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

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

#51

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

im3w1l wrote: post #45
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Know Your Customer, anti-terrorism, anti-drug money laundering, and many other laws have been enacted to keep "the bad guys" from being able to operate efficiently. Unfortunately, and perhaps even sometimes by design, these laws have created all kinds of loopholes that allow financial institutions and governments to prey on innocents, especially those who aren't doing anything illegal but sometimes things that are un…

It's gone way too far. My bank refuses to cash international checks (no banks in my country do). IRS refuses to do international wires. The result is that the united states government owes me money I can only claim if I actually fly there which is expensive enough and too much of a bother for the sum involved. Like if even the fucking IRS isn't trusted enough to push money through the system then it's a complete joke…

TransferWise (now called Wise) would give you a US account number they could pay you with.

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

#52

Post by helsinkiandrew »

mpeg wrote: post #22

Ok so I know a bit about this as I had the same exact thing happen to me in the past. The reason this probably happened is that their business was getting a high % of chargebacks from paying customers, paypal is not a specialist payment provider that wants to handle what they consider high-risk business like that, so they block your account and hold your funds for 180 days and during that time keep processing chargeb…

Isn't the real issue that Paypal lets both consumers and businesses receive money, and consumers are far more likely to be fraudsters - receiving money and not sending goods or requesting chargebacks for goods they have received etc.

If you use a credit card merchant that does more vetting of the seller side businesses, they're more likely to give you the benefit of doubt if you start getting chargebacks and not lock everything.

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

#53

Post by Symbiote »

Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #46
jeroenhd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take credit card payments on any platform: yes. The difference is in how much prior warning you're getting and how expensive paying for the chargebacks is going to be, but every major payment platform will either shut you down or massively increase prices if you incur too many chargebacks. This is one of the practical reasons why credit card processors generally don't take porn sites as customers.

> This is one of the practical reasons why credit card processors generally don't take porn sites as customers Yup “buyer’s remorse” kicks in rather quickly when asked “Honey, what’s this transaction for xxx?” once the statement arrives.

Does anyone know if this happens in Europe, where stronger authentication is generally required for online purchases?

Last year I asked my bank to chargeback a transaction, where I didn't recognize the merchant or the amount. They said it was paid in-person with a PIN, and unlikely to be fraudulent unless I'd lost my card. (It was genuine.)

Normally when I purchase on my card I have to authorize the transaction with a smartphone app. I can see the bank being reluctant to reverse an honest purchase authorized this way.

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

#54

Post by piltdownman »

geek_at wrote: post #32
mpeg wrote: post #22

Ok so I know a bit about this as I had the same exact thing happen to me in the past. The reason this probably happened is that their business was getting a high % of chargebacks from paying customers, paypal is not a specialist payment provider that wants to handle what they consider high-risk business like that, so they block your account and hold your funds for 180 days and during that time keep processing chargeb…

does that mean if a group of people don't like you they can chargeback-bomb you and get you banned?

Exactly this. If you want to kill a competitors iOS app it's a well-known blackhat route, and testified to here before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=343060

In this case a competitor used fake accounts and stolen credit cards to buy a competing app to get it delisted - Apple's apparent policy once the chargeback total hits some arbitrary figure.

Edit: Immediately downvoted for no reason. Catching these sort of malfeasant actors was literally one of the USPs of former Irish yCombinator Winter 2014 participant Trustev, which was picked up by TransUnion for €44 million a year later : https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/transunion-buys-tru...

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

#55

Post by nness »

gndk wrote: post #44

I have nightmares about this. The comments here saying that PayPal is just for hobby projects and should be avoided are living in a different reality. For me (e-commerce business, mainly in Germany), PayPal makes up around 70-80% of revenue and isn't easily replacable. I'm sure some customers would whip out their creditcard (if they even have one) or enter their long IBAN bank account numbers for direct debit, but ma…

I wonder if this might be a case of PayPal in the US vs. Europe — at least with regards to charge-backs.

It seems that the burden of proof in the EU is much higher before an issuer will allow a charge-back — at least anecdotally, the credit cards I've used require you to prove that you tried to resolve the issue with the merchant first, prior to charge-back. Even then, charge-backs would negatively impact your account standing with the issuer, so are dissuaded.

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

#56

Post by piltdownman »

Dalewyn wrote: post #40
geek_at wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does that mean if a group of people don't like you they can chargeback-bomb you and get you banned?

Keep in mind that chargebacks are considered a nuclear, double-edged option. Yes, you can get your money back as a customer or abuse the system to financially cancel someone, but issue too many chargebacks and the banks will be more than happy to also kick you out too. Chargebacks as they are intended are used only when all other attempts at resolving a dispute have failed, including the merchant refusing to issue a…

The problem here lies not in legitimate chargebacks, but in chargebacks as a result of using fake or stolen credit cards. There's a whole industry of blackhat and greyhat Scamming as a Service, ranging from botnets used to delist AdSense ads, to Eastern European carding forums which offer scripts to run 100s or 1000s of transactions that will be flagged fraudulent within 24hrs.

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

#57

Post by reisse »

geek_at wrote: post #32
mpeg wrote: post #22

Ok so I know a bit about this as I had the same exact thing happen to me in the past. The reason this probably happened is that their business was getting a high % of chargebacks from paying customers, paypal is not a specialist payment provider that wants to handle what they consider high-risk business like that, so they block your account and hold your funds for 180 days and during that time keep processing chargeb…

does that mean if a group of people don't like you they can chargeback-bomb you and get you banned?

It's more complicated. In theory, you should not be able to chargeback any transaction at will, you need to provide a reason for it. But because US banking is stuck in between of 90s and 00s, to pay with the card online it's enough to know what's printed on the one side of it, maybe two sides. Therefore, "fraud" can always be used as a chargeback reason ("Oh, it wasn't me, someone taken a photo of my card! I definitely didn't pay 300$ on that hot mums nearby website!").

In some parts of the world this is solved by mandatory 2FA authenticaton for online payments (3DSecure and similar tech). If the transaction is verified by 3DSecure or some other 2FA, you cannot chargeback because of "fraud", but you still can chargeback for any other verifiable reason (e. g. goods not delivered).

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

#58

Post by CalRobert »

gndk wrote: post #44

I have nightmares about this. The comments here saying that PayPal is just for hobby projects and should be avoided are living in a different reality. For me (e-commerce business, mainly in Germany), PayPal makes up around 70-80% of revenue and isn't easily replacable. I'm sure some customers would whip out their creditcard (if they even have one) or enter their long IBAN bank account numbers for direct debit, but ma…

Not sure what your sector is but how is Paypal easier than paddle, stripe, chargebee, etc?

Actually, how do people buy stuff in Germany? I'm in the Netherlands and everything uses iDeal, which was annoying at first but now I like it. I use a credit card otherwise. When I was in Ireland I used a debit card which functioned like a credit card.

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

#59

Post by jpalomaki »

gndk wrote: post #44

I have nightmares about this. The comments here saying that PayPal is just for hobby projects and should be avoided are living in a different reality. For me (e-commerce business, mainly in Germany), PayPal makes up around 70-80% of revenue and isn't easily replacable. I'm sure some customers would whip out their creditcard (if they even have one) or enter their long IBAN bank account numbers for direct debit, but ma…

When dealing with smaller vendors I (as customer) still prefer PayPal as payment method. Having PayPal as an option increases my probability of buying (hard to say how much).

I guess I'm behaving this partly because I know PayPal can be hard against the vendors. For me this indicates that if vendor accepts PayPal, then they are probably not fraudulent.

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

#60

Post by rambambram »

gndk wrote: post #44

I have nightmares about this. The comments here saying that PayPal is just for hobby projects and should be avoided are living in a different reality. For me (e-commerce business, mainly in Germany), PayPal makes up around 70-80% of revenue and isn't easily replacable. I'm sure some customers would whip out their creditcard (if they even have one) or enter their long IBAN bank account numbers for direct debit, but ma…

I hope they add your long IBAN bank account number, instead of their own. ;)

All jokes aside, I've good experience inside the whole EU with receiving money for (digital) goods. Just from one simple bank account to the next, inside EU. I think it is a really overlooked paying method.

We even built an 'internet friendly' website/webshop system around that fact (https://www.heyhomepage.com/?link=16)

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