What we did next
Before anything else, we searched for answers online. What we found was almost nothing. A handful of Reddit threads with users describing the same deduction, posted years apart, with no replies that went anywhere. No explanations of why the charge might be legally flawed. No templates, no precedents in plain language, no resources that treated this as anything other than a one-off misunderstanding between a user and a platform. For something this serious, where an entire account balance is taken with no proof of damages or losses suffered, the silence online was striking. We were on our own.
We tried the usual channels first: support tickets, phone calls, social media escalation, and standard complaint routes. When that failed, we shifted to evidence and structure. We spent years reading testimonies and cases, while studying the laws and regulations governing how payment firms are expected to handle restricted funds, disclosure, and complaints handling, including how penalty style charges and liquidated damages are typically assessed and justified.
Why this site exists at all
This site would not exist if PayPal had simply returned what they took, with interest. That is all we ever asked for, and it is all the law requires. Instead, PayPal has chosen not to respond, not to engage, and not to settle. Formal complaints, letters of demand, and regulatory submissions have been met with silence or deflection.
Litigation would be the obvious next step, but taking a Singapore-registered payment company to court from another country is not a realistic option for most of us, at least not yet. The legal costs alone are prohibitive. On top of that, our cases date back to 2020, which means FIDReC, the financial dispute resolution scheme in Singapore, is not available to us: it only covers cases from December 2024 onwards.
PayPal has removed every affordable route to justice from us and they don't even reply to our emails to negotiate so the only path left now is to contact regulators and make this practice visible, case by case, until deductions under "Damages" or "loss recovery" are ruled unlawful. Every documented case on this site is a data point for the next claimant, the next regulator, or the next judge who has to decide whether a payment platform can seize a user's entire balance with no proof of damages or losses suffered, and call it damages.
If you have suggestions or questions, feel free to contact us at: aupdamages(at)gmail.com