A bit of a heads up and to get your views as well on something that happened recently..
I got a price for some figures from a seller, agreed and asked for his paypal - he sent me it and I proceeded to pay the amount we agreed on.
Within 1-2 hours after it had gone unclaimed and he said he hadn't received it we realised that he in fact had typed out his paypal address incorrectly (so..always check!)
I then cancelled the payment which was never going to be claimed by anyone and wanted to send it again to him to the correct address, except -paypal now HOLD these funds for ONE WEEK!
I cancelled that payment on Monday and still haven't been able to get them to remove the hold on it.
The reason is : when you make a paypal payment and your bank card is linked to the account, paypal actually pay on your behalf then over a 3-5 day period they collect the funds from your bank. So when you cancel a payment like that paypal basically need to retrieve their funds before they pay you back..
I honestly think there should be a reasonable window of time for a cancelled payment to be paid instantly back in.. like I said above the seller notified me of the error within 2 hours of sending the payment and I doubt many people would not realise after a few hours.
Would a 24 hour period be out of the question for paypal to wait before proceeding with a bank transfer for you? or even 12 or 5 hours ? From my limited experience I know that most bank activity on weekends for example is minimal, instead waiting till Monday as a working day to get back on track with these things, so say I had sent the payment on Sunday evening at 8pm and paypal wouldn't start taking the funds for another few hours (monday) I might have been able to get the money back, pay the seller *again* and not had to check back in my paypal + hotmail every single day..
Anyways, I doubt paypal will change their policy but as a heads up - check the paypal address with your seller before sending funds not in your paypal balance as the week long wait is NOT worth the hassle!