PayPal Issues when Abroad

[TonyM]

DON'T whatever you do try and use PayPal while abroad. I'm on business in South Africa and in a spare moment agreed to buy on Oople a motor. I went through the PayPal routine received an email to say funds have been sent. Then I received a PM from my seller to say PayPal are investigating my account!!

After much chasing around PayPal and expensive phone calls I was informed that my location had been picked up outside the UK and so my account was put on hold. I now have to produce copies of bank statements and driving license which of course are at home to unfreeze my account. Meanwhile my seller has sent the motor and I can't send him any money.

The friendly face of PayPal.

BTW I have put an official complaint forward to the EU. Surely it is illegal to inform a third party that my account is being investigated when there is no fault from my side.

[Si Coe]

First I've heard of this, and its all a bit draconian. Which leads me to suspect they've had a lot of fraud going on we haven't heard about and have put a clamp down on it. Knee jerk reactions like that tend to end up screwing lots of perfectly innocent people too because they haven't been properly thought out.

[poopers]

Keep contacting them about it, they've been known to take months to reactivate accounts, if at all. I used to deal with them a lot, terrible company.

I think this is a good site for info on what to do when you encounter problems:

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

That said, locking accounts, especially when doing transactions abroad, is fairly common I think. Even Visa have required me to do security checks quite regularly.

[Col]

personally, I think this is a great thing. It's just like the banks looking for unusual transactions on your cards.
I for one would not be happy if someone in SA had stolen my details and was using them to buy stuff.
Hope you get it sorted, though!

[NeilD]

I agree with Col, it might be a bit of a pain but not compared to somebody fleecing you.

[TonyM]

I agree with the sentiment, but unlike Paypal Visa don't inform the seller that a purchasers account is under investigation literally within 5 minutes of attempting a purchase.

Cheers Tony

BTW my wife has used the old fashioned postal order to pay.

=NeilD;284266]I agree with Col, it might be a bit of a pain but not compared to somebody fleecing you.[/quote]