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How to Get PayPal to Freeze Your Account in Four Easy Steps

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Re: How to Get PayPal to Freeze Your Account in Four Easy Steps

#21

Post by thinkcomp »

cookiecaper wrote: post #20
zavulon wrote: post #3

> PayPal doesn’t want their cut of tens of millions of dollars of revenue we project in the next two years. Any idea of who does? Get a real merchant account and a payment gateway. I recommend Authorize.NET. Get it from one of the re-sellers, it's cheaper than getting it directly from them. There are no shortcuts: you have to compare different vendors, do your research on what all the fees mean and who offers the bes…

This is still not really a good option. Have you looked at the contracts and requirements on payment processors? The options suck. Credit cards are a bad, bad system for merchants because the banks totally have everyone by the balls and in typical bank fashion they are not afraid to put the squeeze on. I hope one day someone comes up with a real electronic payment method. Bitcoins are currently our best hope, but the…

We're working on it (see comment below). http://www.facecash.com

Re: How to Get PayPal to Freeze Your Account in Four Easy Steps

#22

Post by otterley »

hardy263 wrote: post #17
thaumaturgy wrote: post #15

I have less than no sympathy for businesses with Paypal horror stories at this point. Paypal's reputation is very well known, especially in startup circles, and there are a ton of other services available that will handle payments for startups. There have been several HN threads about them, and it's not too hard to find those on searchyc.com. If you're starting a business, and you're relying on Paypal to do it, then…

Unfortunately, most of these payment handlers only allow US companies to use their services. I'm in Canada, and I've been trying to find said services, and every one that I've found using searchyc only accepts US companies. Some of them say that international services is "in the works" or "available sometime in the future", but business cannot wait.

Have you contacted your own bank to ask them what your options are?

Re: How to Get PayPal to Freeze Your Account in Four Easy Steps

#23

Post by zmmmmm »

thinkcomp wrote: post #2

I've been resisting the urge to market my startup as a PayPal alternative, because we're really focused on payments for in-person retail sales (largely to avoid competing with PayPal), but this is probably the fifth or sixth PayPal-froze-my-account posting I've seen on Hacker News and they all seem to garner enormous amounts of sympathy from readers. We've also built all of the infrastructure you'd need to do interne…

In terms of web startups, what PayPal offers over most other services is simple: let the user directly enter a credit card number to pay you some money - without the user having a PayPal account. There are lots of options for payments such as Google, Amazon and others but they all require the payer to have an account. PayPal doesn't - you effectively get credit-card processing with no setup and no hassles for absolutely nothing (apart from transaction fees). Compared to getting a merchant account etc, it's child's play. Of course, the "hassles" part turns out to be not so great once they suspend your account.

Re: How to Get PayPal to Freeze Your Account in Four Easy Steps

#24

Post by bl4k »

> "PayPal doesn’t want their cut of tens of millions of dollars of revenue we project in the next two years. Any idea of who does?"

If you makes you feel any better, I offered them a cut of a projected billion dollars and they still didn't take it.

More seriously though, just go to your bank and open a merchant account.

Re: How to Get PayPal to Freeze Your Account in Four Easy Steps

#25

Post by patio11 »

For what it's worth, travel is a high-risk vertical and you're going to draw the evil eye from any competent operator if that is your focus. See also selling high end electronics or jewelry, among many other seedier business types.

Also FWIW: Paypal has processed close to 100k for me without complaint, and their review of my business for getting a merchant account was quick, professional, and successful. (Partly because I knew to avoid risk-adding activities like accepting yearly payments with a new business. Don't do that. Don't do aggregation. Don't do anything which envisions customers routinely receiving chargebacks or refunds.)

Re: How to Get PayPal to Freeze Your Account in Four Easy Steps

#26

Post by bdclimber14 »

pitdesi wrote: post #14
zavulon wrote: post #3

> PayPal doesn’t want their cut of tens of millions of dollars of revenue we project in the next two years. Any idea of who does? Get a real merchant account and a payment gateway. I recommend Authorize.NET. Get it from one of the re-sellers, it's cheaper than getting it directly from them. There are no shortcuts: you have to compare different vendors, do your research on what all the fees mean and who offers the bes…

helpful plug- Check out http://FeeFighters.com . We compare the different processors for you and cut the BS fees and there are NO contracts/cancellation fees (we started out as a blog to help merchants understand how to not get ripped off). Like zavulon says, auth.net is a highly recommended gateway (and works with nearly all processors)

I've used and liked FeeFighters. Although, the top recommended merchant was PayPal.

Re: How to Get PayPal to Freeze Your Account in Four Easy Steps

#27

Post by djg38 »

zavulon wrote: post #3

> PayPal doesn’t want their cut of tens of millions of dollars of revenue we project in the next two years. Any idea of who does? Get a real merchant account and a payment gateway. I recommend Authorize.NET. Get it from one of the re-sellers, it's cheaper than getting it directly from them. There are no shortcuts: you have to compare different vendors, do your research on what all the fees mean and who offers the bes…

The provision forbidding accepting payments on behalf of others is going to appear in the merchant agreement everywhere you look. It's standard. It's not a PayPal thing.

Re: How to Get PayPal to Freeze Your Account in Four Easy Steps

#28

Post by nolite »

otterley wrote: post #22
hardy263 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, most of these payment handlers only allow US companies to use their services. I'm in Canada, and I've been trying to find said services, and every one that I've found using searchyc only accepts US companies. Some of them say that international services is "in the works" or "available sometime in the future", but business cannot wait.

Have you contacted your own bank to ask them what your options are?

parent is right.. you might have to use a less agile or easy to integrate solution, but many countries should have standard bank-level methods for allowing you to accept online payments, some way or another

Re: How to Get PayPal to Freeze Your Account in Four Easy Steps

#29

Post by djg38 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #15

I have less than no sympathy for businesses with Paypal horror stories at this point. Paypal's reputation is very well known, especially in startup circles, and there are a ton of other services available that will handle payments for startups. There have been several HN threads about them, and it's not too hard to find those on searchyc.com. If you're starting a business, and you're relying on Paypal to do it, then…

Those threads are mostly full of recommendations that don't make sense. There'll be a couple actual recommendations of merchant account providers, which will have the exact same policies for reviewing accounts, freezing them if there's any red flags, holding funds for the exact same 6 month period, and forbidding factoring as PayPal cited in this case. The other recommendations will be for payment gateways (which do nothing without a merchant account) and some people throwing out names of the hot new subscriptions-as-a-service providers (Recurly, Chargify, etc) which again do nothing without a merchant account and have nothing to do with their policies.

Re: How to Get PayPal to Freeze Your Account in Four Easy Steps

#30

Post by djg38 »

bl4k wrote: post #24

> "PayPal doesn’t want their cut of tens of millions of dollars of revenue we project in the next two years. Any idea of who does?" If you makes you feel any better, I offered them a cut of a projected billion dollars and they still didn't take it. More seriously though, just go to your bank and open a merchant account.

They won't open one either. It's standard Visa/MC operating regulations. You can't accept payments on behalf of others.
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