Pay Pal frustrations

I use paypal quite a bit for my eBay business and for bulk orders between different suppliers and myself. Ive always had a bit of trouble with paypal holding my funds for a certain period (perhaps 3-5 days) and just accepted it as part of doing business online. Recently I placed some fairly large orders that I needed in promptly, and paid through paypal as always. After 2 weeks and not recieving payment confirmation I called the suppliers and was told that the payment had JUST cleared that day, and products would be shipped ASAP.

Now whats the deal?
I understand that paypal makes a decent chunk of their money through tiny interest earnings on money passed through their servers, but do they REALLY have to hold my funds for 2 flippin weeks?!? Has anyone else had this problem and if so, is there another service that can be just as easily used to save me this aggravation and pissed off customers?

And yes, I am linked to paypal directly through multiple forms of payment including bank transfer, debit card and credit card.

It may not be the interest earnings that are slowing the process. They probably cut staff like many other capitalists and the remaining workers are overloaded.

Generally, its an automated process. There is very little actual "teller" interaction. Is there really no other alternative to them?

There are a lot of hits on Google to:
paypal alternative

And yet paypal is so deeply inbeded in the online market. For example, eBay. Many large sellers wont accept any form of paymet BUT paypal. Its looking more and more like Im going to be stuck with it

There's alternatives out there but because the vast majority of people use Paypal and so many of them are Paypal exclusive it might be a wiser choice to use it as well.

Some of the alternatives include:

AlertPay

TrialPay

Digital River

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