PayPal refund

[HareAndFern]

Hi everyone,

I've just tried to refund one of my customers, but I got this message:

''You do not have enough funds in your AVAILABLE balance to refund the payment. You can wait until you have enough funds in your available balance."

Since when is it so? I've always used my pending balance for refunds and it is still possible, as stated in PayPal's help topics, so I really can't figure out what I got this message. I do have more than enough money in my pending balance, so that's not the reason.

I've just contacted PayPal, but I still want to hear your opinion. Has someone experienced this before and what was the reason?

[YellowCottageStudios]

Never heard that before either. If you have enough money Paypal should refund. And I have even had them take the balance from the linked bank account. It will be interesting to hear what they have to say so please update us!

[HareAndFern]

That's strange. Note how they say "You CAN wait until you have enough funds in your available balance", not ''you have to'', so that implies that my available balance shouldn't really matter. I have enough money both in my pending balance and on my linked Visa card.

Oh gosh, I'm afraid I'll have a mad customer because of this :(

[Former_Member]

Eek! I haven't heard of that one before. So it doesn't even let you do the refund, even though it says "can"?

[HareAndFern]

Nope, I got this message and all I can to is click ''cancel'' and ''edit''.

[Former_Member]

if you need to give back a paypal refund you can sign into your paypal account and type the amount that you wish to refund and then type in their email linked to the account and it will refund the amount you choose

[happywrap]

That is very strange, I've never had that happen. It makes me wonder if there's a problem with the funds being not properly received by Paypal yet in the first place, when did the customer purchase from you? Was it only today?

[Former_Member]

Do you have paypal set up to your bank account or credit card?

If it's your bank account you will have to transfer money from your account to your paypal which can take up to 7 days then you can issue the refund. If it's linked to your credit card it should be able to do it automatically.

[happywrap]

But surely if you're refunding the customer, you shouldn't need to put any of your own money into Paypal, as you're simply returning the money the customer sent you in the first place?

I would not be too keen to send money to the customer from my own money, as their original purchase payment may never actually clear. So you'd be out of pocket.

[HareAndFern]

Still no word from PayPal, still getting the same message when I try to refund my customer.

Angel, it's linked to a card.

It's for an order placed on November 22 - the customer sent the item back because of a quite funny reason (I won't specify it because ot Etsy rules - no private details) and it's totally fine. I've received the item today and wanted to issue the refund asap, but...

[Former_Member]

Ramona,

Is it possible your credit card is at it's max?

[HareAndFern]

Nope, it's not that. There's really no obvious reason for this situation :(

[UniqueSewingBoutique]

Never heard of that problem either, hope it will be resolved.

Wishing everyone Happy Holidays.

[happywrap]

Hope Paypal get back to you quickly on this, I know you said you've messaged them but is it worth giving them a call just to speed things up?

Hope things get sorted for you soon.

[HareAndFern]

So, PayPal contacted me and solved... Well, nothing. They literally said that I have some available funds right now (in the meantime an amount became available) so I can use that. I refunded my customer right now from that available amount because obviously that's the only thing I can do. I'll write back to PayPal and ask what is the reason because they explained nothing with their cherry-picked words. Oh, goodness.


Happy holidays, everyone! :)