“If your item doesn’t arrive or is very different from the description on Bonanza, file a dispute through the PayPal Resolution Center. Your dispute must be filed with 180 days of the payment date.”

“If a buyer has 180 days to begin a claim, is bonanza/PapPal saying, bonanza/Paypal will keep the sale’s money in escrow, until that time has passed? Releasing the funds to the seller, afterwards? (Effectively, it could be saying that … couldn’t it?)…”

NO, paypal would have no business (and it is illegal to hold a person’s money that long..you can check with your state’s attorney general’s office)….everyone would drop paypal if they held the money that long——

First off…the 180 days is paypal’s rule not bonanza’s (bonanza does not hold nor has any control over your funds)

…However, PP does not hold the funds for 180 days. What happens, is if someone files a claim (and they will have to do it through the payment source, ie paypal, then paypal will prevent any transfer of funds in your account at that time until the issue is resolved. If the resolution is in the buyer’s favor, paypal will pay them back and then take the funds from your account. IF there is not enough funds in your account, then paypal will withdraw from your ‘back up source’, ie your bank account….

So it is always a good idea to keep a small amount in paypal (which I do to cover shipping costs when the buyer uses some other form of payment besides paypal)

“Must a seller at bonanza, obtain positive feedback from a buyer, before the money will be released by PayPal, and made accessible to the seller? Like, eBay sellers are now experiencing?”

No purchases made through paypal are immediately available to the seller. Feed back is rarely given here…and though it is used to measure some quality of the seller, it is only used as a requirement to be able to accept Money Orders (since there is no way to guarantee a seller will honor shipping using Money Orders as a payment option…and I do get some occasionally)

However, for any and all purposes…make sure you do add tracking information, so that there will be proof of delivery in case of any questions

You will have to have the tracking information for other payments to be release if you choose to use Amazon Payments or Direct Credit Card checkout…now these 2 sources will hold funds until delivery…

First… any holding of funds is done by the payment processor (PayPal, Braintree, etc.) and NOT the selling site (eBay, Bonanza, etc.). Second… any decision to hold money is based on risk assessment. If the sale is small, not in high-risk categories, and the seller has a history with the payment processor, then funds are NOT usually held back.

Once, a seller has a history built up with the payment processor, then the payout restrictions are gradually lifted to where you can have very large sales processed and paid out to you immediately.

Never had PayPal hold my money from Bonanza,unlike they do on eBay.

Same here. Never had it happen.

We never had them hold money in escrow on Bonanza, but we already had a Paypal account from our days on eBay, so I am assuming it wasn’t necessary. We did have a 14 day hold on eBay when we started there. it’s a somewhat different world here than it was on eBay and while feedback isn’t relative to getting paid it still has some meaningful application. Nobody wants a negative feedback and working really hard to prevent it will be to your benefit. I believe you can even disable the reminder to your buyers to leave feedback if they haven’t within a certain length of time (30 days?), or at least you use to be able to. Bonanza doesn’t have the “go to” eBay does so you will need to use various tools to direct traffic to your items. Most will find your items first through Google and then view your booth through curiosity of what else you might have. Lots of luck and welcome. It’s a good place to be.

Thank you, all. I appreciate your responses. I feel better informed, for having asked. Whatever variety of nightmares may be occurring on eBay between its sellers and PP, I’m delighted to find out—isn’t happening, here. It may be illegal to hold on to money—one way, but it doesn’t seem to be stopping the implementation(s), of ridiculous hoop-jumping acrobatics a seller faces, before the funds are released, and made wholly accessible.

PS. Appreciated the warm welcome as well. :)

Cheers!