Buyer: PayPal Payment Status Pending With a Cancel Button

If you’ve made a PayPal payment and your My eBay shows the payment status as Pending, log into your PayPal account and see what the PayPal status is.

If the PayPal status is Unclaimed and there is a Cancel button next to the transaction on the Overview page, then the payment has been sent to an email address that is not associated with the seller’s PayPal account.

You will also receive a payment notification from PayPal that looks similar to this:

Contact the seller to explain and ask them to see if they can add the email address to their PayPal account (detailed instructions for the seller here):

PayPal Payment Email Received But No Payment in Account

If the seller is able to add and confirm the email address, the payment will be claimed and you don’t need to do anything else.

If the seller cannot add the email address, press the Cancel button and then Cancel Payment button on the next screen to cancel the transaction.

You no longer have to make a PayPal payment for an eBay Item to the payment email address in the eBay listing to have eligibility for PayPal Buyer Protection. This requirement was removed in the Policy Update of Sep-30-2008:

User Agreement for PayPal™ Service

So you can make a payment to an alternative PayPal email address and still be covered by Buyer Protection as long as the transaction is associated with the eBay Item Number.

You will not be able change the payment email address by using the PayPal Send Money Tab > Pay for eBay Items, because this will send the payment to the wrong email address used in the eBay listing again – which cannot be changed.

However, since the Policy Updates of Sep-30-2008, the seller can now send a manual PayPal Invoice for eBay Items, associating the Money Request with the eBay Item Number (and optionally including the eBay Item URL).

Although this method of paying for an eBay Item is not specifically cited in the PayPal User Agreement, two independent tests have verified that a payment made this way is eligible for PayPal Buyer Protection.

Please see this eBay me page for a comprehensive guide of how the seller can send you the invoice for an eBay Item:

About me: classy.diva!

You will need to give your seller the email address you use to log into PayPal with (but not your password!) so that they can send you the manual invoice request.