Check out the Community Boards over at eBay, especially Dolls and PayPal.
If your accounts are just open and you haven't had activity for a couple years, you won't be considered active. Things have changed. PayPal may well hold your money until after your buyer leaves positive feedback.
Forms of payment other than PayPal are allowed, but good luck getting another provider to show up and be active in your listings. EBay says this other one works, but I couldn't get it to go active in my eBay account. I think it was ProPay but don't remember the name for sure.
There are other marketplaces out there. Bonanzle is doing well, is friendly, has great support, no listing fees, low final value fees, is easy to use, and has a strong helpful community. The sellers there just had a big Christmas in July promotion and are about to launch another promotion. I don't like commercializing religion, pfft, just a stick in the mud that way and certainly seem to be in the minority. Bonanzle uses a fixed price format with a Best Offer option. Some run live auctions in the chat window in their booths. That takes a lot of promotion to be effective.
If you have something that likely to attract many bidders in auction, eBay may get you the better price. If your items aren't likely to attract multiple bidders, Bonanzle will save you costs and be much less of a headache.
Yes, PayPal will keep your money for 30 days or more, but only when you sell on eBay. And they won't tell you why they do it. They'll just give you some generic crap about it be standard policy for the good of the community.
Ebay also does this. If they think your item won't sell or you may be a scammer or you don't have a recent track record of successful sales with good feedback, they likely will not allow your item to be shown in search and will never let you know. But, yep, they take your listing fees. All you are left with is sitting there wondering why no one is clicking on your auctions. Your reputation before you went inactive doesn't mean jack to them.
