A bit of a rant guys about PayPAL's poorly designed forms. My parents are moving house and we have a lot of second hand stuff to sell.
I set up a new ebay account at the beginning of the year for this purpose in my parents name.
I also set up a Premier PayPAL account as we are obviously going to sell a few items and need to be able to accept all payment types, which a Personal account can't do.
So far so good. I completed all the steps, registered my Mothers bank account and credit card and set about the verification process to lift limits. Everything went fine, until the final stage.
It asks you to fill in your business details, but we are not a business? So I selected individual as the business type, but have to fill in the rest of the form in order for it to accept the details. Part of this form asks for a catagory and sub catagory of what your business usually sells (eg computers, cars, clothes etc)? We don't usually sell anything? We are not a business? Just random second hand goods that we are actually selling at a loss compared to what we paid for them?
So I stupidly selected "nonprofit" and in the sub category "personal" without thinking. Two days later PayPAL's automated system restricted the account saying they want proof of our business by providing them with a cancelled cheque wrote out in the businesses name; a tax exempt form and letters addressed to our business showing our address and business name. If we don't resolve this issue by faxing them the documents, they will restrict the account? I don't have these items. We are not a business and I selected INDIVIDUAL as the business type in order to tell them this fact as directed to do so by their very own instructions. Made no difference to the robo-judge server at the other end. It thinks I'm setting up a business, with a grand total of £40 worth of transactions in two months! LOL!
I've sent them an email and tried to get through on the phone but it's proven impossible so far. Really annoying. Their stupid business information form is not relevant to individual sellers that are not running businesses but just shifting their own second hand goods. The form contains traps and pitfalls that can restrict your account automatically and they are not explained AT ALL via warning messages or information on the actual page.
I have since changed the business info from "Nonprofit->Personal" to "Services other->Services (not elsewhere classified)", an option that is not very easy to spot! The form is set out for business users only, who sell a specific kind of product most the time. Stupid!
Now I have to get this sorted out just as I was about to list a load of old toys and second hand items on ebay. The timing couldn't have been worse. I'm fuming. After reading around the net, there are other horror stories of people having accounts frozen for up to 180 days and not being able to pay for or accept payments. Some have £100's of pounds stuck in PayPAL for the same period.