Good riddance, PayPal • Hacker News Board

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#41

Post by happywolf » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 1:36 PM UTC

One of the reasons why PayPal so paranoid is to prevent money laundering. In fact this could be _the_ factor because any mis-step would land PP itself in big trouble and could be fined a lot of money. My guess is PP would rather err on the side of its own safety.

Another cause that it will freeze an account is when it suspects the account is used for illegal activities (e.g. selling fake goods).

Please note I am in no way implying the OP is involved in any of these. I am just making some guess on why PP may shut down/freeze accounts.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#42

Post by Sauce1971 » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 1:36 PM UTC

adrinavarro wrote: post #28

tylerrooney wrote: post #27

Perhaps someone who runs their own company can answer this question for me: If you don't use PayPal, how do you receive payment from customers who don't have credit cards? Are your customers exclusively in North America? Or do you just write those customers off (which is a valid option if PayPal integration would be that painful)? Adding PayPal as a payment option has been an enormous pain for us but a non-consequent…

There are debit cards out there! In fact, everyone I know has at least one debit card (either MasterCard or VISA), aside from the number of people who have an AMEX/VISA (credit type). And debit cards work everywhere. I've used my VISA Electron (debit) pretty much everywhere in the developed world, both online and travelling abroad.

I have a Visa debitcard, but it is only good for use in ATM and stores. To overcome this I get a bunch of Visa gift cards from my bank that I can put money into and use online.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#43

Post by 54mf » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 1:39 PM UTC

"Yeah, but, merchant services are hard!"

Bullshit. If you're going to process payments, you have to solve hard problems like fraud prevention, and PayPal is doing a dreadful job solving them. Freezing accounts isn't the problem; the problem is that PayPal is a giant black pit offering no way to resolve any issues. This is customer-hostile behavior. Shoot first, ask no questions later.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#44

Post by michaelt » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 1:40 PM UTC

tylerrooney wrote: post #27

Perhaps someone who runs their own company can answer this question for me: If you don't use PayPal, how do you receive payment from customers who don't have credit cards? Are your customers exclusively in North America? Or do you just write those customers off (which is a valid option if PayPal integration would be that painful)? Adding PayPal as a payment option has been an enormous pain for us but a non-consequent…

  If you don't use PayPal, how do you receive payment from 
  customers who don't have credit cards?

If a customer doesn't have a credit card or a debit card that your payment gateway accepts, you deal with them the same way you deal with customers who don't have computers.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#45

Post by 54mf » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 1:40 PM UTC

unkoman wrote: post #13

Any good alternatives?

Stripe. http://stripe.com

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#46

Post by Lasher » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 1:42 PM UTC

Lots of comments here are focusing on the mechanics of credit card processing and why Paypal might have to hold funds, but to me the entire article was really about the customer service angle and how Paypal handle this. They freeze accounts and make it next to impossible to get valid feedback on why.

He might have argued the point, but in this particular example a simple explanation of "We are concerned about liability if you cancel an issue before the physical version is delivered. The hold on funds helps protect us in that event".

The Paypal model fits small transactions and small volume. As soon as you are big enough to feel like you deserve / expect such an explanation it is probably just time to move on.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#47

Post by DanBC » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 1:45 PM UTC

bradddd wrote: post #23

kevinconroy wrote: post #7

There's been a lot of PayPal hating on HN. I'm not trying to defend the horrible things that I've heard, but I, for one, am a happy PayPal customer. We've regularly moved thousands upon thousands of dollars a day for the last decade without any major issues. #YMMV

There are countless tales of eBay parties having their funds frozen. I've personally had around a dozen influxes of a couple hundred dollars at a time be frozen for 4-6 weeks before I had access to their full balances. Additionally, many have issues with the fees. Going back to eBay, you get hit with fees for both services, and I think many just see it as being too much given other emerging comparable services.

> There are countless tales of eBay parties having their funds frozen.

"I used ebay, something went wrong, here's my post" vs "I used ebay, everything went smoothly, here's my post".

Obviously you're going to have many more posts where things go wrong, but that doesn't tell you anything about the total number of transactions, nor the successful transactions.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#48

Post by rm999 » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 1:52 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #19

andr wrote: post #10

Does anyone have insider knowledge of why PayPal has been causing merchants so much trouble? It sure looks bad on the outside, but I'd be interested to hear their rationale.

To the extent this perception represents actual reality: You know how every time a new payment provider comes up and people kvelch that it isn't available in their country and how no provider is? This is because every payment provider which attempts to hit as many countries as Paypal does dies . They're killed by fraud. (Fraud kills domestic ones, too, all the time, but it's marginally less frequent.) Luckily, Paypal…

My paypal account has been hacked twice, and both times I had to catch the ensuing fraud on my own. This was about 3 and 4 years ago. Two months ago they shut down my account because they think I'm high risk. I've had my Chase account frauded twice too (I know, I AM high risk) and Chase hasn't shut down my account.

IMO Paypal swung quickly from being too sloppy to being too conservative. The fraud they missed a few years ago was easy to catch - it was from sketchy sites and the products were being shipped to PO boxes nowhere close to where I live. Paypal is playing a dangerous game now by shutting down people's accounts because their strength comes from a network effect within a potential monopoly (unlike Chase); every person they ban from paypal removes the legitimacy of their service a little.

BTW Paypal's fraud team was only built up to a solid point in the past 3-4 years. I know this because I used to work in the industry.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#49

Post by someone13 » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 1:57 PM UTC

axefrog wrote: post #5

verelo wrote: post #4

Thank you for writing this, reiterates everything i feel about Paypal as well! We use Stripe and I couldn't be happier. Started with Paypal, wanted to shoot myself on a regular basis.

Unfortunately for Elliot, myself and the countless other non-Americans in the software development world, Stripe is not available (yet) outside of the USA. Stripe have stated that they're working very hard on breaking out into other countries, but I suspect it must be an immense job, what with all of the various existing bureaucracies and regulations present in each country. Hopefully we'll get some good news in the…

Stripe currently has a Canadian beta going, if you happen to be based there. Send them an email and ask!

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#50

Post by kevinconroy » Thu, Sep 06, 2012, 2:00 PM UTC

jakeonthemove wrote: post #16

kevinconroy wrote: post #7

There's been a lot of PayPal hating on HN. I'm not trying to defend the horrible things that I've heard, but I, for one, am a happy PayPal customer. We've regularly moved thousands upon thousands of dollars a day for the last decade without any major issues. #YMMV

They seem to really hate any and all pre-sales, plus they have a list of "risk items" - if you're lucky not to fall into one of those categories, it's a happy life with Paypal for you :-). Then there's their automated fraud prevention system that is just too trigger happy. As an example: I bought an item on eBay the other week and they refused to process the payment. A couple of days later I decided to try again befo…

Based on what's said, it seems that businesses/groups that raise large sums of money sporadically trigger the most problems.

If you're running an on-going business that has multiple to many transactions everyday over long periods of time, then I suspect that you're less likely to trigger these problems. But again, YMMV.