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I was going to register PayPalSucks.com...

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Re: I was going to register PayPalSucks.com...

#11

Post by dangrossman »

shabda wrote: post #10
dangrossman wrote: post #3

With 184 million accounts (more than 73 million active), they're gonna have a few complaints. And most of these complaints are about accounts being temporarily frozen after sending money to or from a country with a high rate of fraud. Good fraud detection and mitigation is the only reason PayPal is here today where their many attempted competitors went out of business in the dot-com days and since. Generally a single…

Lets see. I am in India. They have frozen bank withdrwals without any prior intimation, and this is almost unbeliveable any personal intimation after that as well. 1. Bank transfers to India have been frozen since 27 Jan at least (Not personal exp, other people exp on various forums). The first communications from Paypal was 6th Feb, when the shitstorm was already out. 2. I have ~45KUSD with Paypal, which I cant with…

PayPal's issue with Indian accounts was due to your local banking regulations. PayPal cannot violate your local laws, so if you want change, then change the laws. You can't blame them for being cut off by your banks. And github keeping you updated on their server status isn't the same as a publicly traded international corporation keeping you updated on private talks with a government and banks.

The lesson you should take away has to be that you shouldn't treat a payment processor like a bank and hold $45,000 there. Doing business is in part about assessing risk, and holding all your money in a PayPal account should've jumped out as a major risk even without this situation.

Re: I was going to register PayPalSucks.com...

#12

Post by dangrossman »

jeffmould wrote: post #8
dangrossman wrote: post #3

With 184 million accounts (more than 73 million active), they're gonna have a few complaints. And most of these complaints are about accounts being temporarily frozen after sending money to or from a country with a high rate of fraud. Good fraud detection and mitigation is the only reason PayPal is here today where their many attempted competitors went out of business in the dot-com days and since. Generally a single…

I am curious to what you sell and what the average sale price is? Also, what is your daily volume? From what I have seen the people who experience the most issues are the ones who do high volumes daily, ones that sell virtual products, and individuals who have lower credit scores (I know this because I have read some of the forums). The other thing I have found is that people who never have problems or very limited p…

My average ticket is around $40 and my volume is in the tens of thousands per month range. Many small tickets, in other words, rather than few big ones. I sell virtual goods and services, nothing tangible. Over the course of the ten years, there have been over 100 held payments, reversals, and chargebacks. PayPal has won a significant number of those chargebacks and recovered the funds for me.

The situation you described of having an account closed due to fraud problems, funds held for 180 days, and no help during that time is the same experience they'd have with a merchant account anywhere else. The policies are exactly the same, because they trickle down from the card associations themselves -- more than 1% chargeback rate, or a categorization as a high risk business due to what's being sold, and the MAP is bound to close the account and hold payments for 6 months or their own ability to process credit cards becomes at risk with Visa and MasterCard.

I've actually gone through that with a normal merchant account underwritten by a bank. My experience with PayPal has been much more pleasant, though I expect they would do no less if for some reason they classified me as high risk. They have the same obligations to Visa/MasterCard as anyone else doing payment processing does.

Re: I was going to register PayPalSucks.com...

#13

Post by zackattack »

w3matter wrote: post #7
gchucky wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a bunch of threads around here; http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=526517 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=918700 have a bunch of alternatives on them. Seems like people are okay with Spreedly and Braintree.

Nope those are systems that few people use. If I'm gonna pay a contractor in virtually any country, PayPal is the place to be.

amazon payments

Re: I was going to register PayPalSucks.com...

#15

Post by shabda »

dangrossman wrote: post #11
shabda wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets see. I am in India. They have frozen bank withdrwals without any prior intimation, and this is almost unbeliveable any personal intimation after that as well. 1. Bank transfers to India have been frozen since 27 Jan at least (Not personal exp, other people exp on various forums). The first communications from Paypal was 6th Feb, when the shitstorm was already out. 2. I have ~45KUSD with Paypal, which I cant with…

PayPal's issue with Indian accounts was due to your local banking regulations. PayPal cannot violate your local laws, so if you want change, then change the laws. You can't blame them for being cut off by your banks. And github keeping you updated on their server status isn't the same as a publicly traded international corporation keeping you updated on private talks with a government and banks. The lesson you should…

> PayPal's issue with Indian accounts was due to your local banking regulations.

As I said,

1. Paypal support said it is technical, not a regulatory issue. Their blog only confirms it only personal transfers being a regulatory issue. They have stopped all transactions, including my business account, which accepted no personal transaction.

2. In spite of their saying otherwise I am willing to believe it is a regulatory issue, my major issue is with their absolute lack of transparency and willingness to commit too any timeline.

> The lesson you should take away has to be that you shouldn't treat a payment processor like a bank and hold $45,000 there. Doing business is in part about assessing risk, and holding all your money in a PayPal account should've jumped out as a major risk even without this situation.

1. Totally agree that I failed in accessing risk, however Paypal is classified as bank in a number of jurisdictions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Bank_status . I hope you would agree that this behavior should be enough grounds t revoke their bank status?

2. Its not all my money, though quite a significant percentage of it. However, I am assuming that there a quite a number of people in India whose weekly transaction is > 45K$, so holding that in a Paypal account is not really unheard of.

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