Thank you so much for your support, Twitter. I've written up what's happened so far, please reach out if you can help:

My main Paypal account was locked around the end of May. A month or so after the Build ticket sales, and weeks after the money from those sales had been transferred to my bank account, I logged in to find that a £60k required minimum balance was enforced on my account, without any word from Paypal. I contacted Paypal to query the limitation, which they told me was enacted to cover any potential dispute cases and subsequent refunds from Build. Even though the revenue from Build had long left the account, and even though — in 4 years of running Build — there had never been a dispute case filed to claim a refund, the account would still be limited and any funds coming in would be used to meet the £60k required minimum. It was suggested that I take it up with Executive Escalations.

At that time, it was also recommended that I separate my PayPal accounts: one for Build and one for The Manual, which I did. Although the main (now locked) account still had some revenue from The Manual sales, we quickly moved over to a new account. Issue #3 launched, and all went smoothly.

Paypal then locked the new account due to EU money laundering regulations, which is pretty standard. I responded to the dispute, and it was unlocked shortly after. The day after it was unlocked, Paypal locked the account was locked again, with a much longer list of demands (a lot of which I'd have trouble producing), so I reached out to a friend-of-a-friend in Paypal to help resolve things quickly. A few days ago, after a few weeks of back and forth, it became clear that she couldn't help, so I went on to upload as much information as possible in the Resolution Centre. No luck, the upload function was broken. I'd set an alarm this morning to get up to call their UK call centre, but was met instead by an email in my inbox telling me the new account had been closed without review.

Executive Escalations have been working on the main account for months, with no resolution. An answer was promised last week, but nothing has arrived, my emails aren't being replied to, and the call centre number can't or won't transfer me to their department. The secondary account for The Manual was closed without review, and no one at the call centre can provide clarity as to why or let me know if I can counter it or what's happened to the money, or if I can even ever withdraw the funds.

Paypal are currently holding, between the two accounts, a total of just over £40,000 — predominantly of sales of The Manual. Between temporarily borrowing some money from the Build budget and wrangling a small overdraft, I've been able to pay the bills and continue to settle invoices from the shipping company, but that money is almost gone.

Please, if anyone has any clout with Paypal, or can do anything to help, please let me know. I'm completely lost here, no one there is interested in listening to me, emphasising with me or even explaining things to me whatsoever. If you know anyone who can help me have my funds released, email me: andy@fiction.co.

(Needless to say, once this is resolved, Paypal will no longer be processing any payment for Build, The Manual, or any other of my projects now or ever again.)

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