SALLY SORTS IT: PayPal Won’t Give Me Access to Funds to Cover Food and Vet Bills for My Cat Rescue Group

I am part of Uist Cat Rescue, a small non-profit volunteer group that helps feral cats. A previous member set up a PayPal account for us to receive donations and pay for food and litter.

This worked fine until early 2023, when PayPal put a restriction on our account and said the rules had changed.

I started filling out the required information on a link sent by PayPal to unlock the account. However, I got stuck asking if we are a registered charity or a company, as we are neither.

There is £1,825 on the account which I have requested that PayPal refund if the restriction cannot be lifted but this is not happening. Donations cannot be paid out either.

With huge vet bills and the need to feed our cats and kittens, we cannot afford to lose this money. Please help.

CB, Outer Hebrides.

Sally Hamilton replies: You appealed to PayPal to remove the restriction on the group’s account, but after several phone calls over many months it remained in place.

To settle matters, you said you put your own name on the account and provided proof of ID in the form of your driver’s license and a bank statement.

But that wasn’t enough, it seems, as PayPal then asked for “an authorization letter.”

You said you believed this only applied to business customers. It was suggested by telephone to simply authorize it yourself, but apparently that didn’t help either.

By the time you came to me, you were fed up with the whole story and said that if it couldn’t be resolved quickly, the group was about to have to abandon its vital work.

You mentioned that you have already had to temporarily halt the rounding up of wild animals because you cannot afford to feed or neuter additional animals.

I researched the company’s website for possible answers and discovered that it’s okay for nonprofits to use PayPal—and not just those that are registered charities.

Anyone who wants to raise money temporarily, for example because he is running a marathon for a good cause, often uses the service to withdraw and pay out money. I couldn’t quite see the problem with your arrangements.

However, I have had many complaints from readers, ranging from those running small businesses to members of social clubs who are struggling to meet banks and payment organizations’ increasingly strict compliance rules and ‘know your customer’ obligations, as well as the over generally stricter security measures.

Compliance rules require financial companies to verify that customers are who they say they are and are intended to eliminate fraud, money laundering and other financial crimes.

At my request, PayPal investigated what went wrong. After some research into your case, it seems that PayPal had difficulty confirming your identity – and this must be done if a customer wants to maintain a balance with the service.

She then checked the documents you sent, including a photo of your driver’s license, and this time decided that they met the requirements. It quickly reopened the account.

A spokesperson said: ‘We can confirm that recent customer-provided documentation meets our compliance obligations.

The limitation has now been resolved and the customer can use the account normally. We recognize that this must have been a very frustrating experience and have placed a £150 credit on the account as a gesture of goodwill.”

You were delighted by this news and welcomed the goodwill payment, which you believe is sufficient to pay for the sterilization of a cat.

Insurer cannot find my new-build home

I recently moved to a new-build home. I tried to change my address with my car insurer Hedgehog, but they told me that it does not recognize it and therefore does not provide cover.

This is despite the fact that it apparently recognizes other addresses on the same development, including the house next door, which was completed a few weeks before mine. Can you please help?

Member of Parliament, Leeds.

Sally Hamilton replies: You told me you’d already had a problem with insurer Hedgehog when they gave you just seven days’ notice to cancel your car policy, which was bad enough, but then it said you had to pay £60 for the privilege. I thought that was pretty spineless.

Your new home is already registered with the post office and other insurance companies have given you quotes without any problems.

As a mother with two young children who is already struggling financially, you can avoid the hassle and huge additional costs of switching insurers. You need your car for work and to take the kids to daycare, so you can’t give it up.

Your Hedgehog policy had an affordable price of £394 for the year, which you paid in monthly instalments, and would not renew until May 2024. Once you started looking for an alternative, you were shocked to discover that the lowest new quote was higher. than £800.

Auto premiums have soared in recent months, which insurers blame on rising claims costs, largely due to higher repair costs. While moving can usually lead to premium changes as different areas pose different risks in the eyes of insurers, I was surprised that Hedgehog would offer no cover at all.

You have moved from Kent, where you had to park on the street, to a property in Leeds with a private driveway, which is usually more attractive to insurers.

I asked Hedgehog, based in Gibraltar, to explain why they didn’t recognize your postcode. It told me it receives regular updates of new zip codes which are then loaded into the system, ready for review. But before that, it needs to conduct a detailed analysis.

Like all insurers, it looks at various factors such as accident and crime statistics in a particular area. It added that the lack of data for a new zip code could result in a customer being denied coverage.

A spokesperson for Hedgehog said it was sorry to disappoint you but agreed to waive the £60 cancellation fee. You had no choice but to take the best quote you could find: £811 from Hastings Direct. Apparently it has the ability to add new zip codes and review them faster than the slower moving Hedgehog.

• Write to Sally Hamilton at Sally Sorts It, Money Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email sally@dailymail.co.uk – include telephone number, address and a note addressed to the offending organization stating they are given permission to talk to Sally Hamilton. Please do not send any original documents as we cannot take responsibility for this. The Ny Breaking cannot accept any legal liability for any answers given.