"PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

I thought it was common knowledge at this point that there is this risk using PayPal and it was generally not recommended for anything but hobby use.

PayPal has been seen using several jurisdictions, eg. Luxembourg, France, Germany. When maltreated customer try to sue and get their funds back, they will ping-pong people around in different orgs across these jurisdictions.

In the end you would need several very persistent lawyers across several jurisdictions, which is more expensive than loosing 100.000 EUR.

(There is a specific case on this that was shared on HN some time back).

One of the things that fascinates me about silicon valley is that there's this very clear playbook that goes along the lines of: We're going to 'disrupt' X industry with technology. And disrupt often has a veneer of technological progress, but really is primarily just regulatory arbitrage. Paypal: We're going to be a bank, but we're not going to adhere to banking regulations. Crypto: We're going to be a stock exchange, but we're not going to adhere to SEC regulations. Uber: We're going to be a taxi company, but we're going to ignore all local taxi regulations. Uber/Doordash/Gig economy: We're going to employ people, but we're going to ignore employment law.

Not only is it interesting that this keeps happening, and successfully. But we're like 25 years down the line since Paypal started, and Paypal is still acting in ways that you wouldn't expect a bank/payment processor to be allowed to behave by regulators.

Like, if I were a regulator I would seriously be considering just going through Uber's behaviour since the company started and prosecuting every single violation they committed. Let's see how well that business model holds up. It's not good enough to say "Oh we're all billionaires now and we floated on the stock exchange so I guess now we'll think about abiding by the law".

> Has anybody ever really been completely robbed by PayPal and never gotten their money?

On both ends of the spectrum of being an ebay buyer and seller.

Once I sold a WoW account, and as soon as the buyer got the account charged back the payment.

Another time I bought a piece for my motorbike. Never got anything. Asked for a chargeback. Got nothing.

Did not use their service and I am still livid for their lack of transparency, consistency and honesty.

Alternative?

Forgot the /s (rugpulls)