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PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

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101–110 of 366 posts

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#101
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like everything else.

Not really - can USA spy on credit cards issued by Chinese banks? And vice-versa? There is at least some level of privacy. But with BTC every time you make a purchase you can be linked to all your previous and future purchases.

If it's a Visa or MasterCard, yes the US Gov can spy on it.

If it isn't, you can't use it to pay Mailpile- so it's irreverent.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#102

They just don't want to, and we cannot help but wonder why. The risk of complaints, refunds, and chargebacks for non-delivery would be my guess. "Please provide an itemized budget and your development goal dates for your project" This puts us in an incredibly uncomfortable position... ...of having a roadmap for your product's development. It's really not unreasonable, and if you don't have even a vague idea right now…

Note that they had previously stated that they wanted to release the funds as slowly as possible. Asking us to provide a detailed budget is basically asking us to justify that and give them a timetable so they can withhold the maximum amount of cash for the maximum amount of time.

When this happens, does PayPal provide interest on the funds that they withhold?

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#103
I work at GoCardless.com, a UK-based payments startup (YC S11), and thus I have a above-average insight into these kinds of issues from my day-to-day work.

From the point of view of fraud protection and risk management, I can see why PayPal take this kind of unilateral action. Payments providers are always at high risk, and since they deal with and indemnify other financial firms further up the chain, they're the ones taking the risk.

Even when you're charging relatively high fees as PayPal does, one case of fraud or even something as simple as a project that doesn't materialise (not that I think that'll happen with Mailpile!) can eat up tonnes of your revenue and make your business unviable.

As such, GoCardless sometimes has to make decisions that account holders won't like. However, the difference between us (as well as, I believe, other providers like Stripe) and PayPal is that we will be (a) reachable and (b) reasonable.

For me, PayPal's failing is in the lack of customer engagement on these issues. Every story like this shows PayPal as cagey, unhelpful and unwilling to have a discussion or reconsider at all. Everyone can, to a degree, understand why PayPal has to make unpopular decisions to protect itself from unacceptable risk (as all businesses will have to do in various ways), but their approach and manner in doing so is what is unacceptable.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#104
post #88
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Paypal's competitors weren't wiped out by Paypal being good, they were wiped out because they weren't as good as handling risk and fraud as Paypal. They got wiped out by criminals. Paypal is risk averse, which means you shouldn't use them for cases where you're taking a large amount of money up front and not delivering in the near future (i.e events, crowd-funding), or alternatively get pre-approval from Payp…

> I've no idea what the current fraud level against Stripe is, but as they become more mainstream they're going to need to employ more anti-fraud and anti-risk measures as their exposure increases. I'm one of Stripe's cofounders. For what it's worth -- we already process billions of dollars a year. (More than PayPal when it was acquired.) There'll always be more we can do on the fraud/risk side, but we're already ope…

You're right, but then there was no PayPal when PayPal reached their size, so the situation now seems different to me.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#105
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Paypal's competitors weren't wiped out by Paypal being good, they were wiped out because they weren't as good as handling risk and fraud as Paypal. They got wiped out by criminals. Paypal is risk averse, which means you shouldn't use them for cases where you're taking a large amount of money up front and not delivering in the near future (i.e events, crowd-funding), or alternatively get pre-approval from Payp…

And then there's Bitcoin- no fraud, no charge backs. Payments are final and instant and, best of all, don't require a middle man.

> no fraud

Only for extremely specific and useless definitions of "no fraud."

If I send my bitcoins to someone to buy something, I have no protection if they decide not to deliver.

At which point the Bitcoin enthusiasts will say "but you can use a third party escrow service," which is true, and puts us right back into the same situation we are with PayPal.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#106
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can get tired of other people telling this, but really, they should use Bitcoin. There are several advantages of this: accountability (you can verify with the block chain that they really received your payment), ease of use (utilizing 3rd parties like Coinbase, BitPay and others you don't really have to know how Bitcoin works to pay with them) and most importantly - irreversibility - once you receive Bitcoin t…

> irreversibility - once you receive Bitcoin there are no chargebacks. Unless I receive the goods before paying, I would never buy anything with Bitcoin online. There’s no buyer or fraud protection whatsoever. I don’t understand how any legitimate merchant would be alright with that. If a merchant would only accept Bitcoin, that would come across just as sketchy as a merchant who wants me to mail him a cashier’s chec…

Remember that "chargebacks for everyone, no questions asked" is a US and Australia-only thing. In most other places it's not very common (you need to go premium for that), and Bitcoin would be more than welcome to reduce fees, delays, frozen accounts, and other bull.

Fraud is still fraud, so if you get defrauded by someone, all you need is that a judge decides that Bitcoin is money, like it has already happened with that guy in the US who ran a ponzi scheme based on Bitcoin and got caught. So don't worry about that.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#107

They just don't want to, and we cannot help but wonder why. The risk of complaints, refunds, and chargebacks for non-delivery would be my guess. "Please provide an itemized budget and your development goal dates for your project" This puts us in an incredibly uncomfortable position... ...of having a roadmap for your product's development. It's really not unreasonable, and if you don't have even a vague idea right now…

Mailpile sets off alarm bells for me. The web page seems big on promises, and decent webmail isn't the eaiest thing in the world to make a decent UI for. Never mind that it's all wrapped around some kind of seamless background application. I'm doubtful that they'll do what they think they can do. Good luck to them, but I'm unsuprised that paypal has witheld funds.

You're entitled to your opinion. But I've personally met two of three team members. So these or not phantom people, trying to take your money.

Paypal doesn't seem to have any problems taking money for "shady" people and just refusing to pay out. In my mind, that makes Paypal shady - and not the people that use it.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

PayPal terms of service strictly requires any kind of charity donation campaign to be approved by them in advance. Anyone who has their unapproved donation drive frozen by PayPal kind of deserve what they get.

I don't agree with that. They kind of emphasise that they want people using donation buttons and unless you are going into the ToS and looking (which I'm sure 99.99% of people don't) you wouldn't know that.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#109
post #70
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should they use - Google Checkout? https://support.google.com/checkout/sell/answer/3080449?hl=e... For better or worse, Paypal has survived and looks like it's going to go on surviving, that's why people if they only support one method, choose it.

People can get tired of other people telling this, but really, they should use Bitcoin. There are several advantages of this: accountability (you can verify with the block chain that they really received your payment), ease of use (utilizing 3rd parties like Coinbase, BitPay and others you don't really have to know how Bitcoin works to pay with them) and most importantly - irreversibility - once you receive Bitcoin t…

I will accept goats and chickens before I accept Bitcoin. 99% of people have never even heard of it. I am pretty certain that 100% of my customers have never heard of it. Not worth my time.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#110
post #83
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can get tired of other people telling this, but really, they should use Bitcoin. There are several advantages of this: accountability (you can verify with the block chain that they really received your payment), ease of use (utilizing 3rd parties like Coinbase, BitPay and others you don't really have to know how Bitcoin works to pay with them) and most importantly - irreversibility - once you receive Bitcoin t…

Of course you also have about zero privacy with bitcoin (by design), but who cares about that, right?

Bitcoin is a protocol that gives you as much privacy as you want. You can use one-time addresses both for sending and receiving, which gives you more privacy than using Paypal or credit cards directly.
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