PayPal normally processes credit card transactions in two steps. First, a “temporary hold” is placed on the amount that has been debited via the Paypal debit card. That puts a hold on the money, which is deducted from your account balance. A few hours or a few days later, the transaction is finalized, the temporary hold is removed, and the purchase is complete, with the held money being transferred out of the account.
Well, I made a $65 purchase on target.com the other night. As expected, a hold was placed on $65, and it was deducted from my account balance, which left me with $2.70 (I’m going real far with that, heh). But when I checked my account balance yesterday morning, I went from a positive balance of $2.70 to -$62.30. PayPal went ahead and “completed” the target.com transaction, but they didn’t remove the temporary hold. So the original $65 is still being “temporarily” held, and another $65 was taken out — hence the negative balance.
I’m just a little bit annoyed, because some payments I am expecting tonight will be going to cover that negative balance, which means I won’t be able to purchase the necessary supplies for a Sunday evening cookout. GRRRRRR.
My name is Jenn, and I'm a 27 year old married and babied chick. In addition to a husband, a seven year old daughter, and a five year old autistic son, I also have four cats, three hermit crabs, two frogs, a few fish, and one snorty little Pug. I work from home doing a variety of writing and even some web design. I love blogging, digital photography and web design. Kitty.nu has been around for several years. Once upon a time it was home to my personal blog (you can find that over at 
kick them in the balls. seriously. id be uber pissed.
I would seriously be contacting them about that. It’s not the first time someone has gotten screwed over that way by PayPal. I’ve had it happen to me as well. So not cool.
Paypal has done that to me too. Don’t ever buy gas with your Paypal debit card!!! They pre authorize $100 PLUS whatever the cost of your gas!!!
I love being able to have a debit card for my Paypal account, but the holds can be pretty stupid!
I’m calling PayPal right now. I’ve been on hold for six minutes… I’m hoping that’s because they’re busy with other customers, and NOT because they’re actually closed but haven’t set up their phone system to reflect that (I’ve had that happen to me before with our car loan provider).
They’ve done that to me before, a few times actually. It’s nice that I always had the money to cover it, but if not I’d be screwed. Additionally they set up a second monthly payment for my hosting so instead of just a measly $10.00 it was doubled. I caught it after 3 months making them owe me $30.00 back. The hosting company was nice enough to take care of it that day and cancel all the subscriptions out and use the additional to pay my bill for the next 3 months, but I’ve never heard back from Paypal on the matter.
Paypal’s been messing up for me lately, too.
One day they decided to just put a hold on 10% of my earnings for the day. Now I have to wait 3 months to close an account I intended to close that day. That day I made $8.99 and they held $3.20. Am I the only one that can do simple math?
Another time they sent me an email stating that they had neglected to take out a fee from a payment I received and would be taking it out in 3 business days. They didn’t mention which payment or how much.
I’m starting to lose some trust in Paypal.