> 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 cam…
I know that's what all the crowdfunding sites says, but practically speaking, people expect their stuff, and get angry if they don't get it.
I think crowdfunding would be a lot less popular if people actually understand it wasn't just a pre-sale. Because most people are not just donating.
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.
> So these or not phantom people, trying to take your money.
Well Paypal doesn't stay in business on trusting the reputation of one or two people at a time. Trust simply doesn't scale like that. So while I or you personally might not worry about this, Paypal would still have to look at this through their dispassionate business case microscope to evaluate how risky the situation looks.
> 1.0/0.0 -> Infinity (at least in javascript) The IEEE floating point standard (for any precision) defines anything divided by zero to be the infinity value (all bits except the sign set to 1). You where saying?
Please don't be so vain. Division by zero is undefined, that is (supposed) to be taught in high school. The fact is that computers have to display some value when x/0, and that value is defined by IEEE standard in the context programing languages for consistency.
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…
At the core of your very well crafted considerations and arguments lies one critical flaw; Paypal's risks or issues are none of our problems and the burden for which should not be rolled over and down the chain of responsibility or power. Unfortunately, it is a systemic problem in the American business culture and society as a whole that responsibility and consequences are constantly passed down to to the point where…
Pretty much. I refuse to use Paypal for anything unless I absolutely have no choice in the matter. I'd be really happy if they'd just do the world a favor and go out of business so someone less shifty could take over. I would rather they deny someone an account than wait until that account has racked up a huge pile of money before suddenly deciding it's too risky to be doing business with the company that money legally belongs to, and that they need to just hang on to all of someone else money just in case they go out of business... say from some shifty company stealing all their money right when they need it most. There's something of a self fulfilling prophecy here, Paypal decides a company is at risk of going out of business even though they're pulling in lots of money so Paypal decides to freeze a substantial portion of the companies assets. How many companies do you think can survive having most of their assets frozen for an unknown number of months? Not many I'd bet, so at a guess I'd say Paypal probably has a near 100% success rate at predicting companies going bust after they've frozen their accounts.
Could it be that we've all missed the point entirely? Maybe, just maybe, Paypal was under duress from the Feds to cancel their Paypal account because they're afraid of what Mailpile would have accomplished?
and of course, paypal only discovers all that risk when there is a lot of money on the hook? And their only action is to make a move that's hugely profitable to them ? Because now customers are charged (they won't pay by another mean) and the company is dry.
>And their only action is to make a move that's hugely profitable to them ? Not sure why you think PayPal is going to just take the money and screw over the customers. Much more likely they will refund all the payments.
Their policy is to freeze the funds for a long time (they talk about 1 year in the blog post) then to actually go through.
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…
Interesting reading: the Paypal Pre-sales Policy https://www.paypal-businesscenter.com/content/presale-policy... In particular I like the bullet point under "I’m a legitimate business selling products and services in advance. Why do I have reserves on my account?", which is lengthy, worth a read, and which you'll have to click to expand.
So why do they actually do business with IndieGoGo? I would expect the vast majority of IGG campaigns not to be able to deliver within 20 business days. Since the users of IGG obviously intend to use the money to fund a lengthy process of building a product that sort of invalidates the use-case.
I wonder if Elon Musk cares at all that a service he created, one that made him incredibly wealthy, is so willfully abusive and corrupt. How about Pierre Omidyar or John Donahue?
PayPal really needs to be investigated by federal governments, and put under strict oversight, regulations and controls.
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…
At the core of your very well crafted considerations and arguments lies one critical flaw; Paypal's risks or issues are none of our problems and the burden for which should not be rolled over and down the chain of responsibility or power. Unfortunately, it is a systemic problem in the American business culture and society as a whole that responsibility and consequences are constantly passed down to to the point where…
"Paypal's risks or issues are none of our problems"
While that obtains for any business which does not do business with Paypal, the converse obtains for any business which does to exactly the degree that those risks or issues are expressed in the structure of the agreement with Paypal.