How PayPal could have killed an independent conference

Post by jellicle » Fri, Aug 12, 2011, 7:46 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #42

pavel_lishin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever happened to "caveat emptor"? If you're attending a real estate conference at a Ramada Inn, you weren't defrauded - you're just an idiot.

What happened to it was that credit card companies discovered that they could gain additional customers by removing that risk. The end result is now that most or all credit cards cover the cardholder in the event of a fraudulent purchase. Feel free to run your own conference where "caveat emptor" is the rule for buying tickets, but you won't be able to take credit cards or various other forms of payment for it.

Post by pavel_lishin » Fri, Aug 12, 2011, 8:09 PM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #44

pavel_lishin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By offering it as an option, you no longer have the option to not rely on it completely . What happens when everyone decides to pay in Bitcoins? I don't think the caterers will accept them as a form of payment - they'll echo Doug Shaftoe's sentiment: " Doug’s regained his composure now, and is back to belly laughs. "What’ll that buy me? Pictures of naked girls on the World Wide Web?" "

It's a medium of exchange, they can exchange it for USD.

Post by thomaslangston » Fri, Aug 12, 2011, 8:49 PM UTC

ScottBurson wrote: post #45

ig1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's do a back-of-an-envelope calculation and say Paypal makes 1% of a transaction (after accounting for CC processing, etc.) - if the company in question had processed say £200,000 through Paypal then Paypal would have made £2,000 from it. That's a fraction of the £11,000+ that they would have been on the hook for if it turns out the event had been a fake and they'd allowed the account holder to withdraw the money.…

I could believe that a fraudster might spend a few months trying to appear legitimate, but six years ? Your point about PayPal's risk vs. their profit on this account is valid, but look at it from the other side. Let's take a more plausible scenario than one in which the account was opened for fraudulent purposes from the beginning. Let's imagine our business owner has had every intention of running a legitimate busi…

Post by mikeash » Fri, Aug 12, 2011, 9:25 PM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #51

mikeash wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to it was that credit card companies discovered that they could gain additional customers by removing that risk. The end result is now that most or all credit cards cover the cardholder in the event of a fraudulent purchase. Feel free to run your own conference where "caveat emptor" is the rule for buying tickets, but you won't be able to take credit cards or various other forms of payment for it.

> What happened to it was that credit card companies discovered that they could gain additional customers by removing that risk. The end result is now that most or all credit cards cover the cardholder in the event of a fraudulent purchase. What happened was that after defrauding customers became common practice, Congress passed laws regulating the credit card industry and putting the fraud onus on the party with the…

Post by sprovoost » Sat, Aug 13, 2011, 4:01 AM UTC

ig1 wrote: post #10

Paypal classes events as high-risk transactions (as they require people to pay upfront often far in advance of the event) so you're at much more risk of being suspended if you breach their risk thresholds. Imagine if you're a fraudster, you've knocked up a fake event and you've sold $10k-$20k in tickets, you could withdraw the money and disappear before the date of the event. Now Paypal are on the hook for the money,…