Almost this exact scenario happened to me a few months back, and they did the same, asking me to sign an agreement saying I knew what I did was wrong (it wasn't) and that I wouldn't do it again. I absolutely refused to sign such a thing, and thankfully a friend of a friend knew someone in a high position at PayPal that finally got it all sorted out. Two weeks of extreme stress later, but at least it got worked out. Take unusual measures and if you are lucky you'll get it worked out.
More Paypal nonsense
11–20 of 257 posts
Re: More Paypal nonsense
#12I'm a huge fan of WePay. They don't play these games.
With all of the different competing solutions out there these days, I don't know why anyone continues to use Paypal.
Re: More Paypal nonsense
#13I'm sure everybody knows by now, but this is certainly not the first time paypal has done this kind of thing:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/paypal-fiasco-summary.p... (slightly nsfw)
Re: More Paypal nonsense
#14These horror stories are so common that I have to ask: why does anyone still use PayPal? I ask this in the most constructive way possible... is there a set of use-cases that PayPal is still the best for? Is it a lack of awareness of alternatives? International availability? Something else?
Because buyers keep demanding sellers use it. If you're a buyer, it's about the most painless thing out there. I got forced into it by a client once for that very reason. Unfortunately PyPal froze his account with about $20k in it. We switched to a real merchant account and everything went uphill from there.
Is there a current best alternative to PayPal that you would recommend?
Re: More Paypal nonsense
#15These horror stories are so common that I have to ask: why does anyone still use PayPal? I ask this in the most constructive way possible... is there a set of use-cases that PayPal is still the best for? Is it a lack of awareness of alternatives? International availability? Something else?
40% of my customers will only pay with PayPal. I went without PayPal for about a month at one point and sales were down dramatically even though I still had credit card and other options available.
Re: More Paypal nonsense
#16These horror stories are so common that I have to ask: why does anyone still use PayPal? I ask this in the most constructive way possible... is there a set of use-cases that PayPal is still the best for? Is it a lack of awareness of alternatives? International availability? Something else?
Mainly international payments. Plus, customers are more likely to already have an account with them, and no one feels like signing up for a new payment system just to buy something at your store.
I'd be curious to know how conversion rates vary when you have Paypal vs. a merchant account (or something like Stripe) vs. both. Anyone have any data?
Re: More Paypal nonsense
#17These horror stories are so common that I have to ask: why does anyone still use PayPal? I ask this in the most constructive way possible... is there a set of use-cases that PayPal is still the best for? Is it a lack of awareness of alternatives? International availability? Something else?
Because in reality paypal is actually pretty awesome (note: I work for Etsy which uses paypal as a payment processor, so I guess I'm kind of biased). The cost for the business, compared to maintaining your own payments platform at scale, is pretty reasonable, and the failure rate is pretty miniscule when you consider the amount of potential fraud that goes through the platform.
Paypal wasn't really designed to handle one off personal payments, it was designed to let small (and large) businesses accept payments, internationally and fraud free. This is ridiculously difficult (how many of you have ever written software that integrates with a bank? ugh.) PayPal does this exceptionally well and because of that many huge businesses are built on its back.
The reality is, in most of the situations that people complain about freezing their money, without paypal their entire project would've been a no-go anyway.
I do feel for people who legitimately have their accounts wrongly frozen (I am one of them, though mine was unfrozen after a few days), but you have to understand how small a percentage of people that is, and that you can't have a system without failure. Again, paypal's failure rate, when you consider what they actually do, is astoundingly low.
Edit: Just for absolute clarity - I work for Etsy and have zero affiliation with the blog from the OP, and it has zero affiliation with Etsy. Also these are my opinions not my employers etc.
Re: More Paypal nonsense
#18At the risk of being perceived as the devil's advocate, let me ask a question.
I've heard of dozens of stories about Paypal along a similar vein. "They locked my account for unreasonable reason X and now are keeping the money".
Most of these stories seem anecdotal. Can someone point to a rigorously documented set of cases where both Paypal and the customer's side of things are reviewed?
Over the last few years, all of these "Paypal screwed me" stories have sounded like all the complaints a few years ago about Apple seeming to reject apps arbitrarily. As far as I know, the complaints about Apple from devs have largely died down since we've had a fairly straight-forward list of do's and don'ts to work from.
If most of the people reporting problems with Paypal are doing things that are inconsistent with their policies and then saying publicly how they're being screwed, then that creates a negative reputation for other people who have never personally had a problem with Paypal.
Re: More Paypal nonsense
#19These horror stories are so common that I have to ask: why does anyone still use PayPal? I ask this in the most constructive way possible... is there a set of use-cases that PayPal is still the best for? Is it a lack of awareness of alternatives? International availability? Something else?
Because it is what most sellers offer for transactions.
Re: More Paypal nonsense
#20These horror stories are so common that I have to ask: why does anyone still use PayPal? I ask this in the most constructive way possible... is there a set of use-cases that PayPal is still the best for? Is it a lack of awareness of alternatives? International availability? Something else?
> These horror stories are so common
Don't take that for granted. PayPal has 232 million registered accounts, and many more unregistered buyers. Even if 99.99% of PayPal account holders were completely satisfied and never had any problem, that'd 0.01% would still be 23200 pissed off people.
Is it right to wonder "does anyone still use PayPal" if 99.99% of PayPal users have no problem using the service?