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We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

blog.niteo.co

11–20 of 536 posts

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#11
post #5

It's very hard to evaluate what's actually going on here. This "post" could perfectly fit in a tweet. No details whatsoever, no details about wether they tried to reach to paypal support and if they got any replies. I'm surprised this isn't flagged.

Did we read the same article? Because the on I read said: > After calling their support twice, explaining the situation and asking for a reason, we have received nothing but “the decision is final, and we will not provide more information”.

Is there any law or regulation that requires institutions that handle money handling services to be transparent in cases like this or with any right to recourse? (In any country)

What happens if a multinational organisation based in one country has that right but doesn’t in another - but it’s a single PayPal account - could they get reinstated that way?

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#12
post #4

I've been preaching this since forever. Don't rely on PayPal. They're less professional than a kid selling juice next to the road. There are no grace periods with PayPal to give you time to move to another service. There is never more than a generic reason and stonewalling when they terminate you. And yes, their decision is always final. They'll happily terminate your only source of income on a friday afternoon, free…

Theres at least third party options that leverage paypal indirectly (and other services) 2checkout comes tk mind which is what I suggest if you like having the option of PayPal. I havent touched 2checkout in ages so no idea its state.

Also like they say... Dont put ALL your eggs into one basket!

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#13

It's very hard to evaluate what's actually going on here. This "post" could perfectly fit in a tweet. No details whatsoever, no details about wether they tried to reach to paypal support and if they got any replies. I'm surprised this isn't flagged.

Perhaps they prefer to stick to putting their trust in things they own, rather than other people’s platforms ;)

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#15
post #4

I've been preaching this since forever. Don't rely on PayPal. They're less professional than a kid selling juice next to the road. There are no grace periods with PayPal to give you time to move to another service. There is never more than a generic reason and stonewalling when they terminate you. And yes, their decision is always final. They'll happily terminate your only source of income on a friday afternoon, free…

What alternative would you recommend? Specifically, I am interested in a method of paying independent contractors.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#16
My only experience with paypal was about 8 years ago. I briefly remember signing up for it roughly 2-3 years prior to that. I linked my paypal to my (older) bank account so I could purchase something. This account had about $100 in it - it was my old left over account from before I got married and got a joint account, etc. So I kept a tiny bit of money in it. I had moved about 2-3 times since opening that account - I never used the account for anything, it just sat there with money in it. It was eventually forgotten about.

Anyway, long story short. Someone managed to access my paypal and request a sum of money around roughly $40. That account had about $38 in it at the time. Paypal flagged the transaction as fraudulent, stored the money 'in my paypal account' instead of sending it to the requester, and froze my account. But this overdrew my bank account by roughly $2. Needless to say, 2-3 years of late fees added up to a substantial amount of money - two separate accounts - one for about $280 that I owed the bank and another that was about $350 that i owed to their 'overdraft' company. I didn't find out about either until they were about 2-3 years old and in collections.

I realize what I'm explaining is totally my own fault for not monitoring that account and keeping it up to date, but if paypal would have either redeposited that money into my account or sent some emails, instead of freezing the assets in a holding account, I could have avoided that.

In either event, that left a bitter taste in my mouth, and i severed all ties with paypal and that old account at that point.

I had to explain this multiple times to different government and military agencies throughout my career - it still comes up on background investigations.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#17
So from what I can gather, niteo is a SAAS. For Paypal to ban them in what is a pretty non controversial business, they must have commited one of the following offenses:

1)Breach this user agreement, the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, the Commercial Entity Agreements (if they apply to you), the PayPal Cash and PayPal Cash Plus Account Terms and Conditions (if it applies to you), or any other agreement between you and PayPal;

2)Violate any law, statute, ordinance, or regulation (for example, those governing financial services, consumer protections, unfair competition, anti-discrimination or false advertising);

3)Infringe PayPal's or any third party's copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy;

4)Sell counterfeit goods;

5)Act in a manner that is defamatory, trade libelous, threatening or harassing;

6)Provide false, inaccurate or misleading information;

7)Send or receive what we reasonably believe to be potentially fraudulent funds;

8)Refuse to cooperate in an investigation or provide confirmation of your identity or any information you provide to us;

9)Attempt to double dip during the course of a dispute by receiving or attempting to receive funds from both PayPal and the seller, bank or card issuer for the same transaction;

10)Control an account that is linked to another account that has engaged in any of these restricted activities;

11)Conduct your business or use the PayPal services in a manner that results in or may result in; -complaints; -requests by buyers (either filed with us or card issuers) to invalidate payments made to you; -fees, fines, penalties or other liability or losses to PayPal, other PayPal customers, third parties or you;

12)Use your PayPal account or the PayPal services in a manner that PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover or any other electronic funds transfer network reasonably believes to be an abuse of the card system or a violation of card association or network rules;

13)Allow your PayPal account to have a negative balance;

14) Provide yourself a cash advance from your credit card (or help others to do so);

15)Access the PayPal services from a country that is not included on PayPal's permitted countries list;

16)Take any action that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our websites, software, systems (including any networks and servers used to provide any of the PayPal services) operated by us or on our behalf or the PayPal services;

17)Facilitate any viruses, trojan horses, malware, worms or other computer programming routines that attempts to or may damage, disrupt, corrupt, misuse, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate, or gain unauthorized access to any system, data, information or PayPal services; Use an anonymizing proxy; use any robot, spider, other automatic device, or manual process to monitor or copy our websites without our prior written permission; or use any device, software or routine to bypass our robot exclusion headers;

18)Interfere or disrupt or attempt to interfere with or disrupt our websites, software, systems (including any networks and servers used to provide any of the PayPal services) operated by us or on our behalf, any of the PayPal services or other users’ use of any of the PayPal services;

19)Take any action that may cause us to lose any of the services from our Internet service providers, payment processors, or other suppliers or service providers;

20)Use the PayPal services to test credit card behaviors;

21)Circumvent any PayPal policy or determinations about your PayPal account such as temporary or indefinite suspensions or other account holds, limitations or restrictions, including, but not limited to, engaging in the following actions: attempting to open new or additional PayPal account(s) when an account has a negative balance or has been restricted, suspended or otherwise limited; opening new or additional PayPal accounts using information that is not your own (e.g. name, address, email address, etc.); or using someone else’s PayPal account; or Harass and/or threaten our employees, agents, or other users.

These terms run the gamut from being bad with money (negative balance) to criminal. That is a wide swath of terms to action against you or your business, and leave plenty of room for arbitrary ban hammers to be wielded. I can agree that there are way better and safer ways to accept payments these days, and it seems PayPal hangs on with name recognition, and not by merit of it being the best choice.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#18
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did we read the same article? Because the on I read said: > After calling their support twice, explaining the situation and asking for a reason, we have received nothing but “the decision is final, and we will not provide more information”.

Is there any law or regulation that requires institutions that handle money handling services to be transparent in cases like this or with any right to recourse? (In any country) What happens if a multinational organisation based in one country has that right but doesn’t in another - but it’s a single PayPal account - could they get reinstated that way?

In the US, yes, if the organization is legally considered a bank. I believe that PayPal is not considered a bank, but I'm not sure on the specifics as to why.

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#19
post #4

I've been preaching this since forever. Don't rely on PayPal. They're less professional than a kid selling juice next to the road. There are no grace periods with PayPal to give you time to move to another service. There is never more than a generic reason and stonewalling when they terminate you. And yes, their decision is always final. They'll happily terminate your only source of income on a friday afternoon, free…

What alternative would you recommend? Specifically, I am interested in a method of paying independent contractors.

A bank?

Re: We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

#20
post #10

This and similar behavior is what ultimately drives people toward decentralized solutions, like Bitcoin for example.

HN is traditionally anti crypto, but just want to point out that literally no one in this world can stop you accepting Bitcoin payments. That's the true power of decentralization.
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