Success Happy

PayPal and Bank Problems?

I'm fairly new to PayPal, I set up an account not too long back so I could Buy & Sell on eBay... I sold one item... Now recently I had £25 in my bank account and I wanted to buy something off the internet for £24, I noticed a 'Pay with PayPal' option so I thought I might as well use it... After signing in I was told I had £8 in my 'PayPal' account (I had no idea your PayPal account had a difference balance to your Bank Account) so the final product was only going to require £15 to be taken from my Bank Account... According to it the transaction was successful and I even received an e-mail saying my item had been dispatched. However when I came to buy something else tonight I received a message saying "Payment authorisation transaction declined. Credit Card Not Authorised" The first thing I did was went to check my balance at an ATM, and was surprised with what I found. Where the ATM shows your "Account Balance" and "Available Balance"... well the previous day my "Account Balance" and "Available Balance" were both £25, however today my "Account Balance" was still £25 but my available balance was only £1. This has confused me quite a bit... Not only because it suggests no transaction took place the previous night when I purchased the £24 item... it's also not allowing me access to my own money which is apparently in my account?! Why is this? I thought maybe the money was 'reserved' and only paid to the seller of the item once I'd received it, but that makes little sense as it clearly said only £15 would be required from my bank account because I had £8 in my PayPal account! So why have I been denied access to the whole £25?? What is going on??

Public Comments

1. I dont know much about Pay pal but I do know that its perfectly normal for the bank to show that. Its called Pre clearance and happens when the bank are notified that a card transaction has taken place the money is shown as unavailable in your account until the vendors bank actually completes the transaction and your bank release the money to them.
2. It really depends on the currency exchange since the british pound is the highest currency in the world if you bought something from another country this is why you did not have to spend as much.