Paypal

Casey Brown

Casey Brown

Well-Known Member
Just saw this over on Instagram. A knifemaker in AZ had his Paypal account frozen, and Paypal kept his $6,000 on his account. He was trying to do a fundraiser to raise money for disaster relief in Texas. Paypal permanently suspended his account because he sells "weapons".

Here is the original post:

www.instagram.com

Shane Magnussen on Instagram: "Scorpion 6 Knives has officially been shut down by PayPal because we raised $6000 for charities in Texas!!!! Go figure that one... All accounts frozen, no access to money, during lockdowns, and were a veteran owned s

713 likes, 180 comments - scorpion6knives on February 24, 2021: "Scorpion 6 Knives has officially been shut down by PayPal because we raised $6000 for charities in Texas!!!! Go figure that one... All accounts frozen, no access to money, during lockdowns, and were a veteran owned small family...
www.instagram.com www.instagram.com

He has some follow-up posts about the process with Paypal that are worth listening to. Sounds like Paypal is starting to come after knifemakers now after doing the same thing to small business gun dealers. Just wanted everyone to be aware.
 
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They have always been against anything they can labeled as "weapons"!

I learned from another knifemaker's error. He had his paypal account connected directly to his bank account in which he kept both the family and knife business money, and the credit card connected to his Paypal was also the "family" card....

He had a run in with Paypal, where a customer disputed a payment, and Paypal was able to, and did freeze everything in that account..... for nearly 90 Days!

It's a pain in the butt, however, I have a totally separate bank account, in a totally different bank for my Paypal account/activity, which is connected to a visa card that we have ONLY, to be connected to Paypal, and is NEVER used for anything else.

First NEVER write/type anything with the word "knife", into paypal..... it's either "cutlery", "camping tool", or "outdoors tool." Here's how I operate/try to cover myself with Paypal.....

As soon as a Paypal payment is in my Paypal account, the full amount gets transferred to the bank. As soon as the money hits the bank, I physically go there, withdraw it, and then go to another bank (the one where I keep my knife account) and deposit it. And I NEVER keep more then $50 in the actual Paypal account.
Doing things that way, Paypal can only freeze the bank account that is attached to Paypal (which never has more then $50 in it)..... and the only credit card they have any access to, is the one that is used for Paypal only. And in case you didn't know it, if (Paypal cannot freeze a credit card account) Paypal does a charge back to your credit card, you can dispute it, and in my case (it's only happened twice to me) the credit card company sided with me, recovered the funds that Paypal had charged the credit card, and locked Paypal out of that credit card account. Which also sucked, because after everything was done, Paypal would not allow me to connect that credit card account number to Paypal....which meant I had to cancel that card, and get a new account number/card.

Believe me Paypal IS NOT your friend! Cover your butt, or at the first opportunity, they will stick something right up it!
 
I do pretty much the same as Ed does. All money is out of Paypal or Venmo basically as soon as it comes in. I like Venmo because there are no fees but it is owned by paypal. You can get online bank accounts pretty easily - Varo, Chime, etc. and then connect Paypal/Venmo, etc. to those and then transfer stuff as needed to protect it.

If you sell anything on Facebook marketplace, do the same. Get it out of the FB account that it sits in. All we can sell on FB are kitchen knives but Facebook is definitely not a knifemakers friend!
 
Ebay is dumping PayPal too it appears and asking for direct deposit information. Last week I did what Ed suggested above and just set up a totally separate Visa debit card account I will use only for those transactions.
 
I thought that I was the big dope. PayPal banned me for ever. I made the mistake of calling my company "McLeish Custom Knives" . My ignorance cost me .
 
Odd. I've used Paypal for heat treating services. And it's pretty clear in the invoice that it's for knife heat treating. Never had a problem, but I think I will make some changes.
 
razor-edge-knives said:
Yeah that's happened to several makers over the last year... I know one personally who lost about 9k.

I no longer use them... I use Wave online invoicing and it's perfect for freelancers... And they said knives are no problem
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I use Wave as well but haven't tried their payment option. I'll have to look into that.
 
Apparently they have just started a crack down. I spoke yesterday with an FFL that I know, and they suspended his account 3 days ago.
 
EdCaffreyMS said:
Not wanting to dive into the political.... but things could be heating up from all the anti-gun legislation that has been/is being kickstarted in recent days. Just a thought.
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I don't care what the reason is . I just don't like anyone telling me what kind of business I do and with whom. I am researching alternative sites and will let y'all know.
 
Geez. Hope he gets his money back. I don't use pay pal for anything. I do use my credit card, western union, sent checks and even sent hard currency..but no pay pal. Cancel culture can work both ways.
 
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