Paypal “payment received” failure over the Bank Holiday weekend -
My issue is resolved, but I thought this maybe useful for others.
Hi all, resurecting this old thread rather than posting new, as some of the comments above are relevant to what happened to my shop over the weekend.
I had a message on Saturday from a buyer saying they couldn’t pay for an item in my shop and wanted to let me know in case there was an issue at my end. Luckily it was a from a fellow shop owner who posts on here regularly (the lovely @ccbandatp), so I knew the email was legit and not a scam 
They kindly gave a bit more detail about the error message they received (it said policy violation 
) and I went onto Paypal to investigate - and yes the payment was sitting there as “failed”. My OH, also did a couple of test prichases (I have a £1 item I keep hidden just for this purpose) - he was able to pay via Stripe, but had the same failure and policy violation message with Paypal.
I had no issues paying with paypal, and no emails/notifications from them. So I contacted them via chat on Sunday morning - they responded very quickly and said they didn’t think it was an issue their end but they would investigate further. (I’m still waiting to hear back!!!)
In the meantime, I went into my Folksy account and checked my Paypal link was still there - it was. But I decided to delete it and save as an empty field. Then went back in and retyped it in again from scratch - I didn’t use the autocomplete prompt, and saved again. OH retested, and it worked 
So, I don’t know whether it was a faulty disconnect between my shop and Paypal that was sorted by me resetting it, or if tPaypal did press a button to clear the log-jam at their end - I still haven’t had an update from them - but the amounts were returned to the buyer and my OH.
Either way, I shall be regularly testing my connection with paypal. I have no idea whether I lost other sales over the BH weekend, or how long it would have taken for me to realise people couldn’t buy from me, and I’m hugely grateful to Anne for contacting me.
ASIDE: When investigating possible “policy violation” issues, I found out that Paypal do block sales for items that they think breach their policies, or they think your sales are abnormally high for your typical pattern. I’ve had a couple of good month but nothing exceptional, but I did realise that my listing title may have been a trigger.
It’s a slow stitching kit with raw silk, and I had used the colours in the title - Copper and Rose Gold. Maybe Paypal thought I was now trading in precious metals - bit of a change from cotton bunting and felt playmats!!! - and that triggered a block.
So I changed the title before the buyer went back in to order