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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

#31

Post by ivenkys »

swombat wrote: post #24

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 p…

Yes - there are times when you absolutely must speak to a human being, make your systems as easy and automated as possible but when i am stuck i need to be able to pick the phone and talk to a person.

FirstDirect - are very good at that.

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

#32

Post by Aegean »

dhimes wrote: post #26
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…

Apparently the specialists were incompetent to distinguish between standard pirated software sale and a software vendor's niche product.

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

#33

Post by idan »

chaosmachine wrote: post #10
dfischer wrote: post #7

What's an alternative to PayPal then?

Google Checkout, Amazon Payments, 2Checkout, Authorize.net, and other cc processors. Or get a merchant account.

Pretty much every big payment processor is viable so long as you have a US Bank account into which you withdraw your sales revenue—except a lot of us live outside of Bushland and thus the only option is either using a local bank/merchant account (expensive, complex, slow-moving, don't understand new technology, poor interface, etc) or paypal.

ApparentSoft is a developer based in Israel, like me. They probably opted to use PayPal because PayPal recently opened up the ability to withdraw directly to an Israeli Bank account -- something which all the ohter entrants on this list cannot do (with the possible exception of 2CO, haven't looked at them).

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

#34

Post by grayprog »

dhimes wrote: post #26
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…

On the first page of the fax we wrote all 6 paypal accounts of our partners + all the URLs at _their sites_ where they show link to the sale.

Surely, the 6 vendors won't point to a pirate selling web site, right? Also, we provided all their 6 paypal accounts. They could just call them to verify (which they apparently did when processing limitations of my partner's account).

Jacob. Apparent Software.

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

#35

Post by dhimes »

Aegean wrote: post #32
dhimes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apparently the specialists were incompetent to distinguish between standard pirated software sale and a software vendor's niche product.

It may have been the bundling that caused the problems- I don't know. If one of my competitors started bundling my software with theirs I would be grateful for this kind of leverage. On the other hand, there should be some known (= advertised) means of acceptable proof for resolving disputes.

If may also make a difference if you are working as a sole proprietor vs having a govt id # (EIN in the US). But this is wild speculation.

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

#36

Post by dhimes »

grayprog wrote: post #34
dhimes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On the first page of the fax we wrote all 6 paypal accounts of our partners + all the URLs at _their sites_ where they show link to the sale. Surely, the 6 vendors won't point to a pirate selling web site, right? Also, we provided all their 6 paypal accounts. They could just call them to verify (which they apparently did when processing limitations of my partner's account). Jacob. Apparent Software.

That seems like enough to me, but the problem apparently is that you couldn't get through to someone who actually had authority+knowledge to fix this. It sounds like you can't even get anybody who can tell you what evidence is required. That is a total FAIL on PayPal's part.

But Google does the same thing. I have an issue with adwords that comes up over and over, and nobody there will give me a workaround.

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

#37

Post by bcl »

dangrover wrote: post #3

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…

Same here. I've been using them for years with no problems. These stories worry me enough that I do an annual review of the other options out there -- but none of them are as good as PayPal. I also don't keep funds in my PP account, as well as transfer them out of the associated bank account ASAP since there is the potential that they could drain that as well.

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

#38

Post by jmonegro »

I once had my PayPal account "temporarily" suspended under similar circumstances. Usually, all you have to do is fax them/upload copies of documents verifying your identity and you should be set within a week, if you're persistent and diligent.

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

#39

Post by EvilTrout »

pkrumins wrote: post #14

Wondering if anyone has a success story with PayPal?

I've been using Paypal for years to collect money and they have been working great.

During one month where our sales were particularaly high they froze our account too, but not for incoming transactions, so no money was lost.

I called them on the phone and was able to speak to a representative in 5 minutes who sorted it out. Not exactly a horror story.

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