Is this Paypal experience customary? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is this Paypal experience customary?

#231

Post by tobiasSoftware » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #103

tobiasSoftware wrote: post #66

I recently had a similar experience with eBay, though it got resolved: -I had an old eBay account that was closed through inactivity -I wanted to buy some headphones so I decided to create a new account -When I went to eBay it had already given me a username through some sort of linked google account feature that used the google account I was logged in to -I tried to buy 2 $40 headphones and it wouldn't let me, sayin…

Why did this shake you so bad? You talked to a rep and they fixed it. That's what customer reps are for. If you have humans combing through records for malicious activity and reading off a rubric, you probably would've had the same issue.

There's a few different reasons: First, reading about similar experiences didn't make me optimistic. It seemed like 50/50 between getting someone who would help and someone who would tell you that the case is forever closed without recourse. I got the feeling that the in weird cases like mine these techs didn't actually understand what was going on and it was just the luck of the draw of what tech you got.

Second, I realized how powerful these big platforms like eBay are. I looked around for alternatives in case I did get permanently banned and I sure didn't find much. What was particularly creepy to me was how being an undesirable to eBay could potentially spread: they track your account, name, address, credit card number, IP, and so on and seeing any one of these can lead to bans on other accounts. In a lot of ways this makes sense, but in theory, if I happened to log on to my banned account at my mom's, it could match my account with her IP and ban her account as well. I doubt this would happen in eBay's case as support reps would probably help her if that happened, but it definitely brought to mind the Chinese social credit system where linking to an undesirable can make you an undesirable yourself.

Third and most important was personal. I'm engaged to someone who is planning to use eBay. I wouldn't care too much about being banned off of eBay but I would hate to see her life become any harder just because of some weird glitch.

Re: Is this Paypal experience customary?

#232

Post by saltminer » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

antihero wrote: post #120

Yeah, had this happen to me. Currently my account is limited, they want me to send proof that I have shipped things that do not exist. I am not a merchant or anything like this, I just sent money to my gf and she sends money to me. It's fucking stupid. These companies are absolute shit.

One of my friends is in a similar situation. It ended up being easier just to mail him a check.

Re: Is this Paypal experience customary?

#233

Post by carapace » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 6:55 PM UTC

PayPal owes me $200.

Details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19773036

Re: Is this Paypal experience customary?

#234

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 6:57 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #202

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #69

I very rarely have to contact PayPal for anything, but I’ve had to talk to them a couple times. My experience is that they absolutely will not answer any question they don’t have a pre-written response for, instead choosing whatever they think is closest to what I am asking, even if it doesn’t answer the question. I’ve even had them send me the same response again when I explain that it didn’t answer my question the…

> they absolutely will not answer any question they don’t have a pre-written response for, instead choosing whatever they think is closest to what I am asking, even if it doesn’t answer the question I got the exact same feeling when talking to them. It sounded like they understood my problem, but the proposed resolutions were obviously not a match. Reasoning about it with them got me nowhere, they clearly had no othe…

[deleted]

Re: Is this Paypal experience customary?

#235

Post by driverdan » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #209

antihero wrote: post #158

Whoa, I just got off of a call from PayPal as to why my account was banned. Turns out, 15 years ago when I signed up, I was 15 (I am 30 now) and that is against their terms of service. So my account is permabanned and they said to make a new one with a different email. I can understand they don't want people under 18 to sign up, but for fucks sakes, it was 15 years ago, this feels like a fairly stupid policy. I would…

Probably because they can't legally hold the data of a minor (who wasn't able to consent to their data policy or whatever at the time) so they have to delete everything.

Nope. The account isn't deleted, it's locked. And if they did need to delete the data they could easily delete everything from when they were under age.

Re: Is this Paypal experience customary?

#236

Post by rs23296008n1 » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #137

gdfasfklshg4 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very likely answer. Strange that it is downvoted.

Eh. No worries. I expect a relatively small minority of the HN crowd have exposure to decades-old mainframe systems. It seemed a plausible rationale, given the state of the world ~2000 when PayPal was ramping up was very different. Especially in the financial sector, I can see partners and/or requisite systems to interface with being heavily mainframe-based. And now, even if PayPal is following best practices, it's p…

My experience with multiple identity systems matches the mainframe or mainframe era explanation. Old systems had to draw a line. So they did. And those lines still ripple like waves through modern systems even now.

Re: Is this Paypal experience customary?

#237

Post by carapace » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #102

jeltz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how would one do that? There are competitors which are cheaper, have better APIs, better customer service, and better user experience.

Aside from Stripe - who? And sellers on larger sites like eBay can't easily use a competitor. It's a classic anti-trust pattern and should be treated as such.

https://www.bolt.com/

Re: Is this Paypal experience customary?

#238

Post by rs23296008n1 » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 7:11 PM UTC

antihero wrote: post #158

Whoa, I just got off of a call from PayPal as to why my account was banned. Turns out, 15 years ago when I signed up, I was 15 (I am 30 now) and that is against their terms of service. So my account is permabanned and they said to make a new one with a different email. I can understand they don't want people under 18 to sign up, but for fucks sakes, it was 15 years ago, this feels like a fairly stupid policy. I would…

Heard that story before. 15 when they signed up and now they're 30 and banned. Popular experience apparently.

Re: Is this Paypal experience customary?

#239

Post by smohare » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

saltminer wrote: post #228

viraptor wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be an old decision. I've seen new systems applying the same rule without any technical reasoning. Google "(framework) signup form" and you'll find lots of examples. Third link for rails: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31105996/ruby-on-rails-w... - written in 2015, has artificial limit 8-20 characters without any technical reason.

Yep, just look at the CTA's Ventra system, which came online in 2013. 20 character password limit, but implemented in the worst possible way: only on the web UI, and they don't tell you about it. Basically, I generated a 32 character password in my password manager, pasted it in, got no errors when I made my account, and could login in Chrome successfully. However, I couldn't login on the mobile app. I tried manually…

I’ve had this exact experience with probably a dozen sites. Truly astounding.

Re: Is this Paypal experience customary?

#240

Post by wirrbel » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

I once ordered a domino's pizza via paypal. The app did not complete the transaction. I did find however 20 transactions to dominos on my paypal account. I tried to reason with Paypal that I did not authorize 20 transactions (just one), but Paypal did not want to reason with me. In the end, Dominos refunded 20 transactions.

I now pay with credit card.