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

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

#151

Post by tedunangst »

jemfinch wrote: post #142
tedunangst wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming that "better fraud detection" means "fraud detection that isn't triggered". Credit card companies aren't as concerned about as fraud because they don't lose money, the merchant loses money. It costs them little to be lax. Paypal loses their own money when they don't detect fraud. They can't afford to be lax.

> You are assuming that "better fraud detection" means "fraud detection that isn't triggered". It means "fraud detection that catches actual fraud and doesn't bother me otherwise. > Credit card companies aren't as concerned about as fraud because they don't lose money, the merchant loses money. Wrong. The merchant is indemnified against fraud and the CC company takes the loss if the merchant can show that they follow…

How is paypal expected to verify the signature on the receipt matches the signature on the card?

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

#152

Post by fragmede »

raquo wrote: post #29
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…

Achieving reliable fraud detection is apparently very hard

So was search (and so is search in the face of spammers).

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

#153

Post by forensic »

tedunangst wrote: post #151
jemfinch wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are assuming that "better fraud detection" means "fraud detection that isn't triggered". It means "fraud detection that catches actual fraud and doesn't bother me otherwise. > Credit card companies aren't as concerned about as fraud because they don't lose money, the merchant loses money. Wrong. The merchant is indemnified against fraud and the CC company takes the loss if the merchant can show that they follow…

How is paypal expected to verify the signature on the receipt matches the signature on the card?

Are you from the past?

It's a different procedure online. Usually the CVV number is used instead of a signature.

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

#154

Post by eru »

dRother wrote: post #82
eru wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are funny. Tweets are only a line long or so, so you might as well have copied the thing (with attribution).

Directing to the original source is more authoritative and informative.

Yes. That's what I meant with attribution.

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

#155

Post by cullenking »

bryanh wrote: post #64
helium wrote: post #8

I'm building a website that I would like to launch soon and were planning on selling digital goods. My initial idea was to just use the PayPal shopping cart, since I already have a PayPal account and it so easy to set up(I definitely don't want to go through the hassle of setting up a merchant account). But all these horror stories I have read on HN the last few days have scared me a bit. I also seems that its even w…

I run BitBuffet.com where we enable end users to sell digital downloads and we use PayPal exclusively. These horror stories are somewhat uncommon (we've never experienced one or heard of a customer experiencing one). My advice: go with PayPal until you are making well over $2-4k a month, then switch to a dedicated merchant account once you have proven volume. There are 100 other more likely points of failure than not…

That's what we have done. Paypal horror stories freak me out, so I regularly withdraw to my bank account and then transfer to another account so paypal can't go after the withdraw. Paranoid, yes, but better than nothing.

Now that we have $1.5k a month in donations, we are using Braintree. Wasn't worth setting up before proving financial viability, but definitely worth the peace of mind with a proven business. Great piece of advice.

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

#156

Post by ergo98 »

jemfinch wrote: post #147
ergo98 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Really? I certainly wouldn't. I have recourse with American Express. When I pay with Paypal I have recourse with both Paypal AND my credit card. It doesn't remove that right. >Paypal, on the other hand, flagged a transaction as potentially fraudulent simply because I had the purchase shipped to my workplace Why is the fact that it's a well known Bay Area address of any significance at all? Paypal demands that shippe…

> Why is the fact that it's a well known Bay Area address of any significance at all? Which do you think seems more fraudulent? This address: 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043 Or this one? Hospital Road, P.M.B. 2155 Kaduna, Nigeria Which address do you think is more likely to be used for fraud? > Paypal demands that shipped items only go to the address on record for the account. That seems pretty logica…

"Which do you think seems more fraudulent?"

Any corporate destination for personal purchases looks more fraudulent than any home address. Home addresses -- most notably the one correlated with the account -- have easy traceability. A package being delivered into the bowels of a place with thousands of employees, not so much.

I'm quite glad that any paypal purchases made on my account can only be delivered to my home address. Seems pretty logical to me.

"Oddly, Amazon has no problem with this"

Amazon is the seller. They take the risks because they have a large-margin product that they are selling you. PayPal is a very small margin payment facilitator. Your comparison is not at all valid, and borders on ridiculous.

"maybe because they're indemnified against fraud losses by the CC company"

This is absolutely wrong.

The CC company bears absolutely no burden for fraud beyond the administrative hassle, and it is wholly on the merchant's backs. Merchants have to follow the prescribed rules (e.g. taking a CCV number) or they lose their merchant account, or they fall into a tiered bin where they pay much higher rates.

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

#157

Post by jemfinch »

ergo98 wrote: post #156
jemfinch wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is the fact that it's a well known Bay Area address of any significance at all? Which do you think seems more fraudulent? This address: 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043 Or this one? Hospital Road, P.M.B. 2155 Kaduna, Nigeria Which address do you think is more likely to be used for fraud? > Paypal demands that shipped items only go to the address on record for the account. That seems pretty logica…

"Which do you think seems more fraudulent?" Any corporate destination for personal purchases looks more fraudulent than any home address. Home addresses -- most notably the one correlated with the account -- have easy traceability. A package being delivered into the bowels of a place with thousands of employees, not so much. I'm quite glad that any paypal purchases made on my account can only be delivered to my home…

> The CC company bears absolutely no burden for fraud beyond the administrative hassle, and it is wholly on the merchant's backs.

I've done some research, and I was misinformed on that point.

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

#158

Post by InclinedPlane »

Paypal has the most customers of any financial institution in the world, they have some of the largest challenges of any financial institution in the world. Not the least of which being that everybody who is capable of using paypal is simultaneously connected to the biggest and most efficient megaphone ever invented (the internet) and the unique consequences for bad press that situation entails.

You can decry paypal's customer service, no doubt, but recognize that the root cause of these problems are all of the very real scammers who have abused the system and never make the news. Consider an analogous situation, check fraud. There are many stores and restaurants that do not accept checks, is this because banks are evil and hate honoring checks? No, it's because of repeated abuse from fraudsters devaluing checks as a method of payment. The same is happening here with online payments. You can get around the problem by paying more money for a merchant account but that only protects you from the immediate effects of the problem for a little while.

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

#159

Post by dRother »

gdee wrote: post #94
dRother wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

> 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. You'd lose that bet. They refund the money to the original payer. For better or worse. My company loses a few hundred euros each month to this. They keep asking for proof of delivery. Yet we sell internet access. No proof in that unless I'm willing t…

I'm sure they do that on a bit by bit basis, when they're isolating one transaction at a time, but are you sure that when they 'freeze' an entire account, they reverse all of the transactions?

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

#160

Post by hristov »

shin_lao wrote: post #4

The "paypal blocked my money" stories are frequent. I'm curious to which extent this is legal. I'm pretty sure a bank isn't allowed to block access to your accounts without a formal request from a legal entity. Paypal doesn't "own" the money. This sounds to me as extremely abusive. Is that this frequent?

The problem is credit cards. Credit cards are very un-secure and a credit card owner usually has a right to do a charge-back which means that a credit card processor has to get their money back, which means that every credit card processor puts in conditions in their contract that allow them to block your funds if they smell even a whiff of impropriety.
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