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

blog.apparentsoft.com

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

#21

Post by rimantas »

tallanvor wrote: post #5

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…

> I can't even remember the last time I used them to do anything where it wasn't a hassle.

I can. It had never been a hassle to me. If there are several payment options available I choose paypal—it knows my shipping address and saves me from filling the same borring form again.

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

#22

Post by eli »

pkrumins wrote: post #14

Wondering if anyone has a success story with PayPal?

It's been working pretty good for me.

Maybe I got lucky -- I got an excellent account rep when signing up for the API. She gave me a direct number to her desk and whenever I have a problem I call her and she fixes it.

I actually sent an email to PayPal's Executive Customer Service department telling them how great she was and how there probably wouldn't be so many paypal horror stories if they had more reps like her... and they wrote back with a generic apology for the problems I'd encountered.

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

#23

Post by dhimes »

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.

Google isn't exactly easy when it comes to dispute resolution.

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

#24

Post by swombat »

The way I see it, for something as critical as payment infrastructure, it is simply not an option to go with someone who doesn't have a phone number where you can speak to a real, intelligent person who can act beyond the confines of a few support call scripts.

This is largely why we use a merchant account with a real bank (which has a dedicated account manager), and a gateway with quality support staff that always pick up the phone.

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

#26

Post by dhimes »

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 dug around a little. Apparently PayPal's problem is that some folks are selling pirated stuff (dvds, etc.), while advertising them as legit and using PayPal to do so. Under these circumstances they have to use any means they can to verify that the seller is legit and the software (whatever) is not pirated.

Apparently they were trying to do this here, but a bunch of emails wouldn't cut it. I can actually understand that.

However, there should be a channel for companies to pursue to expedite the process. If I were the Apparent Software, I would send a letter from an attorney- perhaps an affidavit- testifying to what I was trying to do. This would at least take PayPal off the legal hook for anything they are trying to do.

And it's a lesson for all of us. If we want to partner like this, we have to make it easy for our "silent" partners (PayPal, Google Checkout, Amazon-- they are all in the same boat here) to play along. I'm grateful to the blogger for posting: this problem wouldn't have occurred to me.

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

#28

Post by pierrefar »

ig1 wrote: post #12
bdfh42 wrote: post #6

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…

The reason that PayPal survived and is still around is because they took a very risk averse attitude and pro-actively try to combat fraud. Most of their competitors didn't fail because of lack of customers, they failed because they couldn't handle the fraud. If you want to get a more detailed view of the issues have a read of the interview Max Levchin gave to JL in Founders at Work.

There is a big difference between aggressive fraud protection and pooping on your customers. Being polite and handling mistakes intelligently doesn't mean they can't combat fraud effectively.

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

#29

Post by shin_lao »

sailormoon wrote: post #25
shin_lao wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No signature.

.. only an electronic paper trail a mile long. Email is absolutely of legal value.

I'd like you to exhibit cases where e-mail was ok to grant a copyright permission.

My lawyers always told me the following: everything formal must be fax, snail mail or signed with an electronic certificate (I declare and pay my taxes with the later for example).

Copyright handover is not just "ok we're going to buy you 2 computers" kind of e-mail.

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