# PayPal Shipping Is Not Available; Your Account Has Not Been Charged **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 13, 2008, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paypal-shipping-is-not-available-your-account-has-not-been-charged/437501 "2008-02-13T21:04:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2008, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paypal-shipping-is-not-available-your-account-has-not-been-charged/437501/1 "2008-02-13T21:04:57Z")
Well, thank you very fucking much for not charging my account for a service you didn’t fucking provide! (If I wasn’t so tired, this would probably be in the Pit). I’ve been trying to ship several eBay packages for the past several hours. I got two done with no problem at all. I get to package three. I keep getting the same message: We are unable to generate your shipping label at this time. Your account has not been charged. PayPal shipping is currently unavailable, please try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience. Now, I’m not pissed that PayPal shipping is temporarily unavailable. Shit happens. What frosts my shorts (OK, it’s mid-February in Maryland; I’m not wearing shorts. Sue me.) is that you have to go through two fucking pages, one of which requires you to enter: the dimensions of the package, the weight of the package and the shipping date of the package; the second of which tells you how much this will cost and you click a button to authorize the withdrawal of funds from your account, _before_ you get the page that tells me I can’t ship right now! I’m not a tech or a geek. Maybe I just don’t have a firm enough grasp on how this stuff works. But how freakin’ hard could it be for them to just display a graphic that tells you, _before_ you jump through all those hoops, that you can’t do this right now? Whew! Thanks! I feel better now! Though I’ll feel even better when I can complete my eBay shipping. ---
**Author:** ![Sticks\_and\_Scones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sticks_and_scones/32/16951_2.png) [@Sticks\_and\_Scones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sticks_and_Scones)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2008, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paypal-shipping-is-not-available-your-account-has-not-been-charged/437501/2 "2008-02-13T21:10:02Z")
It’s been a pretty shitty day here, too. Tomorrow will be better for us, I hope. ---
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2008, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paypal-shipping-is-not-available-your-account-has-not-been-charged/437501/3 "2008-02-13T21:22:47Z")
[QUOTE=Always Brings Pie] It’s been a pretty shitty day here, too. Tomorrow will be better for us, I hope. [/QUOTE] Hmph. I hope so, too! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![racer72](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/racer72/32/3075_2.png) [@racer72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racer72)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2008, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paypal-shipping-is-not-available-your-account-has-not-been-charged/437501/4 "2008-02-14T01:43:38Z")
Last time I had this problem it was the recipients address that was causing the hangup. It was so screwed up (and as they listed it with Paypal) that the USPS site would not accept the transaction and I would get the error message. Make sure the address is correct, no periods required in the street address for abbreviations (St, Ave, NW, etc) and the names of the city are fully spelled with no abbreviations. It’s Saint Paul, not St. Paul. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2008, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paypal-shipping-is-not-available-your-account-has-not-been-charged/437501/5 "2008-02-14T04:12:35Z")
You had to wade through 2 pages of unnecessary information? I am sorry that your life has hit such a low point. Perhaps prayers and a sincere wish that your fortunes will change will allow you to experience happiness in the near future. Please put down the gun and remember that life is worth living. /sarcasm off ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2008, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paypal-shipping-is-not-available-your-account-has-not-been-charged/437501/6 "2008-02-14T04:43:19Z")
[QUOTE=jtgain] You had to wade through 2 pages of unnecessary information? [/QUOTE] Multiple times, to judge by her post. Poor design is always irritating, and should always be excoriated. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2008, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paypal-shipping-is-not-available-your-account-has-not-been-charged/437501/7 "2008-02-14T11:50:46Z")
[QUOTE=jtgain] You had to wade through 2 pages of unnecessary information? I am sorry that your life has hit such a low point. Perhaps prayers and a sincere wish that your fortunes will change will allow you to experience happiness in the near future. Please put down the gun and remember that life is worth living. /sarcasm off [/QUOTE] Well, no need to use up your monthly allotment of sarcasm on me. Save it for when you really need it. 😉 It’s not that I had to “wade through” two pages of unnecessary information. It’s that I did the same thing maybe 10 times, getting the same result every time. All I’m saying is, if PayPal shipping is unavailable, couldn’t they tell you that right up front instead of asking you to re-enter the information in order to try again, and fail again? But I think **racer72** might be right. It could be that particular address. I gave it about a 10-minute rest, then attempted to print out a label for the _other_ order I still had to ship, and everything went fine. Then I tried once again to ship the one that had given me so much trouble in the first place, and again got “PayPal shipping is unavailable at this time”. The reason I didn’t think of that before is that, in the past, I’ve gotten a notice that an address is unsatisfactory, or doesn’t agree with the USPS’s data base or something, and had to make adjustments to the shipping address. But I’ve never gotten “PayPal shipping is unavailable at this time” in response to a wonky address before.