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PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

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Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#171

Post by gopher1 »

appleflaxen wrote: post #81
HerraBRE wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IndieGoGo actually support direct credit card donations, but a lot of people asked for PayPal as an option and we relented. So donating via. IGG actually works just fine - we have obviously disabled the PayPal option.

Wait... really? Because when the ubuntu phone campaign happened, I wanted to buy one, and didn't purely because I couldn't figure out a way to do it without PayPal. Did I miss something on the page that would have let me pay without it? Oh well; too late now I guess.

I was in the same boat as you with respect to the Ubuntu Edge, as it turns out each campaign can choose which payment services to use. Ubuntu chose to only enable PayPal.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#173

Post by [deleted] »

patio11 wrote: post #118

Indulge me in a flight of fancy in which we pretend, for the sake of argument, that a) Paypal is run not by Snidely Whiplash clones but b) by smart geeks working with thin margins in a highly regulated industry where c) customers are at risk essentially never, d) merchants eat 100% of the risk if they stay in business, and e) Paypal eats 100% of the risk if the merchant doesn't. Why is Paypal very skeptical of pre-sa…

[deleted]

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#174

Post by derefr »

chris_wot wrote: post #135
patio11 wrote: post #118

Indulge me in a flight of fancy in which we pretend, for the sake of argument, that a) Paypal is run not by Snidely Whiplash clones but b) by smart geeks working with thin margins in a highly regulated industry where c) customers are at risk essentially never, d) merchants eat 100% of the risk if they stay in business, and e) Paypal eats 100% of the risk if the merchant doesn't. Why is Paypal very skeptical of pre-sa…

If Paypal are so concerned about presales, then in my opinion they should get out of the market. Or force their customer base to get some sort of insurance. You know, do their risk management before they let the vendor take payments? It amazes me that their marker for freezing money is for how many sales the company does . Because you wouldn't want to accept money from a successful business now!

I wonder how much of Paypal's margin it would eat to just require a phone call with everyone who signs up for a Business account, asking precisely what kind of business they'll be doing (with the real possibility of denying their request.)

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#175

Post by leephillips »

jafaku wrote: post #106
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

At least in the US, it's not quite "no questions asked". The last time I requested a chargeback my credit union sent me a form with a list of questions, including asking me to detail how I had attempted to resolve the issue with the merchant, with the dates of when I had phoned them.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#177

Post by mseebach »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #86
M4v3R wrote: 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…

> Unless I receive the goods before paying, I would never buy anything with Bitcoin online.

Good, then you should be fine donating to Mailpile using Bitcoin. Because it's not a purchase transaction, it's a donation. There is no promise of a product.

By clicking 'Continue', you acknowledge that you understand that you are contributing to a work-in-progress and not making a direct purchase. Perks are managed by the campaigners and cannot be guaranteed by Indiegogo. Your click also acknowledges that you agree to the Indiegogo Terms of Use.

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#178

Post by stef25 »

grandalf wrote: post #68
downandout wrote: post #37

I don't know why, in 2013, people are surprised when they use PayPal and wind up without access to the money for months or years. Paypal apologists will say that this is relatively rare. Even if that is true, since the criteria they use to take these actions are often beyond the control of merchants, using PayPal is an unacceptable risk for any business that doesn't have at least 6 months of working capital. Always a…

I've seen PayPal nearly put several small businesses out of business. There are some things that cause PayPal to just freeze an account, and it's next to impossible to speak to a human or to otherwise get the situation resolved. Pretty much the only threat to Stripe's eventual world domination would be PayPal getting its act together.

Surely Stripe will eventually face the same issues that made Paypal behave the way it does? I imagine there is a certain logic behind Paypal's "evil".

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#179

Post by [deleted] »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #90
ig1 wrote: 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.

[deleted]

Re: PayPal Freezes Mailpile Campaign Funds

#180

Post by smackfu »

ollysb wrote: post #27
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It seems a bit late in the day to decide not to do business with you if they've already taken money on your behalf.

The alternative is to shut down payments in the middle of a launch. Which Paypal will do, and it's not like people like that any better.
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