My husband and I had a PayPal account, mainly used to buy items from etsy.com. He passed away in August of 2011. Since the account was in his name and tied to our joint account, I decided in December to open up my own accounts. I had become an Etsy seller in June of 2011. I froze our joint account at the bank and opened up three others, one personal one, one to share with my business partner, and one that was attached to the supply shop on Etsy (the one with the most traffic and that was to be our fund for our own supplies and marketing). Well, that high traffic fund was almost immediately frozen by PayPal. At this point, the freeze is off, but the money frozen during the freeze is still unavailable to me. I cannot buy more stock to sell, I cannot pay my Etsy fees, De I cannot pay for promoting my shops. As it stands now, between my three shops I have three thousand feedback . . . no neutrals, no negatives, all positives. I have never had a dispute or a chargeback. But since I cannot buy more stock, I cannot pay for shipping, I cannot promote my store, I may have to close my doors. I am now on disability d/t my husband’s death. I have been using that check to keep my store afloat, but am now behind on our bills and the mortgage. We may lose the house AND I may have to yank my two kids out of college. Last weekend my grandfather passed away (the fourth death in three years in our immediate family) so there is no one left to borrow from. I have a decision to make: close my stores before I get negative feedback and lose my house or hold on praying that I can catch up and keep my good reputation on Etsy. Paypal has been less than helpful each time I called them. They want to hold the money to make sure I send things on time but then I have no money to buy items for special orders or to ship things in a timely manner. I give up!
