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We got banned from PayPal after 12 years of business

blog.niteo.co

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

#391

Post by synlatexc »

codezero wrote: post #297
ben509 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That raises another question: why couldn't Paypal simply say this? I can imagine several plausible reasons, related to potential liability, but does that mean that if we're trying to outsource business functions to specialist firms that we can't expect them to be transparent in their operations?

Having worked in a different industry that also had to ban people I can make an assumption: they don’t need to, and doing so never makes anyone happy, so why bother. If they said it was because of their spam business, the owner would do exactly what they did on HN: “but we didn’t use PayPal for our spam business” - this won’t change the decision.

But failing to do so leads to increased operational costs, as customers contact CS again and again, demanding the rationale. It can also lead to negative press.

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

#392

Post by convolvatron »

astura wrote: post #331
apostacy wrote: post #168

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…

what I* want is an exchange on the order of 'fooco is asking for $53.28, is that ok?'

the minor annoyance for recurring payments is totally worth not having to actively be on guard for random people withdrawing from my account.

why is this so hard? i suppose its because of some perverse incentives that I dont understand.

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

#393

Post by pvg »

wccrawford wrote: post #279
Loughla wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question about the phrase 'dog whistle headline'. I thought a dog whistle in current popular use was a headline or sentence meant to imply something hidden, usually racist/sexist/other-ist. Like the phrase 'those people' or something like that. How is this headline implying anything other than what it says, or is my interpretation of that phrase wrong?

A real "dog whistle" is used to get the attention of the dogs and tell them to do something. A dog whistle headline would therefore be attempting to round up a bunch of people to fight their fight for them. And had they been doing good, wholesome things at their company instead of creating spam tools, it probably would have worked. Unfortunately for them, people are starting to learn to dig a little deeper before get…

A real dog whistle is heard by dogs but not people so the phrase is about things addressing a specific subset of the audience in some un-obvious and underhanded way. This headline doesn't - simply misrepresenting yourself by omission or trying to enlist a paypal ragemob to your cause is not a 'dog whistle'.

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

#394

Post by codezero »

synlatexc wrote: post #391
codezero wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in a different industry that also had to ban people I can make an assumption: they don’t need to, and doing so never makes anyone happy, so why bother. If they said it was because of their spam business, the owner would do exactly what they did on HN: “but we didn’t use PayPal for our spam business” - this won’t change the decision.

But failing to do so leads to increased operational costs, as customers contact CS again and again, demanding the rationale. It can also lead to negative press.

It's pretty easy to no longer support someone who is banned. The negative press is usually OK because like in this case, and in many others I've seen on HN, the one complaining is usually in clear violation of stated policy. It's completely reasonable to disagree with and complain about that policy, but they rarely do so explicitly, it drums up more support when the policy violation isn't made a highlight.

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

#395

Post by Lowkeyloki »

magduf wrote: post #372
astura wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally 100% of payment processors heavily "regulate" what their customers sell/do and who is profitable to do business with and what clients are profitable to associate with. For example, if an industry has a humongous chargeback and fraud rate, then they become unprofitable and get dropped. This is why American Express stopped allowing porn (there was news articles about it at the time and they went on record say…

>These are businesses, not charities. It's not just that: these are businesses, not the government. A lot of free-speech advocates and libertarian thinkers seem to think somehow that private businesses somehow have a responsibility to uphold free speech, and they simply don't. It's the government that can't restrict you from free speech (in the USA); but companies don't have to put up with it on their property or whe…

Why are you booing magduf? He's right.

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

#397

Post by lopatin »

marcosdumay wrote: post #287
metaprotocol wrote: post #78

Niteo produce a product to produce content farms and generate spam. PayPal has done the world a favour by banning them.

PayPal should avoid doing vigilantism if they want to keep people's money under trust. It matters very little how despicable the company is, monetary services must not hold opinions unless explicitly told one by a local government.

> "should void doing vigilantism", "monetary services must not hold opinions"

That sounds like a very interesting idea, but how about this one?

> "You must follow PayPal's terms and conditions or should expect to have your account terminated"

Because that's how every payment processor in existence works. Don't like it? Use bitcoin.

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

#399

Post by rock_hard »

Given that there is pile on of negative comments about Paypal already I figured it be nice to share that I have never had a single issue with PayPal in about 15-20 years or so.

Neither on my private account nor business accounts.

Not even with the paypal account for my burning man camp.

Just my 2c

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

#400

Post by [deleted] »

anonymousab wrote: post #377
magduf wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These are businesses, not charities. It's not just that: these are businesses, not the government. A lot of free-speech advocates and libertarian thinkers seem to think somehow that private businesses somehow have a responsibility to uphold free speech, and they simply don't. It's the government that can't restrict you from free speech (in the USA); but companies don't have to put up with it on their property or whe…

Many people believe that businesses and corporations have a responsibility to uphold and respect free speech as a societal virtue moreso than as a constitutional right. This isn't a crazy position given the power many companies wield over the workings of society.

[deleted]
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