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PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

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Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#11
I made use of PayPal Credit the other day to defer payment of an item for 14 days. Is this the same thing or something different?

Having looked at my transaction history, I don't seem to have been charged anything for the service. Where might I check to be sure?

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#12
post #10

Related: why doesn't anybody take down LinkedIn? They run consistently obviously illegal spam/marketing practices. Why do they get a free pass? Is the "mafia" part of PayPal mafia too strong? Too many cross-bred investor attachments all the way down making some services "untouchable" no matter what they do? We need something like the EFF but for out of control tech companies needing to be denounced for the public goo…

LinkedIn has some niche competition. I've seen at least two oil-oriented ones based out of Houston, and a few others elsewhere

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#13
post #4

About time, but $25M is nothing for them. Nowadays we have all our clients using Stripe for their CC processing, but back in the day, our clients could use anyone they want. One poor soul choose to use PayPal against our insisting he not. Three days before he had to give the security deposit to the convention center where his organization was hosting their conference, PayPal froze the account. I can't express the str…

This is something I've seen as well - PayPal does not like the idea (for some reason) of people using their service for events. I'm personally aware of two event coordinators who had large sums of money tied up by PayPal at the last minute (around $10k and $20k) so that I never used them for my own events. Stripe all the way, never a problem.

I gather that PayPal's secret to success is strong anti-fraud measures (and not caring about false positives), and one of them is freezing accounts that get a flood of money all at once. That also is a pattern you see in events and charities set up for a new disaster.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#14
post #4

About time, but $25M is nothing for them. Nowadays we have all our clients using Stripe for their CC processing, but back in the day, our clients could use anyone they want. One poor soul choose to use PayPal against our insisting he not. Three days before he had to give the security deposit to the convention center where his organization was hosting their conference, PayPal froze the account. I can't express the str…

This is something I've seen as well - PayPal does not like the idea (for some reason) of people using their service for events. I'm personally aware of two event coordinators who had large sums of money tied up by PayPal at the last minute (around $10k and $20k) so that I never used them for my own events. Stripe all the way, never a problem.

As long as we're accumulating anecdotes: I run the website for an organization that puts on shows every month. We sell tickets through Paypal and have never had a problem. We're talking hundreds of $s rather than thousands, though.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#15

PayPal is not a bank, although people seem to think it is, and they seem to be more than happy to let people think that. It's long overdue for some serious regulatory oversight.

Don't they have quite a bit of oversight since they're a monetary transmitter?

What more oversight would be needed?

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#16
post #2

I once made a major purchase off eBay and received merchandise that was substantially different than what I ordered. It took 4 months, many exchanges with PayPal via their "dispute center" and many phone calls to have my purchase refunded. They even closed my dispute at one point claiming that I hadn't returned the merchandise because their support staff was too incompetent to check the DHL tracking # on DHL's web si…

you're supposed to handle disputes for ebay merchandise through ebay channels, not directly with paypal. This may have been part of the cause of difficulty.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#17
post #4

About time, but $25M is nothing for them. Nowadays we have all our clients using Stripe for their CC processing, but back in the day, our clients could use anyone they want. One poor soul choose to use PayPal against our insisting he not. Three days before he had to give the security deposit to the convention center where his organization was hosting their conference, PayPal froze the account. I can't express the str…

Agreed, $25M is nothing and they should be slapped with a much higher penalty. PayPal is the scummiest company on Earth. A buyer opened a dispute with them, and PayPal robbed me of $2500, tried fighting them for 2 years but eventually gave up.

PayPal has some serious issues with regards to what you say, but I used it last summer to transfer money from USA to Europe for my daughter and the fee was a fraction of what the bank wanted. Banks can be pretty scummy in their own way.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#18
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've seen as well - PayPal does not like the idea (for some reason) of people using their service for events. I'm personally aware of two event coordinators who had large sums of money tied up by PayPal at the last minute (around $10k and $20k) so that I never used them for my own events. Stripe all the way, never a problem.

I gather that PayPal's secret to success is strong anti-fraud measures (and not caring about false positives), and one of them is freezing accounts that get a flood of money all at once. That also is a pattern you see in events and charities set up for a new disaster.

PayPal does not consider conferences a "false positive". Small events often fail: the speakers cancel, the venue falls through, not enough people buy tickets to cover costs... if you are using incoming ticket money today for things, you are essentially taking investments, not payments. PayPal's response to this is to hold most of the money until one day after the conference, as otherwise, when your conference fails, and the attendees make a ton of chargebacks, they know they are going to not be able to get their money back and they will be out thousands of dollars.

This is not unreasonable behavior on their part, and is part of a very consistent pattern of response: they don't let you use their service to sell promises of any kind. This actually leads to PayPal being very user-focussed--essentially always protecting users from even having to think about whether something might end up stealing their money--which is actually good for those for users, and by proxy, good for those of us who use PayPal to sell legitimate products.

(FWIW, you can use PayPal to sell event tickets, but be prepared to appreciate what is happening in the mind of PayPal--which should hopefully cause you to not being unreasonable or abrasive in your communication, though even if they were being bad that isn't an excuse to get angry at them--and reach out to their underwriting department to prove you are financially solvent in a way that doesn't rely on the success of the event, and preferably also provide evidence that your event will also work.)

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, $25M is nothing and they should be slapped with a much higher penalty. PayPal is the scummiest company on Earth. A buyer opened a dispute with them, and PayPal robbed me of $2500, tried fighting them for 2 years but eventually gave up.

PayPal has some serious issues with regards to what you say, but I used it last summer to transfer money from USA to Europe for my daughter and the fee was a fraction of what the bank wanted. Banks can be pretty scummy in their own way.

Have you ever tried TransferWise? With customers and family around the world, I'm thinking of switching to them to handle transfers instead of Paypal/Stripe. They seem to have the most honest fees around.

Disclaimer: not affiliated with them. Just genuinely curious.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#20
post #18
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gather that PayPal's secret to success is strong anti-fraud measures (and not caring about false positives), and one of them is freezing accounts that get a flood of money all at once. That also is a pattern you see in events and charities set up for a new disaster.

PayPal does not consider conferences a "false positive". Small events often fail: the speakers cancel, the venue falls through, not enough people buy tickets to cover costs... if you are using incoming ticket money today for things, you are essentially taking investments, not payments. PayPal's response to this is to hold most of the money until one day after the conference, as otherwise, when your conference fails,…

So how do you like the PayPal campus?

;)

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