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PayPal is no GayPal: another PayPal horror story

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11–20 of 46 posts

Re: PayPal is no GayPal: another PayPal horror story

#11
Ugh, why does paypal care about sexual orientation?

For future reference, seems that a merchant account with Visa or Mastercard is fine even for hate groups like the KKK. http://www.christianconcepts.net/informat.htm

If those douchebags can charge cards, Im sure you can figure something out.

Re: PayPal is no GayPal: another PayPal horror story

#12
post #9

I love a good PayPal bashing as much as the next guy (I've had my own poor experience with them), but there is a significant amount of detail missing here. It's unclear to me that you've actually contacted them - by phone, not via email or their online support gadgetry. Have you? If so, what (specifically) was their response?

I spoke with somebody on the phone, and they viewed the site and agreed that it wasn't pornographic, but their decision is final and can't be overturned.

I asked to speak to a manager. They said a manager would get back to me, but no response yet and I'm guessing they won't ever call me back.

Re: PayPal is no GayPal: another PayPal horror story

#13
All this Paypal "we had to use it for business reasons" stuff reminds me of a family friend who was a Mcdonald's franchisee and got screwed over by Mcdonald's corporate and vowed to never eat at Mcdonald's again after being able to exit the business. Sure enough, 3 months later, there he was going to Mcdonald's. Excuse? "Well it was the only decent place to stop at this exit."

If you chose to use Paypal for business reasons, then you should own up to having possibly made a bad business decision. There are alternatives: Amazon Payments, Google Checkout, WePay, and 3rd party payment processors.

Re: PayPal is no GayPal: another PayPal horror story

#14
post #4

Have you tried contacting any news organizations? I can imagine a few in and around San Francisco would probably be interested in this, as it has a direct impact on Gay Rights. This seems like complete discrimination. They shouldn't be able to freeze your account for having any references to "gay X" any more than they should be able to freeze your account if you were advertising "african american X".

My guess, as mentioned, is that some phrase on the site triggered some automated process that locked the account.

Is it related to orientation or do just the words "phone sex" trigger something? I have no idea how PayPal works internally.

Re: PayPal is no GayPal: another PayPal horror story

#15
post #4

Have you tried contacting any news organizations? I can imagine a few in and around San Francisco would probably be interested in this, as it has a direct impact on Gay Rights. This seems like complete discrimination. They shouldn't be able to freeze your account for having any references to "gay X" any more than they should be able to freeze your account if you were advertising "african american X".

Let me know if you feel otherwise, but it could be reasonable for paypal to want to distance itself from "african american phone sex."

Random discrimination agains minorities is never a wise move for a public company. It would not be wise ling term but they could be some short term gain if they pander to some extremist gaining ground in government.

I don't think they realize just how noxious this is to small companies. Pay pal is convenient but they are Earning a recommendation for unreliability large this kind od thing is enough to put a start up in serious danger. I hope star ups are not forced to play it squeaky clean and forced to discriminate in order to avoid loss of liquidity.

It sounds like it takes no more than a bad word or rumor of some outspoken group to get cut off. By bad word I mean gay black muslim independent.

I feel sorry for our non white non catholic friends. There seems to be a growing movement in the US to fragment our nation and KUt the others off from income and protection of law.

Re: PayPal is no GayPal: another PayPal horror story

#16
post #3

Say what you want about PayPal but they don't discriminate. They screw everyone regardless of race, religion, sex or sexuality. To the OP: Like so many people, I lost money when PrayPal[0] locked me out of my account. No amount of faxing documents, emails or phone calls would convince them that it was my account and my money. I ended up just walking away. A suggestion might be to go talk to a gay rights group and try…

Definitely. My account was recently frozen under a 'random check' to very my phone number. They didn't like the fact that I didn't have a land line phone number, cell phones are not accepted! It took 3 weeks to get it verified through their customer service.

Re: PayPal is no GayPal: another PayPal horror story

#18
post #11

Ugh, why does paypal care about sexual orientation? For future reference, seems that a merchant account with Visa or Mastercard is fine even for hate groups like the KKK. http://www.christianconcepts.net/informat.htm If those douchebags can charge cards, Im sure you can figure something out.

But not for wikileaks apparently. Though I see your general point as they probably aren't discriminating. Paypal seems to do many 'random account verifications' these days. They freeze the account until its verified.
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