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We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

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

#361

The lack of customer service in the Silicon Valley is a pervasive problem. * Cody Don on YouTube teaches the masses about science and regularly gets banned. His videos are rated G to PG. Despite millions of viewers and dollars of Revenue, there is nobody he can call. * Uber charged $1500 to my debut card a few months ago. There's literally nobody you can call about it. * Lose your Instagram/Twitter/Gmail? Too bad, be…

> The lack of customer service in the Silicon Valley is a pervasive problem. The reason their is very little customer service in SV is due to fact that it is extremely expensive to provide customer service...

Yes, but that’s like a restaurant complaining that it’s extremely expensive to provide food.

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

#362

Literally NO ONE wrote the below: Every Friday go online and withdraw all-but-the-necessary £€$$ to your bank account (transfer wire or via card number). I do get some revenue via PayPal, and the very same day (or the next) I 'download' comes it to my bank account (connected to PayPal via card) and IMMEDIATELY is shipped to another account that has all the controls to make money (relatively) unmovable. I perceive Pay…

>Every Friday go online and withdraw all-but-the-necessary £€$$ to your bank account (transfer wire or via card number). I do get some revenue via PayPal, and the very same day (or the next) I 'download' comes it to my bank account (connected to PayPal via card) and IMMEDIATELY is shipped to another account that has all the controls to make money (relatively) unmovable. PayPal does have a feature they don't advertise…

It'd be better if there were a way to autosweep to a paper check or fedwire if Auto Sweep's terms doesn't specifically prohibit Paypal from generating a withdrawal that backs out the ACH deposit.

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

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber charged $1500 to my debut card a few months ago. There's literally nobody you can call about it. Your bank. You call your bank.

Yeah, you don't call Uber in this case. You immediately call the card issuer and report fraud. In the case of debit charges, reacting quickly is absolutely key. Always pay with a credit card, it's much easier to reverse this kind of stuff versus a debit card. There is literally no good reason to ever use a debit card.

And get a good bank!

The bank that offers me 0.2% more interest isn't worth it because their customer service is reprehensible garbage.

When something goes wrong my good bank - First Direct - are going to answer in 2-3 rings, and they're going to fix it, their founding philosophy (I happen to know some of those founders by chance) is that customers must feel "totally taken care of", if the customer wants a £2M mortgage at 2am on a Sunday, then you can't tell them "Oh I'm sorry the mortgages team only works 9-5". I have never come off a call to them thinking they should have done more or done it faster, on the contrary I'm often surprised how effective they were able to be.

Everything about this approach can be replicated. If every bad bank loses its customers we all get better banks.

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

#364
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad to hear that about Non-US card owners. In the US, I've had just the opposite experience. E.g., with AmEx, I had suspicious charges and before I even finished the description the agent interrupted me and said the charge and my card were both already cancelled and new card w/new numbers was already on the way via FedEx. I'm not quite sure what pattern the agent recognized, but she sure didn't like it and they weren…

There are huge culture differences in different parts of the world, and no such thing as "global companies" -- local offices are staffed with locals. US customer support is probably the best in the world, only Japan could be a valid contender here. The rest of us have to suffer.

Interesting, and perhaps not surprising since a college acquaintance once told me (quite some years ago) that AmEx would only cancel your card in one country at a time. Seems he'd had some trouble in Europe (parents shut off funds or something), and while making his way home before eventually getting it sorted out, discovered that little tidbit.

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

#365
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason I don't use virtual credit cards is because they tend to not protect you from first party fraud, only third party fraud. Despite what the banks claim, they usually will NOT prevent recurring payments from being honored. Even if you don't have enough money in your account. (The bank will just collect it from you) I used to use a service called Entropay, which would actually let you pre-pay money into a disp…

>What I want, is to give a merchant a credit card number, pre load that number with $30, have them charge it, and then be completely done with it. This especially makes sense for low stakes low cost recurring monthly payments. I should just be able to stop paying a $5/month fax service that I never use, and have them terminate my service. Banks would never let you do that. Services that used to let you do that have b…

Like, Privacy.com has access to your bank account and have the authority to collect? Because then it is the same problem.

All I want, is the digital equivalent of a personal check.

A one time promise to pay money. If the merchant has a dispute with me, or thinks I owe them more money, they are free to sue me.

If my utility company wants automatic recurring payments, I have to sign paperwork which makes it very clear that I am authorizing recurring bank transfers.

The system we have now makes no sense at all.

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

#366

PayPal blocked us after 10 years due to a a Kafkaesque problem, where they decided that our Hong Kong company was both a Chinese company and not a Chinese company: https://www.cogini.com/blog/paypal-know-your-customer-failur...

I ad a similar issue when parts of Ukraine were invaded by Russia and my Ukranian developers were suddenly "Russian" developers.

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

#367
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't keep your money in paypal, withdraw it to your bank account as soon as you can.

to generalize, you shouldn't keep your money in any 3rd party longer than necessary.

To be more specific, you should not keep your money at a 3rd party with more control over your money than necessary for longer than necessary.

Giving PayPal an interest free loan and control over you balances rather than sweeping them into a (potentially interest bearing) account controlled by you is one example of this.

Another is having a second account at a different bank that you sweep money from the first one. That second bank account should be set up to reject automated ACH withdrawals so that you can push money into it but PayPal, your payroll company, your bill payers, or even other companies that ACH payments to you cannot withdraw from your account without your permission.

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

#368
post #264

paypal has no business in regulating what software their customers are allowed or not allowed to sell. Even if it's spam creation software. If it's not illegal to sell, it should not be blocked by paypal. If the software is spam and is bad for society, let society introduce a law to ban the software, the same way you can't sell drugs using paypal. This moral policing by businesses is bad for society - and lets busine…

In your opinion, but from the business's point-of-view, if they're enabling a shady business (like a spammer), then people will publicly complain about how that company is aiding and abetting bad actors. It's just like how Twitter gets blamed for neo-Nazis using it to spew their garbage.

Companies aren't the government, and are allowed to choose who they want to do business with. They don't have a responsibility to uphold free speech, and only have to make sure they don't discriminate based on protected class (race, sex, etc.). Otherwise, if they don't want to be known as "the company that helps neo-Nazis accept payments" or something like that, they're free to not do business with them.

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

#370
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What I want, is to give a merchant a credit card number, pre load that number with $30, have them charge it, and then be completely done with it. This especially makes sense for low stakes low cost recurring monthly payments. I should just be able to stop paying a $5/month fax service that I never use, and have them terminate my service. Banks would never let you do that. Services that used to let you do that have b…

Like, Privacy.com has access to your bank account and have the authority to collect? Because then it is the same problem. All I want, is the digital equivalent of a personal check. A one time promise to pay money. If the merchant has a dispute with me, or thinks I owe them more money, they are free to sue me. If my utility company wants automatic recurring payments, I have to sign paperwork which makes it very clear…

It's not the same problem.

They block charges over the limit.

You can "turn off" a card after you use it.

They have "single use" cards that turn off automatically two minutes after the first charge.

You can set the spending limit on single use cards or for non-single use cards on a per month basis or per year basis.

You can use any billing name and address with the merchant.

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