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PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

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11–20 of 366 posts

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#12

Why do people still use PayPal? Their service is just absolutely insane.

My sentiments exactly, if this were the first instance of this i would forgive them however it is not; I fail to see why paypal is used given it recent history.

Ref: GlassUp Campaign - Indiegogo Diaspora's Funding Account Skullgirls DLC by developer Lab Zero - Indiegogo Paypal even froze a $35k donation for cancer treatment and in another case forced Regretsy to refund all their donations.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#13
> "... unless Mailpile provides PayPal with a detailed budgetary breakdown of how we plan to use the donations from our crowd funding campaign they will not release the block on my account for 1 year until we have shipped a 1.0 version of our product."

I'm a little confused by this. What crowd-sourced funds is PayPal withholding, as I thought that went via IndieGoGo? (answer: IndieGoGo uses PayPal)

What on earth does PayPal care about the financial planning of the recipient of the funds? This doesn't seem like it has anything to do with fraud detection.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#14
post #13

> "... unless Mailpile provides PayPal with a detailed budgetary breakdown of how we plan to use the donations from our crowd funding campaign they will not release the block on my account for 1 year until we have shipped a 1.0 version of our product." I'm a little confused by this. What crowd-sourced funds is PayPal withholding, as I thought that went via IndieGoGo? ( answer: IndieGoGo uses PayPal ) What on earth do…

IndieGoGo offers PayPal as an option. Many people prefer it, for various reasons. The funds donated via. credit card directly on IndieGoGo are still available to us.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#15
I am sorry this happened to you. As a consumer I used to love Paypal, buy anything with one click. After using them as a business owner for online transactions I absolutely hate them.

I won't go into my situation but the horror stories are endless:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/directory/paypal-inc http://www.paypalsucks.com/

As a developer I won't use them anymore. I use Stripe now.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#17
...and that is why you don't use PayPal, no matter how loud people scream that they want to use PayPal.

Seriously, PayPal has screwed over so many individuals, businesses and projects in the past, the obvious conclusion is that PayPal isn't an option when you run a small business (esp. IT/software-related) or a crowdfunding campaign.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#18
I assume this is to protect against chargebacks. If Mailpile were to empty their PayPal account and then buyers start requesting refunds for non-delivery of the described product, PayPal would be left holding the bag.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#19
PayPal is fine for a certain class of limited transactions - usually when they involve selling physical or digital products which actually exist and can be delivered today.

Rightly or wrongly though they have a very[1] long[2] history[3] of freezing the accounts of projects they deem to be remotely 'risky' to them. By definition this would seem to include almost any crowdfunded project where an actual product or service which people are paying for does not yet exist.

Given how well documented this is I can't help but wonder why a company like IndieGoGo would touch PayPal with a bargepole - their interests seem diametrically opposed !

IndieGoGo should be protecting their users by disabling PayPal as a payment option for all projects.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/06/paypal-account-freeze/

[2] http://www.holdtheline.com/threads/paypal-freezes-funds-from...

[3] http://www.siliconbeat.com/2013/08/16/paypal-freezes-then-re...

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#20
post #13

> "... unless Mailpile provides PayPal with a detailed budgetary breakdown of how we plan to use the donations from our crowd funding campaign they will not release the block on my account for 1 year until we have shipped a 1.0 version of our product." I'm a little confused by this. What crowd-sourced funds is PayPal withholding, as I thought that went via IndieGoGo? ( answer: IndieGoGo uses PayPal ) What on earth do…

> What on earth does PayPal care about the financial planning of the recipient of the funds? This doesn't seem like it has anything to do with fraud detection.

Because PayPal provides users with the option to ask for refund which can be very expensive for them. If they deem the risk is too high they won't do business with you.

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