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PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

nytimes.com

41–50 of 92 posts

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#42
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, Paypal is declared and regulated as a bank in the EU, declared in Luxembourg. So if something like this happens to you as an european, either sender or receiver, use your rights. > As of July 2007, PayPal provides localized versions of its service to customers in the EU through PayPal (Europe) S.A.R.L. et Cie, SCA., a wholly-owned subsidiary of PayPal that is licensed as a bank in Luxembourg. Whereas: > In the U…

@nolok what is the value of this regulation? Some recent/current examples. 1) During the banking crisis after 2007 EU banks loose 100billions of euro's and the taxpayer mostly payed for their losses. 2) They get 80billon euro's for free every month ( quantitative easing ) from the ECB which goes down the drain, iow into their profit, not into supporting the economy. 3) Up till the Greece crisis, Greece had to pay hig…

I don't think the parent said that Paypal is nice and good in Europe. It merely said that they might be under a stricter regulatory control in Europe, so unhappy customers have more tools available to keep them to account.

[Edit/add]: However, American citizens have often stronger tools available in class action suites. EU countries trust the authorities, and it is then up to officials to control parties like Paypal. Do they do it? It's not necessarily very consistent.

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#43

Why is it, when an established company does something like this, the headline talks about "redirecting contributions", instead of calling it what it is? Why not just say "Paypal Defrauds Donors"?

I remember that several Xorg developers alleged that Paypal robbed Xorg. I think Xorg never got anything back. https://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1417033.html I recall reading a bible quote or might have been another religious book. It said, when a powerless man breaks the law, a crime has been committed, but when a powerful man breaks the law, the law was unclear.

Because when you have lots of money, you can afford to use the threat of expensive libel lawsuits to keep people in line. The prospect of dragging someone into litigation is enough of a chilling effect they don't even have to commit to it for it to be effective.

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#44
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, Paypal is declared and regulated as a bank in the EU, declared in Luxembourg. So if something like this happens to you as an european, either sender or receiver, use your rights. > As of July 2007, PayPal provides localized versions of its service to customers in the EU through PayPal (Europe) S.A.R.L. et Cie, SCA., a wholly-owned subsidiary of PayPal that is licensed as a bank in Luxembourg. Whereas: > In the U…

@nolok what is the value of this regulation? Some recent/current examples. 1) During the banking crisis after 2007 EU banks loose 100billions of euro's and the taxpayer mostly payed for their losses. 2) They get 80billon euro's for free every month ( quantitative easing ) from the ECB which goes down the drain, iow into their profit, not into supporting the economy. 3) Up till the Greece crisis, Greece had to pay hig…

> 80billon euro's for free every month (quantitative easing) from the ECB which goes down the drain, iow into their profit, not into supporting the economy

This is not how QE works and it is absolutely not free money.

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#45
post #34

Paypal is evil, but what are the alternatives? AliPay? WebMoney? Bitcoin??

The good'ol cash or physical check will always work. Don't believe so called the 'new money': you lose all control of your own money and at someone else's mercy.

Physical checks are headed for the dustbin of history. I write at most a check per year these days, and haven't had a new checkbook issued in the last decade. When I moved to the UK 17 years ago, it was the first time I'd seen a check since childhood - they were already "extinct" for most purposes in Norway back then. Since then I've witnessed the rapid decline in check usage in the UK as well.

Cash is headed that way too but it'll take longer.

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#46

So my parents run a non-profit and a recently letter we got from Amazon Smile explains what is happening here. Amazon Smile is a service were you can choose a charity for Amazon to donate to. When you shop at Amazon, a small percentage of that money goes to the selected charity. Recently they got a letter in the mail explaining they had been chosen as recipients of this Amazon Smile money. The thing is, they never ch…

That probably explains why the amazon smile program included a local charity that caught me by surprise. I didn't think the local office would be technically savvy to sign up for a special amazon program.

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#47

Why is it, when an established company does something like this, the headline talks about "redirecting contributions", instead of calling it what it is? Why not just say "Paypal Defrauds Donors"?

Fraud is a legal term that presumes a finding in a court of law to be anything other than a nonsense word (that means whatever someone thinks it means). It's absolutely correct in this case for the headline to refer to "redirect" because no court has found that to be fraud (yet) - that's the allegation the lawsuit is making.

It's why we don't call murder suspects murderers.

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#48
post #9

It looks like that the Humble Bundle is also affected by this. On their webpage, it says "Charitable contributions administered by PayPal Giving Fund" and "PayPal Giving Fund retains ultimate discretion and control over the use of the donations it receives from Humble Bundle." Is there a way to know which charities are registered with Paypal?

so I did great to always specify 100% to the devs

Re: PayPal Redirects Charitable Contributions Without Consent, Lawsuit Says

#50
post #11

Remember when in the aftermath of Katrina, Paypal seized donations fundraised from Something Awful intended for the Red Cross for "fraud" and then refused to release them even when everyone told them they knew full well what was going on? After they got called onto the mat they finally agreed to release the funds but only to one of their own selected list of charities, all of which had vastly greater overhead expense…

PayPal is a nightmarish company. I've lost ~3000 USD to PayPal when I was doing small business back in early 2000s. Their "buyer first" policy had screwed us big time, even though we have provided all the documentation to contest the bogus claims. PayPal froze our money, and terrorized me for a whole year with collections agencies. It was awful. I am out of 3K dollars, and I have stopped using PayPal since.

Only ~500 for me, but same deal. Fradulent buyers flat out lying and no amount of evidence on my side stopped them from trying to go to collections over it.
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