So, I tried Dwolla • Hacker News Board

Re: So, I tried Dwolla

#21

Post by zefhous » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 10:03 PM UTC

What a poorly written and immature article! Calling Dwolla "a bunch of clowns" because you couldn't get your account verified right away is just ridiculous.

It's also ridiculous to claim to "understand the whole fraud aspect" and then imply that they are engaging in fraud because the money hasn't been transferred back to the other guy's account within a single business day. And claiming that Dwolla is too good to be true because it didn't work out for you right away? Really you want us to take you seriously?

These things take time and these businesses cannot and should not be run without adhering to processes and rules that aren't transparent to consumers. As a payment processor, a false positive is much worse than a false negative.

Dwolla is providing a fantastic and much-needed service. In my experience the people at Dwolla are providing a great service and doing a good job of it. Their support has been responsive and very well done.

Re: So, I tried Dwolla

#22

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 10:09 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: So, I tried Dwolla

#23

Post by michaelfairley » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 10:17 PM UTC

boling11 wrote: post #19

chourobin wrote: post #7

Try Venmo?

Venmo has a $5k per week limit on payments as well as cashouts.

Venmo now has payout business accounts: https://venmo.com/payouts

Re: So, I tried Dwolla

#24

Post by yarou » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 10:21 PM UTC

I can understand this guy's frustration. While I've never used Dwolla before, all the negative reviews of it make sure that I will never use it. Hopefully Ripple and OpenCoin take off, in the meantime it's probably better to use traditional methods of money transfer.

Re: So, I tried Dwolla

#25

Post by aleksandrm » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 10:26 PM UTC

Is there really no "good-guy" alternative to PayPal? Since PayPal froze my account several years ago and robbed me of 2K, I have been in search of a better alternative. First came WePay, I tried using it, but it was awkward and slow, it took weeks to transfer a simple $500 in the U.S. between verified accounts, and customer service wasn't all that helpful. Then came along Dwolla, I haven't had any large transactions here yet, but it's been slow as well, and unwilling to work with me and my buddy with whom we share a referral credit -- not a very good beginning to start a relationship with a customer. And now this article. Le sigh.

Re: So, I tried Dwolla

#26

Post by mp99e99 » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 10:26 PM UTC

Well, If its in the tens of thousands of dollars ($10,000) for a .25 cent charge, this seems like alot of risk to handle in house. Ie at that size 1 in 40000 transactions could be fraud and they would be breaking even on the .25 cent charges, assuming there is no overhead to running this business.

Re: So, I tried Dwolla

#27

Post by ok_craig » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 10:30 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #13

ok_craig wrote: post #6

The other day I was trying to make some kind of transaction with Dwolla, and before I could, they asked me a series of questions to verify my identity. The questions had obviously been pulled from a background check based on my name that I didn't know they had done. It was asking me what the price of a house was when I originally bought it, and what street I lived on in a given time period. Outside of this being real…

Are house sale prices not documented publicly in the US?

I guess they are, it just wasn't something I expected to learn at that time in that way. So I guess it isn't really a big privacy issue, just a strange experience.

I would have been more comfortable with it if it had been part of the original screening, and not something that popped up randomly before a transaction, after I had already moved money into my account.

Re: So, I tried Dwolla

#28

Post by BoyWizard » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 10:31 PM UTC

aleksandrm wrote: post #25

Is there really no "good-guy" alternative to PayPal? Since PayPal froze my account several years ago and robbed me of 2K, I have been in search of a better alternative. First came WePay, I tried using it, but it was awkward and slow, it took weeks to transfer a simple $500 in the U.S. between verified accounts, and customer service wasn't all that helpful. Then came along Dwolla, I haven't had any large transactions…

The problem is, payment processing is hard. Fraud is a real problem, that costs real money and takes a massive amount of effort to prevent. You can limit your exposure (eg Stripe) by placing limitations on your solution (limit by country, by transaction types, etc), but there is no fix for it.

Big banks don't do much better than Paypal in regards to fraud prevention, the major difference is that they are regulated more tightly so they can't just freeze your money without recourse.

Re: So, I tried Dwolla

#29

Post by eridius » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 10:32 PM UTC

loceng wrote: post #2

I'm curious if others have had similar experiences.

As a personal account, I've moved a few thousand dollars through Dwolla with no problem.

Re: So, I tried Dwolla

#30

Post by niggler » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 10:39 PM UTC

zefhous wrote: post #21

What a poorly written and immature article! Calling Dwolla "a bunch of clowns" because you couldn't get your account verified right away is just ridiculous. It's also ridiculous to claim to "understand the whole fraud aspect" and then imply that they are engaging in fraud because the money hasn't been transferred back to the other guy's account within a single business day. And claiming that Dwolla is too good to be…

You didn't read the complaint.

'Currently, there's 10s of thousands of dollars that have been removed from my business partner's account, that are sitting in Dwolla's accounts, that Dwolla claims they will "return in due course."'

That should never happen. If there are fraud problems, they should be clarified and settled before the fact, not while they hold onto the cash. The sum is too large to take to small claims court and I imagine too large for the author to just write off.