I belong to a Chile forum and the forum owner has used his network to organized relief efforts, lost person location, delivery of supplies.
He got a private plane to fly doctors, medicine, and survival kits into badly hit areas. (Actually, an entire flying club volunteered, and he writes “We have an airforce!”)
All labor and time is volunteer but they need money for fuel for the planes.
Over $3,000 was donated from forum members in the USA through Paypal and PAYPAL REFUSES TO RELEASE THE MONEY!!!
So Paypal was asked to refund the money so it could be sent in a different manner and Paypal is not refunding the money, either.
This is time critical, this is an emergency, there aren’t weeks available to wait until the money can be accessed. Paypal is ademant, no money.
They just said 2-3 weeks before funds would be available. I don’t know why. It’s an international transfer, but it’s the twenty-fist century, for Pete’s sake. They don’t have to send the money by sailing ship.
Western Union has suspended transfer fees for money going into Chile for a couple of weeks.
It seems to me that is more the way a big corporation should be behaving. Public image is important, and they’ve just earned themselves some good will.
I would suspect this is a fraud protection measure. The amount of credit card fraud, identity theft, fake cashiers/bank checks has risen dramatically in the last few years. They are probably waiting for the funds to actually clear. It does take that long.
Best things are the prepaid credit cards where you can goto 7-11 or other stores and put money on them for others to use. Money hits card anywhere from 10min to 1hr depending on store and card.