protect me in case of charge backs for failing to deliver goods as promised. I do not sell goods. I do not take payment for services in advance of completing the work. Customers only pay me upon completion of the contracted work and after it has met their approval for quality of workmanship. The excuse that some of the XXXX theifs are claiming for this fraud does not in any way apply to me or my business. Furthermore, when asked for specific reasoning for why this transaction or my account were flagged for their protection by fraud service, they will not provide that information for any reason whatsoever. They will send an incomplete generic list of possible reasons for this action being taken. Again, the reasons that they provide do not apply at all to my business or personal account. When asked to be transferred to a supervisor, their responses in order of likelihood are a ) to completely ignore the request and fail to acknowledge it in any way b ) to hang up or discontinue the chat forcing you to start over again with the next rep c ) to lie to you and claim that there are not any supervisors that they can transfer your call/chat to d ) to lie to you and claim that your issue has been escalated and you will receive a call back within some timeframe, despite there never once being any type of outgoing call from XXXX for any reason, e ) to make any number of other false claims purely to attempt to appease you without any intention of following through with any of it. These reps are highly trained to misinform, deceive, and XXXX customers exclusively, and never are they to ever address customer concerns or facilitate complaints or escalations or resolutions. Purely deception and games. All while committing fraud by charging for services that they then do not perform. Ironically, they are committing the exact sort of malicious behavior that they are claiming to be providing protection against when they defraud their customers. I want the immediate release of the funds stolen by venmo. I want a refund for the finance fee that was taken by cenmo despite their refusal to perform the service that fee paid for. I want explicit and detailed explanations in writing that describe exactly why my transaction or account was flagged. And claiming that I have had too many charge backs or disputes does not fly, because to date there have been zero disputed charges or charge backs or complaints of any kind in the entire history of my personal and business account. Furthermore, the impact thay the loss of these funds has had on my ability to do business and to pay my helper has cost me XXXX of dollars and will likely cost me much more the longer I am unable to pay my bills. The civil lawsuit that I am filing will seek damages in addition to the funds that have been stolen to date. I will seek legal action through the state AG office for fraud. I am complaining to the XXXX. And I will also seek to have XXXX removed from the XXXX XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX XXXX because of their clear and ongoing pattern of using their platform to commit fraud and theft. I will settle right now and halt all of these actions for the sum of {$250000.00} US payable by cashiers check only and hand delivered by courier within the next 24 hours. Otherwise I will move forward with all of these actions as wrll as any others that I can think of to negatively impact the bottom line of this large and fraudulent scam organization.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation