I have had to open a dispute with someone that I bought something from recently because the promised item has yet to arrive. And now I am getting many threatening emails because apparently Paypal has frozen the other person's account till the dispute is resolved.

Is this how things are normally with Paypal-that you are frozen out of your account? I gave a long, long time for something to arrive that should have taken just two days-I gave a month, so I do not feel guilty. I just want my refund.

It's odd that they completely froze their account, so it may be that they have a few disputes going on. There's really nothing that you can do, except request a refund from the seller before registering a complaint with Paypal, which should have been the first step. If the seller didn't issue the refund, you have no choice.

I'm not surprised they froze him. We had to request a refund and all off some guy who never delivered the goods. I think you gave him plenty of time with a month. Our buddy kept saying he had some small issue to resolve so we ended up giving him more time but the result was the same. I'm surprised he has the nerve to make threatening emails over it. It's his own fault not yours.

Yes, I approached the person and told them the situation. They were uninterested and told me that it was my problem if the post office lost my item, however they were unable to provide delivery confirmation despite me paying for it...

Anyhow-is that the norm-the freezing of the account? When I finally get set up for reselling I don't want to have my business jeopardised by this kind of action. Is it advisable to have a second account just in case?

PayPal will not freeze an account over one dispute. Believe me when I say we've gotten disputes from every type of person you can think of:

- People we forgot to deliver to.
- People we thought we delivered to and didn't.
- People who we delivered to and they wanted it free so filed a dispute

More recently, out of approx 200 orders we received a total of 6 consecutive disputes, and we were not frozen.

However, we generally try to work with PayPal and the customer in question to resolve the issue. The only time we refuse to work with the customer is if they are 1. Rude, or 2. Non-deserving of a refund.

With that said, I say it would depend on this person's volume, and then their dispute to happy customer ratio.

In any case, as I said, PayPal would not freeze the account for no reason, and you're probably not the only person who has filed a dispute. For PayPal to freeze the account I would assume there would be a ton or the seller has a history of this.

Paypal does have a few quirks in that area. I would say that suspension of an account over a single incident, assuming it was a low cost item, is very unlikely. I would think this company has had other incidents or similar complaints. It's hard to say though.

I'm sure almost everyone who has used Paypal as a seller, whether hosting or hard products, has had a few fraudulent orders (unknowingly charged to some ones account). The only thing that I've noticed is that they put a freeze on that specific dollar amount.

Paypal has quite a few measures in place to fight fraud, and sometimes these measures inflict hardship on some honest businesses. One of those measures locks your account (unable to receive payments) if you have unusually high transactions for a month. So that is something to consider. Also, you may only have one personal account and one business account.

Paypal is still number one, and even after hearing some of the horror stories, I still believe that they are one of the better providers.

Paypal can be tough, but the only way they would freeze an account is if the account is new or constantly gets chargebacks.

I completely agree that they are unfortunately the only way to go. Many are trying to break into the market and on the whole are not succeeding and so the competition isn't there to drive Paypal forward.

I didn't really think that they would freeze an account over one dispute, however, having never faced a dispute myself I only had what the provider was telling me, and his claim was that I alone had frozen their account. Yes, I felt somewhat guilty about that, and more over I was concerned because I don't want to be in that same situation myself when the time comes to set up business.

The reassurance that this is more likely a repeat offender is appreciated!

Having filed a chargeback against a small seller and having had one against me (and rarely selling anything back then) it doesn't freeze your account. It may freeze the funds in question, but not your whole account over one chargeback claim. Most likely if the seller was slow tih you he was slow with everyone before and after you and got multiple chargebacks in one time frame looking like he was taking the cash and running.

I have hopes that some of these other products might make a small break in paypal's monopoly, as I really don't like how they treat chargebacks sometimes.

better one who's reliable then having several noobs trying to play bank... We're talking about money, these are serious people working on it.

Yes I agree with netbb that right now it is a case of better the devil you know. We have seen the likes of eGold, and nothing so far has convinced me that RME is a good thing. I just hope that ultimately someone else figures it out. Google Checkout seems ok, but right now is a little too limited compared to the features paypal offers.