I am done for

[fcgamer]

I have about an hour and a half before I go back to work, but I came home tonight to find a very disturbing and disheartening email in my inbox.  It was from paypal, and it had said the following information:

"We have recently reviewed your PayPal account activity, and  determined
that you are in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy regarding your
sales / offers of bootleg video game cards.

As a result, your account has been permanently limited and this cannot be
appealed."

No warnings, no nothing.  I looked through the past several transactions and saw that one or two of the people had said "bootleg xx cart" in the notes section, so that is my only guess as to what happened.  Here are just some of the thoughts and concerns going on in my head, and I hope someone would be able to help put some of these at ease:

#1:  They say I cannot edit or close my account, yet I also cannot send, withdraw, or receive money from the account (basically I can do nothing at all).  This is a bit disturbing to me...I mean, I don't want Paypal to have my information until eternity, especially when I am not even using their service. 

#2:  In a later part of the email, it had mentioned that I could be held responsible for any fees paypal received, based on my infractions.  Will I end up getting sued or something, or be responsible for paying loads of money from (for example a big gaming company) just because I sold a crappy $12 Famiclone cart?

#3:  Yesterday (by chance) I happened to withdraw most of my paypal balance into my bank account (it takes 3 - 5 days for me to receive it).  Will paypal somehow be able to freeze / reverse this transaction, so that I get screwed out of that money somehow, or should it process like normal?


Less serious concerns / thoughts:

#4:  Anyone else get jacked like this before?  Any recommended alternatives to paypal, which other people actually use / accept?

#5:  Lack of paypal = I cannot sell my goods to people.  This creates two additional situations:

(A):  I can't raise additional funds to further my collection (okay this is not terribly important in the grand scheme of things), but more important than that, I can't receive payments from selling my stock.  So I guess unless I manage to find some folks to trade with, I will be sitting on around 200 or so different carts for keeps 

(B):  Since I can't use paypal, I can't purchase items online.  So with only 280 or so licensed Famicom games to go (and Tailor Made and Safety Rally out of the way), I came so close to reaching that goal of a complete set but probably won't be able to realize the goal, unless I just take a trip to Japan.

(C):  Should (when) I do decide that I want to sell my collection (i.e. ten years from now, when I get married and have kids, or whatever), how would I even be able to sell it?  No paypal, no means to receive money, no way to sell.


This past month had been hard on my budget (purchasing those two rare Famicom carts), and maybe I have just gotten spoiled by the idea of being able to raise $500 or $700 extra a month by selling games here and there, to make these crazy purchases.  So perhaps it was just God's decision to help me get refocused on life, and what not.  However, I certainly do worry (maybe I am just paranoid) about the legality aspect, and also feel saddened how it also seems to spell the end of realizing one of my goals. 

Just wanted to post this here, share with you guys, to hear suggestions, advice, and just to rant.  Thanks for reading.

[L___E___T]

 

I would suggest first thing to do is to thoroughly dissect the acceptable use policy and see what part they might be referring to - see what you can do with regard to disputing this.

Second is to withdraw / move all money from your account asap so they can't try and claw it back, it's your money - they're not entitled to keep it.  If they want to close the account they need to give you that.

Another reason not to trust PayPal these days sadly.  Don't worry about selling - there are alternatives.

Try Googling people with similar issues and see what you can find out.  You may also wish to seek legal advice.  It can be expensive but is money well spent.

Lastly - regarding fees incurred, they have to prove you broke infractions.  A comment in the not section is hardly concrete, someone could simply be mistaken these weren't official carts.

[80sFREAK]

paypal reversing withdrawals on claims for sure. For this situation you have to wait 3-5 days. You still can trade. Ummm... whatelse?

But hey, you violated their rules for sure  

[fcgamer]

paypal reversing withdrawals on claims for sure. For this situation you have to wait 3-5 days. You still can trade. Ummm... whatelse?

But hey, you violated their rules for sure  

Well there was never a claim opened, so I don't know if they will do some crazy reversal or not. 

The whole situation makes me feel sick, after my mom goes home from visiting me (this weekend) I will then try to decide where I will go from here.

[80sFREAK]

paypal is a game. By selling pirates and using paypal, game becomes "tricky game".

[fcgamer]

paypal is a game. By selling pirates and using paypal, game becomes "tricky game".

Yup, agreed.  I have lost faith in the whole thing, tbh.  Just like what happened with my ebay account at one point, where I had been banned from selling videogames due to selling bootlegs (yet the so-called bootlegs were actually original Sachen games). 

In grand scheme of things, this year I wanted to get my focus back on some other hobbies, and as we all know, to sell online takes a lot of time and energy  I had just wished I could have finished my collecting goals before this whole ordeal.

[BonBon]

I'm really sorry to hear about this fcgamer. I'm speechless. I feel like ebay and PayPal can be so petty over dumb things.

[fcgamer]

Update.

I found a work-around solution (temporary solution) for the time being, so I can receive money (and sell to you guys) via a relative's account.  This doesn't help for me making online payments (obviously I'm not going to pay using a relative's account), but I will soon have this problem nipped in the bud, I think / hope.


People may have noticed that I did not answer PMs for a few days regarding sale items, well it was because of trying to find a solution...no use making deals, when I can't receive payments.  But now,  let the sales continue!

[senseiman]

Man, that totally sucks!  Glad you found a solution but still, its crazy the way they can cut you off with no right of appeal.

[zmaster18]

Man, I would be devastated if this happened to me as well. I require PayPal and eBay for basically most of my income, so I would basically be homeless if I couldn't sell online. I really hope all goes well for you soon. 

[fcgamer]

Well the situation is tricky, and will require some life adjustments I think.

Here in Taiwan, recently they made a rule (well last year) where paypal signed an exclusive agreement with one of the Taiwanese banks, so that if you wanted to withdraw money directly from your account, you needed to sign up for a bank account with the one specific Taiwanese bank.  That move sucked hard, as that bank was not in my town, so I would always have to go three towns over to take care of business, though since atm fees are little here, if it were just withdrawing money, I just went to an atm, no problem.

Since I am a foreigner, and I am stuck having to use one specific bank to withdraw with paypal (and visa numbers and stuff like that are all tied to the account), obviously I can't just open a new account and withdraw.  So whatever monies I do earn from here on out, I will only be able to access online.  So that of course requires more budgeting, since I will now need to depend on my two other jobs fully to pay for my daily expenditures.

The whole thing is just so aggravating to me, since I am not a big seller at all.  I see guys on ebay selling bootlegs left and right, and I got banned for selling Sachen games on ebay (yet others don't).  Then I get banned from paypal as well, yet hundreds of thousands of larger sellers sell that stuff time and time again, use gift payments for receiving merchandise payments, etc.  The whole situation makes me feel really angry, but at the same time, it has also started to make me reevaluate my life a bit, so I guess that is the silverlining in the whole situation.

[nerdynebraskan]

Sorry to hear of your troubles, Dave.

It's terrible that we've become so dependent on one capricious corporation for our online buying and selling. But I've only barely heard of most of the alternatives. PayPal is just so convenient because it's everywhere.

I suppose there's always going to be simple trading between collectors, but that also limits our options.

[NintendoKing]

Whoa, I've never heard of such a thing, I wonder why someone would type "bootleg" in the description.

[Retrospectives]

Really sorry to hear that. In the mainland there are three banks i think that are associated with PayPal but the Americans isn't really fancy the Chinese sellers in that regard that PayPal and Ebay almost instantly will block your account once you makes a transaction and ask you about it. Then you need to get verified and since people simply dosen't register their home addresses in the same way as in other parts of the world it is not sure that a person can provide for example a utility bill or such, because many simply just pay their landlords by cash.

Using PayPal anywhere else has never been a problem (if we speak in the region). I'm a Japanese national and i do not dare to use my own account when I am abroad because last time i did it (was sent to Korea to work for a couple of months), then they simply stated that since i was "living" in Korea i had to get a Korean PayPal account.

They have become really inconvinient to use for the "small man" while people who bought a million feedbacks or has the cash to sell in big volumes can basically do anything and get away with it.

Nowadays you cannot even use Skrill to recieve payments on Ebay. But I guess this is where it goes when a big multinational company gets monopoly on a market.

Anyway, good luck and hope you will find a solution. I am in the process of getting "verified" myself to another credit card because i won't use my personal PP account anywhere outside of Japan these days.