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

81–90 of 100 posts

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

#81

Post by sorbits »

pkrumins wrote: post #17
josefresco wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Can you tell more about "money market option"? I'd like to try it but I can't find it anywhere in my PayPal account.

This is only for US accounts.

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

#82

Post by sorbits »

josefresco wrote: post #9
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 th…

I’ve been using PayPal for five years and have had accounts in 3 different countries, personal and business.

I have experienced my account having been frozen a few times, but in all but one case it was just a matter of uploading the required documents. The one case where this wasn’t enough was because an account had been frozen with the claim that I used it for “cash advance”, but the actual reason was something else, so I had to call them — they do have a number you can call with an actual human in the other end.

I have also sold to a lot of people via PayPal, and there is definitely a lot of fraud going on, as people have used stolen credit cards and hacked accounts more times than I’d thought to buy my product — so to some degree I do understand why PayPal are pretty strict. They are also under a lot of external regulation about anti money laundering and similar.

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

#83

Post by sorbits »

idan wrote: post #33
chaosmachine wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

2CO can do international wire transfers.

I use them as a secondary account because some of my customers refuse to use PayPal, and 2CO really sucks compared to PayPal. They haven’t frozen my account, but their UI is crap, their fees are higher, there is delay before payment appears in my account, they keep a “reserve” when they do payouts, etc.

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

#84

Post by Hexstream »

ErrantX wrote: post #4

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 earn…

"a standard review of closed cases highlighted mine for reopening"

I think that's in fact true. As in, their standard review of closed cases includes a clause that they should indulge in the face of legal threats in most cases.

But it does sound funny!

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

#86

Post by cakesy »

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.

Could very easily fake that. Sure, you and I would know it was a fake, but most people would not.

You are an idiot for using paypal in the first place, as many people have already said. There are so many horror stories out there, just do a search.

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

#89

Post by dangrossman »

nfnaaron wrote: post #77
jamroom wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use both PayPal and Fastspring as our payment processors (Fastspring is there to give customers an option besides paypal). Fastspring is excellent customer service, and their "springboard" interface is very nice. Fees are a bit high, but they do offer additional services on top of what you can get from PayPal. I've built merchant processor plugins for several different systems (2checkout, worldpay, alertpay) and NO…

"I use both PayPal and Fastspring as our payment processors (Fastspring is there to give customers an option besides paypal)." I wonder if this is something of a best practice, to have two payment processors running live. Besides giving customers a choice, you also have the other one already up, running and accepting money if paypal or whoever freezes you.

It absolutely is. Not only can you lose your access to a payment method at any time (even a merchant account), but the service/API might be offline. Authorizenet suffered a big outage not too many months ago. The smart companies had other payment options available and simply took away the Authnet powered method until the service was restored, the companies that didn't plan so well were essentially not doing business.

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

#90

Post by dangrossman »

pkrumins wrote: post #14

Wondering if anyone has a success story with PayPal?

9 years, a quarter million in revenue per year through PayPal alone, account never limited or frozen, and always get a helpful business representative on the phone.
Post reply on HN