About a year ago I spoke with a gentleman in the sales department at PayPal. My reason for doing so was because of the poor reputation that PayPal had with "smaller" companies who offered premium cigars like I do at Cigar Samplers. You see, PayPal has a reputation of closing accounts and keeping the money earned by those businesses as a "fine" for violating their agreement with PayPal. I was assured that I could open my site, cigarsamplers.com, and except PayPal as a form of payment with no problems by the salesman at PayPal. The greelnight was given and I started getting sales from folks who only wanted to pay for my goods via PayPal. Well, shortly after accumulating over $4,000 is sales via PayPal, my PayPal account was "frozen" by PayPal. At first, I was told that it appeared I was selling Cuban cigars because the term "Habano" was mentioned in a product description. I easily explained this away as it is against the law to sell Cuban cigars and the fact that "Habano" is a varietal of seed grown in places like Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic. I was then told that my "frozen" account was under review. Weeks had passed and I was finally able to speak with a lady from PayPal who was a "supervisor". She actually found the salesman who had given me the greenlight and verified that he did indeed tell me that excepting PayPal would be fine for my business. She informed me that he should NOT have told me this! However, she did say that if I provided her with documentation like my sales tax license, my tobacco products license, and actual tracking numbers from those who ordered via PayPal, she would attempt to re-establish my PayPal account. Again, weeks went by with no word from PayPal about my "appeal". I then had to call PayPal again to see what was going on. You see when your account is being reviewed, you can not except any PayPal payments. In fact, I was told to remove the PayPal logo from my site. Weeks turned to months and I was told my money would be "on hold" for 6 months! PayPal gives customers 6 months to appeal a charge and I was told I would get an email from PayPal once my money was free to deposit in my bank. Well, 9 months later I had to once again try to chase my EARNED money from PayPal. Needless to say, I was given the "run around" by every person I spoke with at PayPal. On August 2nd, I was told by another supervisor named Tamara that my account was disabled and ALL the money in my account was TAKEN by PayPal as a FINE for violating their policy!!! That's right. PayPal has decided I violated their policy and took over $4,000 away from me after telling me it was okay to use PayPal for my business! I sure could use that money for a variety of things that a small start-up business needs. Imagine how upset this makes me. I've spent countless hours on the phone with PayPal, jumped through every hoop they asked for only to find that I have lost ALL my money. Not to mention the fact that I paid for the shipping, the product, packaging and so much more for a loss. Now you understand why I can't except PayPal any longer. It's a shame that a billion plus dollar company would treat me and my company so poorly! PayPal knows that it would cost me way more to sue them than the "fine" that they levied against me for doing what they said I could. So I am doing the only things I can do. Blogs, social media, BBB, and local news will hear about how PayPal has treated me! Maybe if there is outcry, they will do the right thing and give me my EARNED money back so I can continue growing my small business. Thank you for reading my Blog and I hope you have better dealings with PayPal. So frustrating!!! Best wishes, Jeff