PayPal France?

[Mr.Domains]

Has anyone else had problems with PayPal France?

I am currently living in France, so I had to use PayPal.fr instead of the usual PayPal.com, but now they have suspended my account, (with nearly half a grand of funds in it), saying because I have received a total of over $10K via PayPal in the last 2 years, I have to be investigated for money laundering!

They are saying they will suspend my account until I fax them copies of my passport and untility bills to prove who I am and where I live, etc.

But I am more worried about them then passing that information on to the French government, who will then probably try to get me to pay tax on that $10K.

My point is, just because I have had $10K pass through my account, doesn't mean I have made $10K profit! Every single cent of that was reinvested in either domains, renewals, hosting or paid links.

If I buy a domain for $200, then sell it a week later for $220, it doesn't mean I made $220, it means I made $20! If I then spend that $220 on another domain, then sell it for $240, my total profit is $40, not $460 as PayPal would like to believe. And any idiot can see I'm not money laundering, as A) I wouldn't be bothering with $5 and $10 dollar transactions, and B) at least half the money coming into my account goes straight back out, either to GoDaddy, DomainSite or Dotster, or my web hosts.

Has anyone else recieved this email?

1 Dec. 2006: You have received €6 500,00 EUR or more in total payments to your PayPal account.

We have attempted to contact you previously about this issue and have not received the required information. As a result, access to your account has been limited. Your account access will remain limited until this issue has been resolved.

PayPal is required by law to comply with European Union Anti-Money Laundering regulations by collecting information from customers when they receive more than the set limit in total payments. These steps need to be completed as soon as possible to comply with this regulation.

If so, what was the outcome, and was there any follow-up from the French authorities? :sigh2:

 

[Dimva]

Got the same email a couple months ago. They told me that will not share the information with a third part. So i faxed in the stuff and then the opened up the account as before.. This is only used as a verfication and as i said before paypal will not share the information with others.. At least that what i heard.

 

[simon]

send your information, they will not pass the information to a third party.
if not they will release the funds to you after 180 days

 

[Ian]

That is easy to resolve. I also got scared when I received a similar email by paypal a while ago but all that I did was to fax my identification documents and update my profile with business details. Then 2 days later I called Paypal US (Paypal Germany never answers my questions adequately) who lifted the ban after a long discussion over the telephone. Paypal can't disclose your info to third parties if you read there TOS carefully (But this might change in 2007).

 

[cloudfuyun]

Hi, I received this email about 1 years ago, they limited my account by almost the same reason to you. I had no chioce but to fax the documents they requested.