I received notice recently that my Paypal account has been “limited” due to violation of their weapons rules

I received notice recently that my Paypal account has been “limited” due to violation of their weapons rules. Since their conditions to continue using Paypal are that I stop selling any and all martial arts related weaponry, I clearly cannot do business through Paypal and can no longer accept any payments through them. Until such time as I find another affordable means of taking payments by internet or phone, all transactions will have to be by snail mail.

“Limited” means that Paypal has unilaterally frozen my account, meaning I cannot access it for withdrawals, purchases or any other purpose. This effectively means I have no access to payments that have recently been made, and I cannot use those funds to purchase the supplies my business needs in order to fulfill some outstanding orders.

Until such time as Paypal releases those funds to me, I may not be in position to complete some orders. If you have questions about the status of payments made through Paypal, you can contact me. If they do not release these funds (which they’ve been known to hold indefinitely) then contact Paypal to let them know they are holding your money hostage!

May 29, 2006:

After sending an explanation to Paypal and visiting their resolution page, I received an email stating my account has been restored. At that point I went online to request that all funds in my account be transferred out. Hopefully this will take place, allowing me to keep supply and product pipelines going. However, this issue does not give me great confidence in continuing to use Paypal, and indeed it is not clear if my account has been cleared for business or just to allow me to close it out. Once I have clarity on this issue from Paypal I will update my site accordingly. Meanwhile I’m looking into other credit card services.

The irony of all this is that Paypal is owned by Ebay, where it is possible to find lots of knives, swords and, yes, escrima sticks, and purchase them through Paypal. I guess it’s ok to use this service through their website but not through my own ….