More Paypal nonsense • Hacker News Board

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#181

Post by paulhauggis » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:24 PM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #74

asto wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money donated is used by the non-profit to purchase products that are then given away to needy kids. This is donation whichever way you look at it. Amazon will let you do this but people generally specify who they want the product to go to which makes it a gift purchased for friends/family. So it qualifies as a purchase there.

PayPal does not let you ship items to addresses that are not the billing address. General policy, in their TOS, no surprises. OP is also not a registered non profit, though the real issue doesn't really have anything to do with the charitable nature of it.

I do it all the time. You can add a "gift address" in Paypal.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#182

Post by Silhouette » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:24 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #122

bphogan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't. I replied elsewhere in these comments that it happened to a client of mine. I made a lot of money in one weekend doing emergency "I told you so" payment gateway switching for him so he could take reservations. But it's my recollection they're not a bank, and so they have no real obligation to act like one. So when they do this kind of stuff, I'm not surprised. And I wouldn't want to be them. They probably de…

Actually, Paypal's European operation is officially registered as a bank in Luxemburg.

Thank you. I didn't know that before.

I'm in the UK and one of my companies is in the typical start-up bind right now: we want to take on-line payments, heavyweight Merchant Account and Payment Gateway services are a bureaucratic nightmare to set up with lead times often running into months, but the cheap 'n' cheerful services like Paypal have terrible reputations for customer service and reportedly a tendency to steal merchants' money arbitrarily.

Does anyone here know anything about whether, in practice, such horror stories are mitigated in the EU by PayPal's registration as a bank?

We don't see them as a long-term prospect for handling our payments, but today we'd settle for something we can set up in hours rather than weeks so we can launch our service and get some sort of trading history going. If nothing else, that would deal with a lot of the headaches of applying for the more "serious" services, which tend to be very risk-averse if you approach them as a start-up with no trading history and wanting recurring payment authority on credit cards to implement your subscription model.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#183

Post by Cyph0n » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:26 PM UTC

AlertPay is a good alternative. Fees are a bit high, but there is no such thing as a "limited" account, unless you send/receive fraudulent funds of course.

The problem is that AlertPay is not accepted by many online services. Once that is solved, I believe that it could probably compete with PayPal.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#184

Post by speleding » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:26 PM UTC

morsch wrote: post #150

masklinn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why trust a business to such a stagnant concern? Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it . Oh if you're in the US for the US you might be able (and want) to gamble on an other younger service, but in the wider world? It's a fucking wasteland , it's either Paypal or Big Bank Merchant Account, and those are no fun at all either. My card expired (and was renewed) recently, I decided to stop using payp…

I haven't seen the developer side of it, but from the consumer POV in Germany, it hardly looks like a wasteland. There are a couple of services like Moneybookers, ClickandBuy, which are very PayPal-like. There are also a few services circumventing both money "escrow" (not sure if the term is applicable) and the credit card companies by interfacing directly with your bank deposits, either directly (using your PIN/TAN,…

A lot new businesses, especially SaaS like services, need recurring payments and only PayPal offers those. For one-off payments there are indeed a lot of alternatives but few are available world-wide.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#185

Post by quanticle » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:31 PM UTC

bigiain wrote: post #162

masklinn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why trust a business to such a stagnant concern? Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it . Oh if you're in the US for the US you might be able (and want) to gamble on an other younger service, but in the wider world? It's a fucking wasteland , it's either Paypal or Big Bank Merchant Account, and those are no fun at all either. My card expired (and was renewed) recently, I decided to stop using payp…

>> Why trust a business to such a stagnant concern? >Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it. That's a bit like saying "I had to get a pay day loan at 27% per week interest, I had no alternative and they fucking know it". It probably means you're doing it wrong. If the business you're trusting to Paypal can't get a Big Bank Merchant Account, maybe you need to work out why (and whether it's a very goo…

That's a bit like saying "I had to get a pay day loan at 27% per week interest, I had no alternative and they fucking know it".

It probably means you're doing it wrong.

Either that or you don't have enough starting capital to do it right.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#186

Post by paulhauggis » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:34 PM UTC

8plot wrote: post #72

jfruh wrote: post #30

Yikes, are you really only allowed to use "donate" buttons if you're a nonprofit? I use them as a "tip jar" on my blog. What's the options for for-profit when you're giving money for nothing in particular?

Bitcoin is an option.

I would never use Bitcoin. Mostly because the currency has a tendency to be so volatile. I've seen it worth $30 one day and $3 the next.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#187

Post by briandear » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:35 PM UTC

DTanner wrote: post #166

masklinn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why trust a business to such a stagnant concern? Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it . Oh if you're in the US for the US you might be able (and want) to gamble on an other younger service, but in the wider world? It's a fucking wasteland , it's either Paypal or Big Bank Merchant Account, and those are no fun at all either. My card expired (and was renewed) recently, I decided to stop using payp…

> Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it. Hopefully in a few years time when it's matured, Bitcoin will be that alternative.

Bitcoin? No way. We might as well use Facebook credits. Getting Aunt Martha to trust some sketchy form of 'money' to make an online payment is going to be exceptionally difficult. Imagine suing for damages in bitcoins -- it's not a legal currency anywhere. It's a digital version of trading goats.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#188

Post by billswift » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:37 PM UTC

non123 wrote: post #143

danilocampos wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but this breathless "for the sake of the world don't ever use PayPal" You know, I've been working on my condescension. I really have – my last girlfriend hated that shit. And it's gotten a lot better. But you just had to use a cutely loaded little word like "histrionic," so there's really no other course... So what I'd like to do now is offer a brief explanation of how quotation marks work. Generally, quotation mar…

> A single word or a short phrase may be enclosed in quotation marks to indicate ironic use. http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Quotation-Marks-Correctly I think it was pretty clear that this was the case, when I read it didn't make me think that you said that.

> A single word or a short phrase may be enclosed in quotation marks to indicate ironic use.

Normally, yes. But the primary use of quotation marks is to quote - in a direct response to something someone wrote, you come across as either dishonest or stupid if you claim to be using them ironically.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#189

Post by quanticle » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:38 PM UTC

saurik wrote: post #87

sk5t wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What world do you live in, where "donate" necessarily implies some kind of accounting whargarbl? Unless there is some more complicated scheme afoot here that I have failed to comprehend, it appears the Regretsy folks were collecting money, 100% of which would be used for the benefit of needy people, without claiming to be a 501(c)(3) or anything of the like. Still sounds like a donation to a worthy cause. Only when P…

In the US you cannot run that company: if you accept money in exchange for goods (or even sometimes services), and are not a registered non-profit, you need to pay sales taxes on the sales, must declare any residual as income, and the people giving you the money cannot claim it as a write off. Regretsy is in the EU, not the US, but I don't believe that changes the point. In the EU, everything that is traded, whether…

if you accept money in exchange for goods (or even sometimes services), and are not a registered non-profit, you need to pay sales taxes on the sales

Only if you have a point of presence in the same state as the person you're transacting with. The US does not have a national sales tax; all sales taxes are collected by the states. Currently, transacting with a person in another state is considered interstate commerce and is therefore exempt from state sales taxes. There are efforts in Congress to change this, but, for now, you don't have to pay sales tax on a sale you make across state lines.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#190

Post by briandear » Tue, Dec 06, 2011, 2:45 PM UTC

gergles wrote: post #89

danilocampos wrote: post #24

I've been sitting here for the last five minutes trying to make a point eloquently. I'm having a hard time with it. So I'll just put it like this: What else can we really expect from a product whose parent is eBay ? This company is a fucking fossil with all the hunger for customer satisfaction of a used tissue. Is it convenient for users? Yeah. Is it worth gambling your entire business on? Given the lack of accountab…

Wow, that's histrionic. PayPal's customers are the people who use it. You, as a merchant, are not a customer of theirs, but a necessary evil to keep the customers coming. PayPal's customers love it. PayPal's merchants don't like it because PayPal has fraud prevention methods that are opaque and hamfistedly applied. That's a fine complaint, but this breathless "for the sake of the world don't ever use PayPal" garbage…

Actually, the merchants ARE the customers. The people who buy using pay pal aren't the ones paying the fees. Without merchants accepting PayPal, then no one would use PayPal. I am transitioning my own company away from PayPal -- we're going to use chargify for recurring and braintree for everything else. PayPal can go to hell. They've been treating us like criminals because we are located in China, are incorporated in Nevada, have a DC phone number and a California bank account. They don't seem to understand global businesses. They're a step below retarded. We've had our accounts frozen multiple times and don't respond to emails. I hate PayPal and as soon as I can get their crap disintangled from our web application code, we're done with them. We get better customer device from China's Union Pay and that is a state owned black hole of a company. At least they respond to emails and don't lock our account everytime I log in from a hotel room on the road.