Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Is PayPal good for your microISV business?” A short PayPal horror story

blog.apparentsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 100 posts

Re: “Is PayPal good for your microISV business?” A short PayPal horror story

#2

Post by robk »

Time and time again I've heard these PayPal horror stories (and at www.paypalsucks.com). I am very leery of PayPal and make it a point to always transfer any balance out immediately, as their freezes seem like a nightmare to deal with. I wish Google Checkout had a more compelling product, and that there were a better solution for C2C sales.

Re: “Is PayPal good for your microISV business?” A short PayPal horror story

#3

Post by dangrover »

I've processed about $80K in transactions with PayPal with my microISV with no problems. And I think they're better than all the other solutions. But I never keep a balance because I'm afraid of this sort of thing.

Something like this happened with a charity drive at SomethingAwful: http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/paypal-fiasco-summary.p...

There's apparently no way to quickly talk to an intelligent person with the knowledge and authority to resolve a situation like this should one come up. It seems like with the fees they take out they could do a lot better.

Re: “Is PayPal good for your microISV business?” A short PayPal horror story

#4

Post by ErrantX »

I've had similar problems with Paypal accounts in the past too.

Although it's an absolute joke I have found they only respond to formal legal threats. At one point they limited my account, with a couple of grand in it, in the same way (nothing in, nothing out, wait 180 days). So I sent them a letter basically saying "release my money or your staring down the barrel of a legal gun" and listed a whole load of lost earnings, recompense etc. I "would be seeking".

For the most part it was empty threats (I could probably have sued - but had no cash to do so) but someone actually rang me the day it arrived; never mentioned the letter but "a standard review of closed cases highlighted mine for reopening"...

It's idiotic.

Re: “Is PayPal good for your microISV business?” A short PayPal horror story

#5

Post by tallanvor »

I've gotten to the point where I refuse to use PayPal for buying or selling products. --I can't even remember the last time I used them to do anything where it wasn't a hassle.

I suspect they probably see much higher percentages of fraud than other payment processors, and as such have decided they'd rather shut down accounts and reverse payments without warning rather than actually trying to detect and prevent fraud in the first place.

Re: “Is PayPal good for your microISV business?” A short PayPal horror story

#6

Post by bdfh42 »

I suspect that PayPal is the payment processor of choice for all crooks and scammers. Thus, choosing them as your payment processor is risking your business reputation - they will always default to treating their customers with suspicion and if they have your cash in their coffers then they will sit on it given any excuse to be "suspicious" - that's the business model they operate within.

While the cost of processing payments is an issue (particularly with otherwise low cost software downloads) it is important to link your business to partners with a solid reputation for probity and good service.

Re: “Is PayPal good for your microISV business?” A short PayPal horror story

#8

Post by scotty79 »

I am really glad that I've read this. I plan to build a bit unorthodox website and I was intending to use PayPal for money transfers between the users. After reading this I am almost sure that my PayPal account would get suspended at any decent amount of popularity. Can you point out some other alternatives? I was thinking about money bookers.

Re: “Is PayPal good for your microISV business?” A short PayPal horror story

#9

Post by josefresco »

robk wrote: post #2

Time and time again I've heard these PayPal horror stories (and at www.paypalsucks.com). I am very leery of PayPal and make it a point to always transfer any balance out immediately, as their freezes seem like a nightmare to deal with. I wish Google Checkout had a more compelling product, and that there were a better solution for C2C sales.

I've heard horror story after horror story and yet I've never had any issues with PayPal. I've stored money there, used their Visa/debit cart and even opted into their money market option and made some money (off my money) for several years.

Factoring in anecdotal evidence like this (or mine) always has risks.

I'm sure you could find someone local who absolutely hates the bank you choose to have accounts with, but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll have issues.

Post reply on HN