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Burning man defeats PayPal

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Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#31

Post by MichaelSalib »

CamperBob wrote: post #21
pinksoda wrote: post #20

PayPal once made me refund every customer in the last 6 months. They said it was the only way to unfreeze my account. I gave them the thumbs up because I had no other options at the time, and they said, "you have to manually refund them one-by-one yourself and then call us when it is done". It was really strange. They permanently froze my account after I refunded everyone and refused to talk to me when I called. I wa…

Well, that certainly sounds like half of a good story.

Yeah, this is the sort of thing that happens when a business decides that it will simply terminate communication with a customer without explanation. We don't get to hear their side of the story. The customer has no idea what's going on. That's a pretty bad business practice.

I've heard enough insane PayPal stories from enough people that I trust such that I have no trouble believing pinksoda.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#32

Post by pyre »

I think that PayPal has the same problem as many police departments. The police spend so much time dealing with criminals and looking for criminals, that soon everyone that isn't a police officer looks and feels like a criminal.

PayPal seems to have the same issue with fraudsters. They spend the majority of their time dealing with fraud and looking for fraud (the good transactions are automated and therefore abstracted away from human eyes for the most part) that everything that comes across their desk looks like fraud and is treated as guilty until proven innocent (hey, just like the IRS!). The assumption probably is that 'the system' detects fraud and 'the system' is practically infallible, so when it flags something as fraud they need mountains of evidence to prove that 'the system' is wrong (because 'the system' is perfect, didn't you know?).

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#33

Post by mironathetin »

pinksoda wrote: post #20

PayPal once made me refund every customer in the last 6 months. They said it was the only way to unfreeze my account. I gave them the thumbs up because I had no other options at the time, and they said, "you have to manually refund them one-by-one yourself and then call us when it is done". It was really strange. They permanently froze my account after I refunded everyone and refused to talk to me when I called. I wa…

Interesting to read that. I thought it is only Paypal Germany whose customer service is bad. My experience with Paypal is, that they deliberately freeze my account and ask for private information and business details, that you really don't want to distribute. If I don't send them, the account remains frozen - well, I may upload money any time ;o).

And indeed, Paypal also doesn't talk to me anymore. They don't close my account on request, they don't respond to any kind of mails. Only the list of problems to resolve gets longer and longer.

Please read their terms and conditions. It is one document with numerous extensions, 48 pages as I counted them the last time! The way it is done looks to me like they want to make it impossible to understand (my personal interpretation). Try to find out under which circumstances Paypal may freeze your account or under which circumstances they transfer your money , as you request: It is their personal decision. There are no clear criteria given. It is a matter how much they think you can be trusted. Check it yourself.

Sorry for the rant. Hearing the name of Paypal really makes me angry.

Steve Jobs once said: I don't sign a contract that is longer than 1 page. Good advice.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#34

Post by christonog »

gimmejimmy wrote: post #26

Here is another example of how PayPal is a bit shady: Sign into PayPal to send money. If you have a credit card as a payment method and a bank account as a payment method, PayPal will auto select your bank account. That's fine, except when you change your payment method from the default bank account to your credit card. A confirmation page comes up and tries to change your selection back to your bank account. There a…

Yes! I mainly use my credit card for everything online, including paypal, and that trick does get me on some occasions when I'm not paying close attention. It's probably a cost saving measure as credit cards most likely cost more to transact with than bank accounts.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#35

Post by almost »

bluelu wrote: post #22

To every story there is also the other side of the story. They obviously don't freeze accounts account just like that for fun, so they certainly had some reasons to do so.

No, they freeze accounts when their automated system flags them. Things like you had more sales this week than normal. Then they won't talk to you or the people who will talk to you are so brain dead that they actually don't seem to understand what Paypal has already done or don't realise when they're asking you to do impossible things.

That's my experience with them anyway. Eventually got it all sorted out but at the cost of not being able to get at my money for about a month.

Just having friendly helpful customer support who can explain what's going on would make a huge difference.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#36

Post by almost »

CamperBob wrote: post #21
pinksoda wrote: post #20

PayPal once made me refund every customer in the last 6 months. They said it was the only way to unfreeze my account. I gave them the thumbs up because I had no other options at the time, and they said, "you have to manually refund them one-by-one yourself and then call us when it is done". It was really strange. They permanently froze my account after I refunded everyone and refused to talk to me when I called. I wa…

Well, that certainly sounds like half of a good story.

Except that's probably is most of the story. Seriously, PayPal do this kind of thing. I'm sure they do it to loads and loads of scammers (who presumably set up a whole lot of accounts) but they also do it to normal people just trying to use the service.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#37

Post by acgourley »

russell wrote: post #27
CamperBob wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that certainly sounds like half of a good story.

Your point is well taken, but I have never seen a comment, here or elsewhere, where someone lauded the great PayPal service or the quick conflict resolution. It's always about being blindsided. Folks, if you have GOOD stories, those are worth posting for balance.

Well the good story is pretty mundane. Here's mine: the payments have always gone through.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#38

Post by bmm6o »

acgourley wrote: post #37
russell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is well taken, but I have never seen a comment, here or elsewhere, where someone lauded the great PayPal service or the quick conflict resolution. It's always about being blindsided. Folks, if you have GOOD stories, those are worth posting for balance.

Well the good story is pretty mundane. Here's mine: the payments have always gone through.

Point taken, but how about a story where there was a conflict that was settled quickly and fairly?

In my case, my account was flagged (the business was legit, but I could understand if they had some cause for concern), but it was such a hassle to satisfy them I gave up. I couldn't talk to a person; I had to send dozens of faxes; I couldn't even email - I had to use a stupid form with a character limit; it was never laid out what I had to do or how many steps remained.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#39

Post by MaysonL »

tomh- wrote: post #5
wallflower wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I simply do not understand why there are not more competitors to PayPal If you read the excellent interview with Max Levchin in Founders at Work, he alludes to the fact that PayPal is really just a state-of-the-art, best-in-class fraud detection system with a payment frontend. He also says that Banks are more conservative than PayPal - in that they can't go after a business model where there is going to be fraud -…

He forgot to mention it has an extremely large number of false positives using that system. The reason it might work is because they take/freeze money from innocent customers. The amount of horror stories about Paypal significantly outnumber the horror stories about regular banks or credit card companies.

This is probably only because the bank horror stories are (mainly) small: a late fee here, an overdraft fee or two or three there, a bumped up credit card interest rate, etc. The banks probably do as much per customer as PayPal, but they spread the pain out, so it isn't quite as noticeable.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#40

Post by ahoyhere »

tomh- wrote: post #24
patio11 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of horror stories about Paypal significantly outnumber the horror stories about regular banks or credit card companies. I surmise this is because you're a techy and you talk to people who run businesses online on a regular basis. If you spent a lot of time on, e.g., credit card discussion boards (they exist), or spoke to "regular people" about their payment issues on a regular basis, I suspect you would co…

You are right I'm a techy, I talk to people who run online businesses, they use PayPal and other methods. PayPal is by far the biggest problem when it comes to payment solutions. Also I'm from Europe, which means I talk to people who use the common solutions in Europe to deal with payments, which is direct bank transfers or an online alternative provided by banks (such as iDeal in Holland). While our banks don't requ…

Banks in Europe are tightly controlled. You have no idea what it's like in the US.

Imagine a system where…

1. You pay a 20% fee to withdraw money from an ATM that doesn't belong to your bank.

2. The bank puts thru a charge they shouldn't, you run out of cash, and you get whacked with a $35 fee.

3. The bank charges you a monthly fee after that - another $35 fee.

4. The bank shuts off your card because you're in another city, meanwhile you're lost in the dark, and alone, and out of money, and can't get a cab.

And on and on and on…

Not to mention outright defrauding.

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