341–350 of 396 posts
Snarkly I will mention that this is the same company that 'HN darling' Elon Musk was part of prior to his current life. Everything that everyone hates about paypal existed back then.
I also find this interesting. Musk's startup history is often cited as evidence of his serial success, but it's hardly mentioned that the startup that earned his fortune is widely detested as a "necessary evil".
If ever there was a single shining example of how not to treat your customers, PayPal is it. Every year or two there is another story of a different arcane rule they have in place that is enforced with zero human consideration, oftentimes to deprive people access to their funds. They don't learn from their mistakes, nor acknowledge them in the first place. I can't think of another company that has drummed up such bad…
What can I use instead of paypal?
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Depends how you store your bitcoin. You can't zero-day exploit a cold wallet.
I don't use bitcoin, so I might be missing something, but don't you have to transfer funds from the cold wallet to your device at some point, and doesn't that mean that any malware waiting on your device could just grab the whole thing at that exact moment? In any case, even if you could secure the wallet, it still doesn't address the fact that once the funds are sent, they're not recoverable; I think it's unreasonab…
You can use a hardware wallet. I do. All of the cryptography takes place on the hardware wallet device, and there is only a small, well-defined interface between the wallet device and the computer.
I use a Trezor[1], and like it. A Ledger Nano S[2] is also good (a bit more button-clicking required on the device, but improved Ethereum support - it integrates with Mist with no additional setup required).
If ever there was a single shining example of how not to treat your customers, PayPal is it. Every year or two there is another story of a different arcane rule they have in place that is enforced with zero human consideration, oftentimes to deprive people access to their funds. They don't learn from their mistakes, nor acknowledge them in the first place. I can't think of another company that has drummed up such bad…
What can I use instead of paypal?
There are are probably local debit-card based payment processors available to you as well; iDeal is one such system that is very popular in the Netherlands, it lets you pay with any Dutch debit account just as easily as with PayPal. It's a system in that there are a bunch of companies offering access to it. AFAIK processing costs are around ~€0.10, irrespective of transaction size at least for transactions under €1000.
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No, it would be like you're employer sacking you because you have a criminal record for something serious but you had put 'No criminal record' on your CV/resume when you applied.
PayPal had known for a decade that he signed up before he was 18 years old, but did nothing about it. At the time they closed his account, he was well over 18 years old so why would it matter? Besides 'a criminal record' and 'signed up for a service a bit before you were eligible' are hardly comparable.
If you are mostly buyer, then online payment is already easy (few clicks and 1 SMS password away).
If you are seller, setting up your website to support credit card payments takes maybe two hours.
I really don't see the use case for PayPal, especially given the constant complaints.
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He did not commit financial fraud. He might have broken a TOS, but bringing up financial fraud is just silly. Honestly, in many jurisdictions (except for the punishment happy ones) being under certain age, ie. 18 or 17 automatically makes you non-persecutable for a lot of the "soft" offenses. So even if you tried to claim opening a PayPal account is a financial fraud, it would likely never stand up in court.
Actually an interesting question. If the TOS includes the terms (1) you certify that all information provided to us is accurate (2) if you breach the TOS you must stop using the product and (3) you certify that you are over 18. Then your continued use after age 18 may in fact signify entering a contract, even though you were under 18 when you signed. It also may not. Capacity/consideration/intent to be bound are real…
If every company assumed that every person with a discretion to their name was an undesirable customer, virtually none of us would be customers of any company.
Just close your account if you have a PayPal account at all. They limit and freeze funds at random and good luck resolving it. OP, You can refund the funds to the sender less Paypal's 30¢ cut, I believe. That might be the best way to get the money back to your friend, and then they can re-send it to you with something sane like Google Wallet.
I tried removing my debit account coupling but it refuses citing "a pending transaction" (no specific reference given).
The "close my account" button takes me to an error message. I guess I'm spamming all their email addresses I can enumerate until this is resolved.
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Forget fees, I once tried to buy something in the US from some stranger and he refused to give me his account number and accept a wire even if I paid for everything (and the sum was big enough that PP wouldn't be cheaper). The guy literally thought I want his number for some scam. "Only PayPal, please, it's secure, blah blah blah". Talk about culture shock.
It is useful to know that, in the US, if you have sufficient information to send a payment into an account you also have sufficient information to debit it. Americans are, accordingly, leery about giving out account numbers. Americans are not historically leery about giving out checks but, fun fact, we put all the information needed to empty an account on every check. Why? Long story; legacy systems rule the world. T…
Wait, what? The only thing needed to send a payment is a target account number. So, if banks in US consider that enough info to DEBIT the account then something went terribly wrong there. In Europe, to take money out of the account you need to either
- go to the bank, and show your photo ID to prove that you're you.
- login to online transaction system and prove your identity by knowing the login password and one-time SMS password.
That's why many charity institutions simply put their account number on their website and ask for donations - there's zero risk someone will debit their account.
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The same is true in the UK, a direct debit instruction can be setup on an account using just the name, number and sort code, but it doesn't make us more wary, much in the same way that supplying one's home address is enough to take out lines of credit in that person's name
This sounds incredibly insecure, is it exploited much?