Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Paypal is holding over 600,000 euros from the minecraft developer

notch.tumblr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 182 posts

Re: Paypal is holding over 600,000 euros from the minecraft developer

#71

Post by sankara »

drtse4 wrote: post #49
die_sekte wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's Google Checkout and Amazon Payments, neither of which work outside the US. There's also AlertPay, which is apparently used by IPREDator and which is sometimes used by 7chan. I'm not sure whether I trust them more than PayPal.

Do you mean that you can't register to checkout and amazon as a seller if you are not an US resident? Because as a buyer i've used checkout a lot of times from Italy, same thing should be possible in other european countries.

It works for buyers as long as you have an international card. But to register as a seller a US bank account is a must. Given the new features added to Checkout By Amazon and all the Paypal stories, they might get traction if they remove that "US only" tag. Not sure how easy it is though.

Re: Paypal is holding over 600,000 euros from the minecraft developer

#72

Post by parallax7d »

EvilTrout wrote: post #67

I run a browser based MMO that once upon a time earned a fair amount of money (not at Minecraft's astonishing levels though!) and Paypal is my only method of payment. The first time I made a large withdrawal (10s of thousands) they did something similar. I think people are being very knee-jerk with their reactions about all of this. Yes, it's annoying to have your money frozen temporarily, but Paypal is basically on…

It sounds like they screwed you too, and your defending them?

It sound suspiciously like they just want to keep the money for as long as possible. Collecting interest on your assets is a clear profit motive.

Re: Paypal is holding over 600,000 euros from the minecraft developer

#73

Post by sankara »

ergo98 wrote: post #70
jdietrich wrote: post #68

We've been going around in circles with stories like this for years. In spite of all the horror stories, people are still using PayPal. That would indicate to me that either PayPal are exploiting a monopoly position, or there is a massive gap in the market for a fast, easy payment system that doesn't treat serious customers like dirt. I completely understand the Googley argument that you can't provide much customer s…

There are exceedingly few global payment systems, almost none of which, from a consumer perspective, are as trustworthy and easy to use as PayPal: When it comes to small vendors, I'd much rather pay them through PayPal (where I can even pay from a bank account) than to give my CC numbers to some micro operation. PayPal, like all payment processors, deals with a large amount of fraud, yet they seem to manage to keep i…

I'm in India and Paypal had a tough time dealing with the central bank here. So yes, I would agree a little that these rules are most likely imposed by regulatory authorities but that doesn't mean what Paypal does is acceptable. Have intelligent rules not alarms that blaze through the roof everytime someone transacts above, say, a thousand dollars. Even after that they could very well treat sellers with a bit more dignity?

Re: Paypal is holding over 600,000 euros from the minecraft developer

#74

Post by robgough »

mcherm wrote: post #22

Google is trying to create their own payment system. It hasn't gotten much traction. Why don't they go ahead and support countries throughout the world (if they want to leave out a FEW places like North Korea that would be fine)? Seems to me that then they would have a ready-made constituency. Not to mention pleasing a huge number of Android developers. Yet they don't do this... Why? There must be something difficult…

Is it also worth pointing out that Google isn't exactly known for it's high level of customer service. Is there any reason to think they won't be just as bad as PayPal if they had the same number of customers.

I can't believe there isn't a better option yet, it's not like PayPal have suddenly become worse. Stories like this have been around for years.

Re: Paypal is holding over 600,000 euros from the minecraft developer

#75

Post by mmaunder »

We ditched paypal because:

1. Their site is very slow which hurt conversions. People who may have simply paid using a regular credit card went down the PP funnel and got frustrated and simply left.

2. Retention for monthly subscribers was 10 to 20% lower than credit card subscribers.

3. Refund policy sucked. It would take several days for our customers to get their money back if we refunded them.

4. Tools to manage bulk recurring subscriptions sucked.

So glad we're free of them.

Re: Paypal is holding over 600,000 euros from the minecraft developer

#76

Post by stuhacking »

buster wrote: post #24

What.. just bought Minecraft last week, awesome :) Hope he gets this sorted out.. Also i think it's quite interesting to see one person making such an amount of money with an alpha version of a game that has not much content and graphics from the last century but fun gameplay. EA and friends should learn from this.

Fun gameplay is the key. For the rest, we have our imaginations. (I can't remember the last time a game scared me as much as when I fell down a pitch black cave and heard the groaning coming from all directions! :eek:)

Edit: Sorry, I'm not trying to make a counterpoint, I agree with your statement.

Re: Paypal is holding over 600,000 euros from the minecraft developer

#77

Post by all »

mattmanser wrote: post #11
acabal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the rub--Paypal is not a bank . They can do whatever they want with the virtual money that is exchanged on their servers. Which is why a real merchant account is the only serious option for a larger-scale business.

They are a bank in Europe, just not the US. Sounds like the whole legal status in the US is a bit of a mess really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Regulation

While that may be true, Luxembourg is known as a tax haven. I note that Amazon also registers its European operations there. From the same source as you cited:

"Concern about Luxembourg's banking secrecy laws, and its reputation as a tax haven, led in April 2009 to it being added to a "grey list" of nations with questionable banking arrangements by the G20." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Luxembourg#Banking]

So, in effect, Paypal is probably a bank in nominal terms only. They can still do pretty much whatever they want with your money and get away with it. That is why my company went with WorldPay even when we started out. We don't get charged any fees, just commission, and we get free fraud insurance on the major credit cards.

Re: Paypal is holding over 600,000 euros from the minecraft developer

#78

Post by btilly »

jdietrich wrote: post #68

We've been going around in circles with stories like this for years. In spite of all the horror stories, people are still using PayPal. That would indicate to me that either PayPal are exploiting a monopoly position, or there is a massive gap in the market for a fast, easy payment system that doesn't treat serious customers like dirt. I completely understand the Googley argument that you can't provide much customer s…

That would indicate to me that either PayPal are exploiting a monopoly position, or there is a massive gap in the market for a fast, easy payment system that doesn't treat serious customers like dirt.

You're missing the third possibility, which is that efficiently doing what PayPal requires requires "treating serious customers like dirt."

PayPal is in the business of efficiently detecting and not paying for fraud. One type of fraud that they need to deal with is fraudsters getting control of an established account, sticking lots of fake payments in, then withdrawing the "money" before PayPal notices that it isn't real. Their strategy for this seems to be to make people jump over a low paperwork barrier, then wait long enough that the payments have all cleared before they pay out. Given this, paying for a dedicated customer service representative for the victim on top of that strategy is an inefficiency.

The last part of that decision ignores the effect of pissing people off on their reputation, and so may be shortsighted. But the rest of their strategy makes sense to me.

Re: Paypal is holding over 600,000 euros from the minecraft developer

#79

Post by EvilTrout »

parallax7d wrote: post #72
EvilTrout wrote: post #67

I run a browser based MMO that once upon a time earned a fair amount of money (not at Minecraft's astonishing levels though!) and Paypal is my only method of payment. The first time I made a large withdrawal (10s of thousands) they did something similar. I think people are being very knee-jerk with their reactions about all of this. Yes, it's annoying to have your money frozen temporarily, but Paypal is basically on…

It sounds like they screwed you too, and your defending them? It sound suspiciously like they just want to keep the money for as long as possible. Collecting interest on your assets is a clear profit motive.

I don't consider myself screwed at all. They held my money until I gave them proper documentation. When you run a business this kind of thing happens all the time. Just paying taxes to the government was way more complicated and intrusive.

Yes they can earn interest on money, but it's much more likely to me that they are covering their asses about the money rather than earning a small amount of interest on it.

Paypal has to deal with a lot of fraud. If you listen to the owners in interviews they say they lost a ridiculous amount of money in the early years to fraudulent users. It is reasonable for them, in my opinion, to make sure the money was owed to you before giving it to you.

Re: Paypal is holding over 600,000 euros from the minecraft developer

#80

Post by dRother »

mattmanser wrote: post #5

At least he's a known internet guy, it's pretty clear where the money is coming from and this post alone will get paypal to sort it immediately. But why do you have to be a celeb to get decent support from paypal? Freezing over half a million euros and they don't even assign him a dedicated support person? They don't call him? Disgraceful.

Look how they recently froze $10m that was donated to Burning Man.

Seriously, how does they review process work, exactly? They could try Googling the customer and find out it's an internationally famous festival that has been going on for years and years. Instead, they just seem to notice the money involved and try to seize it. I bet that somewhere in paypal, it works like DEA style asset forfeiture, and the people who freeze accounts stand to benefit financially, personally and directly.

Post reply on HN