Paypal declined order

[chilly]

Greetings,

I have ordered three sceneries for my hungry new P3DV4 as there is nice discount.

Charlotte Douglas International Airport29,00 USD
Memphis International Airport24,65 USD
Houston George Bush Intercontinental Airport24,65 USD

Paypal stopped the payment with statement that order is being reviewed and today they refunded my money back and cancelled order with resolution
"To comply with regulatory requirements, we had to decline this payment and refund your money."

Does anyone have the idea what is wrong with my order and what regulations are they talking about?

[virtuali]

We don't have any means to check why PayPal has denied your purchase, because we don't handle payments, don't have your payment details, don't receive your money, and the purchase is not made on our site either, it's all handled by Esellerate so, you should contact them at the following address:

shopper@esellerate.net

Only them can reply to issues related to payment.

[Piotr007]

We don't have any means to check why PayPal has denied your purchase, because we don't handle payments, don't have your payment details, don't receive your money, and the purchase is not made on our site either, it's all handled by Esellerate so, you should contact them at the following address:

shopper@esellerate.net

Only them can reply to issues related to payment.

I called Paypal Netherlands today about the refund I should get for over a week now because of the failed purchase. The woman told me the funds are back to my PayPal account BUT are held due to an "investigation", and these funds will not be available until this is finished. She could not provide me more information about this "investigation". The refund has still the status of pending and this is not changing. It is quite a lot of money that is withdrawn from my bank account, so I am not happy about this at all. 

How can Paypal take money away from me and then not returning it and when asking Paypal Netherlands I am not provided with all the details why and when this will be available? I got a notification it was immediately refunded to my paypal account. But they are blocking the money due to an "investigation". MyCommerce/Esellerate problem? This happened only because I wanted to buy KIAH via FSDT's site. Eventually I bought it through Simmarket without issues using iDeal.

What is happening? There is a large amount of money missing. I am waiting patiently for over a week now.

[virtuali]

As I've said in my previous reply, we don't have any means to check why PayPal has denied your purchase, because we don't handle payments, don't have your payment details, don't receive your money, and the purchase is not made on our site either, it's all handled by Esellerate

We tried to ask PayPal, just because users asked for it but, for the same aforementioned reasons, PayPal won't discuss with us about this, because we are NOT their customers: Esellerate is.

From what we gathered by asking Esellerate, which also started an investigation about this, it seems that PayPal, for some reason, has decided that our flight simulator sceneries could fall into the category of restricted goods that cannot be sold. Most likely, some kind of automatic security trigger has been enabled, maybe they assumed such airports could be used by terrorist to plan attacks...as far as we know, Esellerate was trying to prove that many flight developers sells the same products through PayPal, but we haven't heard back from them.

[Piotr007]

Ok, I can understand this. But my refund by Paypal (not accusing you) is being held "under so-called investigation". They are not providing me info on this. Can I contact MyCommerce/Esellerate which one?¿ to ask if they received money from Paypal?

I am wondering what this investigation is. It worries me, because it is quite a lot of money that is "missing".

[virtuali]

Ok, I can understand this. But my refund by Paypal (not accusing you) is being held "under so-called investigation". They are not providing me info on this. Can I contact MyCommerce/Esellerate which one? to ask if they received money from Paypal?

You can surely contact both Esellerate and PayPal, since you were the 3 parties involved in the transaction.

[Piotr007]

Ok, I can understand this. But my refund by Paypal (not accusing you) is being held "under so-called investigation". They are not providing me info on this. Can I contact MyCommerce/Esellerate which one? to ask if they received money from Paypal?

You can surely contact both Esellerate and PayPal, since you were the 3 parties involved in the transaction.

I contacted them both. Paypal first, saying transactions are refunded but are on hold for availability on my account due to some "investigation". No timetable given when it will be refunded.

I now sent an email to MyCommerce/Esellerate with the order numbers and what their status is. Also the question what the relation with Paypal in this situation is "investigation" was also mentioned by me in this mail.

Is there anything else I could do? Probably not I guess? Perhaps next time I can block the Paypal withdrawal from my bankaccount when a purchase is failed?


P.S.

This happened all because of the addon KIAH that was added to the order list. Someone at AVSIM mentioned this one was "black flagged" at Paypal or something? When I ordered the rest of the sceneries witohout KIAH the order came through. So this issue could be prevented but I was not aware of its existence.

My question is; why is KIAH such a trouble when ordering that the purchase is getting failed/ got into authorization error/ and money still being paid by Paypal??

[virtuali]

This happened all because of the addon KIAH that was added to the order list. Someone at AVSIM mentioned this one was "black flagged" at Paypal or something?

I don't think anyone at PayPal has black flagged anything. Something might just have tripped some kind of automatic security filter and, I guess PayPal would never admit exactly what happened, in order to prevent any possible legal recourse from our side, should we able to prove they blocked a legit product because of a failure of an algorithm.

If I were you, the simplest solution would be just stopping using PayPal altogether, and let them know.

[Piotr007]

This happened all because of the addon KIAH that was added to the order list. Someone at AVSIM mentioned this one was "black flagged" at Paypal or something?

I don't think anyone at PayPal has black flagged anything. Something might just have tripped some kind of automatic security filter and, I guess PayPal would never admit exactly what happened, in order to prevent any possible legal recourse from our side, should we able to prove they blocked a legit product because of a failure of an algorithm.

If I were you, the simplest solution would be just stopping using PayPal altogether, and let them know.

Done.

[mwilk19]

I went through the same situation a few weeks ago. I attempted to purchase KCLT and KIAH. I was paying through PayPal (USA). The transaction was pending due to government regulations. A few hours later it was canceled. PayPal refunded my money. I subsequently repurchased with my debit card. I attempted to try to find out from PayPal what the issue was. I never did get a satisfactory answer. Researching further I found out that PayPal's security system red flags KIAH (George Bush International). I'm sure it has to do with a reference to president George Bush. I try to avoid dealing with PayPal from now on.

[virtuali]

I'm sure it has to do with a reference to president George Bush.

That's an interesting theory...

[busychild]

Same Problem here... Tried to buy KIAH for the third time today and PayPal still rejects my payments... I'll try with credit card later.

[virtuali]

We are keep asking Esellerate about this, and the are trying to get an answer from PayPal, but everything seems to be pointing to PayPal mistakenly blocking orders containing KIAH, because of the "George Bush" in the name.

The issue is, we cannot contact PayPal directly, because we don't handle payments, so they will only discuss it with Esellerate, since you are buying on the Esellerate site (pressing the Buy button here, will direct you to the Esellerate site), and you are sending money to the Esellerate PayPal account, so PayPal won't talk with us about this.

I can only say we keep enquiring about the problem with Esellerate, and the last news is they are still waiting for an answer from PayPal.

[vkupchyshyn]

Same here - tried to purchase a couple of sceneries yesterday during the sale including KIAH - "After an initial review, we found that your payment may not be in agreement with our Acceptable Use Policy. Because of this, we need to put this payment on hold until we can make sure it meets our requirements." Used Paypal before to purchase almost all other FSDT sceneries without problem. It must indeed be the KIAH theory...

[Supera380]

Same here... tried to order 3 products one of which was KIAH.

KIAH is the culprit I believe.

Re-ordered using just my credit card rather than Paypal. Turned out it was cheaper too!
Paypal just lost some business!

Regards
Mark