{"id":5857,"date":"2011-12-08T22:56:25","date_gmt":"2011-12-08T20:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=5857"},"modified":"2025-10-13T12:37:54","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T10:37:54","slug":"paypal-and-account-suspension-lawsuit-in-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/paypal-and-account-suspension-lawsuit-in-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"PayPal and Account Suspension: Lawsuit in Germany?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who gets involved with PayPal as a merchant can expect an experience \u2013 especially if they rely on PayPal as their primary service provider for internet payment transactions. As with many other PayPal customers, our client's account was restricted or frozen overnight, making any access to the balance impossible. The balance was released again through a lawsuit filed in Germany \u2013 unfortunately, without a judgment being rendered. PayPal cleverly prevented this from happening.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It usually starts with the following, completely meaningless message from PayPal:<\/p>\n

To ensure the security of the PayPal network, we frequently conduct account reviews for potential risks. After reviewing your account, we have decided to close it due to security concerns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>\"That's nice,\" one might think. Everything is being done to protect customers from misuse. An immediate inquiry with PayPal revealed that they were working hard to fix the problem. However, no further explanation was given. For days, only receiving payments and refunding customers was possible, but no access to the balance. The officially filed appeal was rejected with similarly vague explanations \u2013 the alleged security risks still existed, and access to the balance would not be possible for at least 180 days (maybe). That's almost half a year, and for some merchants who depend on their PayPal account, it's financial ruin.<\/p>\n

It finally became apparent that it wasn't about protecting the customer, but about protecting PayPal. Our client was supposed to submit all business documents such as profit and loss statements, tax documents, supplier invoices, etc., provide detailed information about the products sold and customers, and deliver comprehensive proof of shipment to resolve the issue. Furthermore, it was stated that contacting the responsible Creditreform agency to clarify the problem was necessary. What all this has to do with the business relationship with a bank is as questionable as the purpose of the exercise as a whole. What is clear is that PayPal is thus hedging risks from its buyer protection program at the expense of merchants. If, from PayPal's perspective, a merchant has too many buyer complaints resulting in repayment obligations for PayPal, the account is unceremoniously blocked \u2013 without consultation and without any attempt at clarification. In this case, there were not even 10 complaints out of several hundred transactions, most of which were resolved because there were only short-term delivery delays. Nevertheless, the withdrawal restriction was maintained. One can rightly ask what the merchant, as a bank customer, has to do with the bank's other products (buyer protection program) and why they should bear the associated risk.<\/p>\n

Not only was the client angry about the incident, but he was also massively financially endangered by it. The PayPal account had a high five-figure balance, which he urgently needed for purchasing goods and thereby maintaining his business operations. For these reasons, he was firmly resolved to sue PayPal.<\/p>\n

Said and done. However, it must first be clarified where and on what basis this can happen. A lawsuit to recover the frozen funds in the form of a performance action is the obvious choice. The problem with this is that PayPal is based in Luxembourg, and the lawsuit must therefore also be filed there. This can take time (definitely longer than 180 days) and be costly (definitely more than proceedings in Germany). We finally decided to sue PayPal in Germany for injunctive relief and have obviously hit a nerve with this. The basis was a claim for injunctive relief under \u00a7\u00a7 823 (1) (established and operated commercial business), 1004 of the German Civil Code (BGB). In my opinion, the connection of the interference to the business can be asserted.<\/p>\n

Nothing has happened yet regarding the warning with the one-week deadline and the request to sign a cease-and-desist declaration. Anyone could just come along with that. The lawsuit, filed with the Regional Court of Stuttgart immediately after the deadline expired and served in Luxembourg on short notice, was also stubbornly contested at first. However, a first surprise occurred in parallel: completely unexpectedly, PayPal announced after \"only\" 90 days that the security issues had been resolved and the balance was once again available. Of course, it had nothing to do with the lawsuit. Uh-huh.<\/p>\n

In any case, the Stuttgart Regional Court soon scheduled a hearing, and in such a constellation, one can ask what the (still existing) claim for injunctive relief still brings after the release of the credit balance and the termination of the account. So it was about costs and the realization of what the court has to say about the not entirely risk-free lawsuit. Unfortunately, the court's statements were disappointingly general. Somehow it was not okay, somehow our client was also obliged to cooperate (?). Somehow none of this makes sense anymore after the lifting of the injunction.<\/p>\n

At that time, the client was still determined to push the matter to its extreme and let it go to judgment. PayPal, however, was keen to rule out even the slightest risk and, under no circumstances, let it come to judgment. At any rate, it is hardly explainable otherwise that they readily offered to reimburse all (!) costs in the event of the proceedings being settled. It was extremely difficult in this situation to still advise the client to continue. Thus, a settlement was reached, which provided for the settlement of the matter with costs being borne by PayPal. The amount, determined without a cost assessment procedure, was also promptly transferred.<\/p>\n

So, in the end, everything achieved and still everything unclear. But PayPal now knows that it cannot hide in Luxembourg with such questionable behavior. And we now know that PayPal fears a German injunction like nothing else. Why is that?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wer sich als H\u00e4ndler mit PayPal einl\u00e4sst, kann etwas erleben – vor allem dann, wenn er sich auf PayPal als prim\u00e4ren Dienstleister f\u00fcr den Internet-Zahlungsverkehr verl\u00e4sst. Wie bei vielen anderen PayPal-Kunden wurde das Konto unseres Mandanten von heute auf morgen mit einer Beschr\u00e4nkung belegt bzw. eingefroren und jede Verf\u00fcgung \u00fcber das Guthaben unm\u00f6glich gemacht. Mit […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":24106,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-custom-blog.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3049],"tags":[1775,1776,1777,1778,1779,1780],"ppma_author":[3114],"class_list":["post-5857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein","tag-klage-paypal","tag-paypal","tag-paypal-guthaben","tag-paypal-kontoschliessung","tag-paypal-kontosperrung","tag-zustellung-luxemburg"],"authors":[{"term_id":3114,"user_id":33,"is_guest":0,"slug":"noauthor","display_name":"NoAuthor","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a2f9c36aa7da8162c9f35ca132170eaa927d38c75c19b2454e6a537a3b46f45a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5857"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avantcore.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=5857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}