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PayPal CEO writes personal response

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Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#91

Post by jasonlotito »

vadiml wrote: post #86
ig1 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try asking your regular bank how their fraud detection works, or your insurance company, or the secret service. Basically if you work in fraud detection (or broadly any kind of crime detection) you keep your techniques secret because otherwise you're helping the criminals avoid you. Look at the source code for Reddit or Hacker News, notice how in the publicly released codebases they've both chosen specifically not to…

The security by obscurity approach usually give you only an ILLUSION of security

Security has nothing to do with fraud. And in combating fraud, obscurity works. SSL is security, but it's meaningless if the site you just sent your CC data to is fraudulent.

Then, you need to understand how open PayPal is to fraud. I can easily commit major crimes using PayPal, and security has nothing to do with it.

This is the challenge they face. If you think it's an easy problem to solve, ask yourself: why is there no one else out there doing this same thing? Why are all the other supposed opponents limited in such drastic ways that PayPal is not?

I'm not suggesting they are perfect, but your trite remark is meaningless and ignorant of the realities of the system.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#92

Post by propercoil »

In the previous post David replied to the comment (on HN) i made about wanting to change paypal's generic template to increase sales through a/b testing.I had a rant about paypal's api suckness and i also ranted about how draconian the fund freezes of diaspora and wikileaks were.

He said that he understands and told me to send him an email and we will take care of it. No email was sent yet as i'm afraid i'll be targeted in the future. I can't put my legitimate digital business at that risk - there are tonnage upon tonnage of forum threads over the web of people's business going under because of pp freezes only because they contacted paypal it's heart breaking and too much of a red flag to me.

The only thing i can say about David is that he looks and sounds like a genuine guy who replied and started a discussion with the community and that as we all know goes a long way. So maybe his intentions are good but will paypal have zappos's culture regarding merchants all of a sudden? i doubt it and you all doubt it too because what matters is implementation ie real life.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#93

Post by ivanstojic »

teaneedz wrote: post #87
angryasian wrote: post #82

The level of discourse on HN lately is absurd. Here is a new CEO that appears to be looking to change things for the positive, yet everyone wants to be cynical and doubting. Yet when startups have major f* ups, the conversation is much different. Lets all admit change is slow and that paypal is still one of the more trusted payment solutions accepted globally. It would be nice to be able to use them in the future wit…

Well put ... PayPal has some housecleaning to do but here is someone that appears to be listening ... listening in a big way. I give PayPal credit for this response. Rather than being cynical, I'm happier giving credit to someone who wants to make things better. Mr. Marcus - some of us appreciate your efforts here.

You are forgetting one thing that was previously stated in the comments: this isn't Paypal responding through their normal support channels.

This is a fire-fighting attempt from the CEO of a company that snubbed the people they should live off of, prompted by a bigger than average shitstorm created by their persistent crappy handling of accounts.

Think of it this way: suppose Mercedes went around, burning the cars it sells to their customers - much to their chagrin - and one of the customers creates a big enough fuss for the CEO to come and personally give him a new car. Is that an acceptable handling of the situation in your eyes?

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#94

Post by chris_wot »

dmbaggett wrote: post #61

From the skepticism here, it's clear Mr. Marcus has his work cut out for him. Even with far fewer people ever reporting to me (directly and indirectly) than him, I sympathize with his inability to get the unvarnished truth from his own people. "We're routinely screwing people out of hard cash" is probably a scary message to relay up. His email sounded sincere, and he's new to the job. I'd be inclined to give him the…

They have their work cut out for them indeed, but it's of there own making. They should have been looking at systemic issues when the Minecraft founder couldn't get access to his account for months, when their customer service advised someone to destroy a perfectly good violin due to "fraud", apparently mass payment doesn't exist even when it does [1], numerous reviews in magazines such as PC World [2] and Kernel Magazine [3], and an entire website devoted to how bad they are was established from pissed off customers [4].

PayPal are in big trouble. It's going to take more than platitudes to get them out of it!

1. http://christianowens.com/post/15771850658/my-recent-experie...

2. http://www.pcworld.com/article/101525/consumer_alert_paypals...

3. http://www.kernelmag.com/comment/column/2978/paypal-still-su...

4. http://www.paypalsucks.com/

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#95

Post by ivanstojic »

lancewiggs wrote: post #81
rhizome wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard to make an email sound sincere, especially when vetted by a PR agency.

I suspect no PR involved here - that email is repetitive, not polished, and feels like a new CEO trying to do the right thing and light a fire.

In this case, I'd suspect that lighting the fire should be the first step to burning most of the customer relations department. I'll trust Paypal when I feel the smell of burning corpses from their offices.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#96

Post by chris_wot »

rhizome wrote: post #74
adgar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I can run a 3 man startup and change things in a week! Why can't a public traded company worth billions with thousands of employees change things in a week?" Check your ignorance and entitlement at the door, please.

Not to mention that any changes they make have to be proven not to expose them to the banking laws that they've been assiduously avoiding, and that would provide the kinds of protections that the general population expects.

They can't escape these laws on Australia as they are a financial depository institution regulated by APRA. Should they try to deny an Australuan their money like this, they will be in a world of pain.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#98

Post by chris_wot »

gabaix wrote: post #48
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #13

Why now? Why with this story? I've been reading similar complaints to that for years. Some of which were far worse in my view (i.e. taking money out of banks to repay people who weren't even seeking a refund because PayPal changed its mind about someone's product or service). Why does PayPal suddenly care? Is it because there is viable competition now?

disclaimer: I work for eBay Inc. David Marcus was CEO of Zong, a small mobile payment startup who got bought by PayPal last year. When buying the company, the CEO of eBay Inc. asked him to change quiet a few things in the company culture. This email is one of the first step to improve customer service. Will he succeed I don't know, but you gotta give him the credit of trying.

eBay is even worse than PayPal! If he can fix PayPal, he might want to try his hand at the owning company...

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#99

Post by eli »

Karunamon wrote: post #70
wpietri wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that they should always try to give you a reason. But that's not as easy as it sounds. Put yourself in the position of somebody who is trying to commit massive fraud. E.g., by purporting to sell a bunch of stuff on-line. Every bit of information you have about how PayPal combats fraud is helpful. Every time PayPal gives somebody a reason, it helps fraudsters avoid that particular wall or trap, letting them pr…

>it helps fraudsters avoid that particular wall or trap, letting them probe the defenses elsewhere. Couldn't you say make the same argument of proprietary vs open source software?

Yes. Does that make it untrue?

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#100

Post by dkarl »

noonespecial wrote: post #38

This isn't special... Yet. What happened here can happen even in the most dysfunctional customer service paradigms. A promblem randomly and luckily escalated from the people who can't do anything about the problem to the people who (generally speaking) won't do anything about the problem. As a lucky break, the person/department who generally won't do anything, decided in their mercy to do something this one time. IMH…

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."
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