It's reasons like this I'll never have a paypal account or offer it as a means of payment on my site
PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute
131–140 of 303 posts
Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
The mere existence of a contract is not evidence of its legality/enforceability.
Unless you are someone who cannot afford the legal fees that would allow you to challenge said legality/enforceability. Which is pretty much anyone.
In California, the small claims court fee for this case would be $50, and lawyers are barred from representing either party.
Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
The above clause of the TOS is the reason not to sue. The seller agreed to a TOS that says that if PayPal decides that it is counterfeit, they refund the money and the item is destroyed, without any restriction on what care PayPal has to take to decide that it's counterfeit. So PayPal acted within the terms of their agreement.
TOS mean as much as the lawyer you have. PayPal can't get you to agree to things that are illegal, and improperly designating counterfeits would/should qualify. Especially when PayPal is a defacto monopoly. tl;dr lawyer up.
TOS mean as much as your small claims court judge decides it means.
They had a professional appraisal on the violin that said it was authentic. Paypal has its TOS saying they can call anything counterfeit and their TOS says they can't be held liable for it.
Sorry it's a judges job to say if you can or can't be held liable for your business terms and practices.
Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute
#134It seems to be, that most of PayPal's PR blunders result from heavily regulation of stupid employees. I know we don't tolerate personal insults here on HN, but those of you who have spoken to as many PayPal reps as I have, will probably agree that there are few other ways to describe them. I guess their logic is: "If we can hire dumb people for less money, and regulate them so they can't make mistakes, we can save mo…
It seems to be, that most of PayPal's PR blunders result from heavily regulation of stupid employees.
Funny, but heavily regulation of stupid employees seems to be the source of many complaints about the TSA, government agencies in general, traffic enforcement, customer service reps, etc...
Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute
#135Yeah. I'm selling some old stuff on eBay, using money to buy newer stuff, drawing the difference from the bank when the PayPal balance is not enough. Repeat. After not even two cycles of this, I get an email from PP saying: > Starting MM/DD/YYYY, money from payments you receive will be placed in a pending balance for up to 21 days. By doing this, we're making sure that there's enough money in your account to cover po…
When your money is in PayPal's hands, it's technically theirs because they are not a financial institution. Your money is not insured or protected in any way other than how PayPal deems appropriate. They are not liable for anything, unlike a bank. So it's not only illegal at all (perhaps immoral but hey), it's also perfectly OK because _you_ agreed to their terms of use when you opened an account with them.
That's only true in the US; in the EU, Paypal is actually a bank, registered in Luxembourg.
Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, you're wrong. Nobody is forcing you to use Paypal, you accept payment that way because it's convenient for both buyer and seller. You could advertise on Craigslist, but would you feel comfortable if someone says, 'I will send you a check, please ship to this address'? No, because the check may be bad and you could have a big financial headache. Likewise, many buyers would not be comfortable sending a check or tak…
This is the absolute best response to this post that we could ever have expected. Nailed it.
Why thank you, that was a nice thing to say.
Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute
#137Yeah, Regretsy.com is a bastion of fine journalism. I'd wait to get your panties in a knot until a real news site reports this.
Hard to understand the down voting.
Are people actually that stupid that they believe the story is true?
Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't know this 10.1 b clause until now but it makes it VERY clear to me: NEVER use PayPal to sell anything that could in anyway be disputed as counterfeit given that the terms allow PayPal to deems what is genuine/fake remotely, without physical inspection and results in not only money witheld but a potentially genuine item being destroyed. So so crazy.
I froze for a second after reading that statement, which I was completely unaware of. I sometimes buy and sell rare coins (particularly US Morgan dollars), which regularly go for thousands of dollars. I have one on eBay at this very moment that I'm attempting to get $3000+ for. I've never heard of such a dispute happening before, or have I had any issues in the past, but now knowing this, i'm really scared of what mi…
Out of curiosity, how do you destroy a coin?
Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't know this 10.1 b clause until now but it makes it VERY clear to me: NEVER use PayPal to sell anything that could in anyway be disputed as counterfeit given that the terms allow PayPal to deems what is genuine/fake remotely, without physical inspection and results in not only money witheld but a potentially genuine item being destroyed. So so crazy.
I froze for a second after reading that statement, which I was completely unaware of. I sometimes buy and sell rare coins (particularly US Morgan dollars), which regularly go for thousands of dollars. I have one on eBay at this very moment that I'm attempting to get $3000+ for. I've never heard of such a dispute happening before, or have I had any issues in the past, but now knowing this, i'm really scared of what mi…
We seriously need a viable competitor to the paypal/ebay system yesterday.
That may be, and I make extremely little use of PayPal (only as a processor of credit card payments for merchants I trust on other grounds, and never as a seller of goods). But any new viable competitor to PayPal will have to solve all over all the cases of fraud and abuse that were responded to over the years by PayPal's current policies. "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., The Common Law (1881), page 1.
Re: PayPal forces buyer to destroy $2500 pre-WWII antique violin in dispute
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason I said that isn't entirely because of the TOS but also because of the cost and logistics. Various courts could potentially decide that such clause isn't legal.
In any event, even if the clause is legal you can challenge the decision to declare the item counterfeit. If the court finds that the decision was procedurally deficient or unreasonable it can be overturned.
A great deal depends on what kind of representations the seller made to potential buyers. I think it's significant that the story does not include a link to the original auction/for-sale listing, or copies of the correspondence between buyer and seller. There's no mention of seller offering to refund buyer's purchase price or what kind of dealings they had, leading me to suspect (though not conclude) that the two parties to the transaction had fallen into dispute. It's possible that the buyer just got cold feet and unilaterally invoked his/her option to get a refund, but that would seem rather unusual. I've had a few eBay transactions over the years that were mildly scary (large sum paid out, radio silence from the other side for more than a day), but they're almost always just normal communication problems that are quickly resolved.