PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices • Hacker News Board

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#21

Post by hurin » Wed, May 20, 2015, 3:39 PM UTC

Many years ago I tried to sell a World of Warcraft account via. Paypal. I got lots of buyers -- all of whom tried to pay with stolen paypal accounts.

After they made a payment I would ask for a photo-copy of their ID, or to wait 3-days to make sure the payment went through properly (Paypal's normalized way of handling this was to mark the Payment as confirmed leaving the seller thinking everything was okay only to reverse it say 3 days later, screwing the seller). If I recall one of the buyers even offered to try a different account when I told them the payment got flagged.

In about a week's time I had received $5000 or so worth of transfers (all of them from stolen accounts!) Subsequently Paypal froze my account. I never was able to sell that World of Warcraft account either.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#22

Post by Moru » Wed, May 20, 2015, 3:41 PM UTC

coffeedrinker wrote: post #17

aleksandrm wrote: post #6

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.

I always compare with my normal bank when I'm forced to use paypal and so far they have always been slightly higher than the bank. I live in Sweden though.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#23

Post by alyandon » Wed, May 20, 2015, 3:42 PM UTC

gr3yh47 wrote: post #16

alyandon wrote: 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.

Sorry, but you are incorrect. I followed the exact instructions that were provided to me at the time (circa 2009) on eBay's own web site for opening a dispute case with the eBay seller.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#24

Post by daj40 » Wed, May 20, 2015, 3:45 PM UTC

baliex wrote: post #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?

The issue that they've been nailed with isn't so much that they over charged people, its that they signed people up without notifying them.

If you are using the service intentionally, then you aren't affected.

On another note, I have been using PayPal for years and haven't had any real issues with it. I mean it takes a while for eBay to get the money to me after a sale, but other than that its not bad. Have I just been lucky? Or is anyone else not experiencing problems that others are?

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#25

Post by dhimes » Wed, May 20, 2015, 3:47 PM UTC

1_player wrote: post #19

coffeedrinker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I use them. It's been great so far.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#26

Post by Moru » Wed, May 20, 2015, 3:48 PM UTC

rip747 wrote: 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…

I once ordered some things together with a few friends. The total sum ended up around $3500, much more than I usually buy for. The buy went through and the company got the message from Paypal that everything was ok and the money was on their account. Sadly they had a vacation day (small home-run company) and did not send the items directly. Two days later when they were back, Paypal had just pulled the money back from their account and left the message that the user disputes the buy or something like that. I had done no such thing. One month later I got the money back except for $20 for 'investigation charges' or some such...

If the company would not have been on vacation at that time they would have sent the goods and we would have gotten both the things and our money back. I ended up transfering the money via the bank as normal and got the stuff about $100 cheaper than over Paypal.

Haven't used Paypal since.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#27

Post by NelsonMinar » Wed, May 20, 2015, 3:50 PM UTC

This is the product PayPal advertises in every single purchase customers make online. I don't understand why any serious business uses PayPal for payments when the company is injecting an extra step (or two) into the purchase workflow. How many sales do merchants lose because of the interruption?

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#28

Post by nine_k » Wed, May 20, 2015, 3:53 PM UTC

saurik wrote: post #18

hga wrote: 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,…

> PayPal being very user-focussed

This works well for only the paying side of the user base. Yes, PayPal is a very convenient way to pay, e.g. in an Internet store.

Those who receive the money have much harder time, though. All complains I saw were from guys having their accounts frozen when money pour in too fast.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#29

Post by yc1010 » Wed, May 20, 2015, 3:54 PM UTC

I think PayPal has been instrumental in illustrating to people that their money once it is in the paypal system is no longer THEIR money

I had trouble before with paypal holding onto funds for months nearly killing my business, when I contacted the Financial Services Ombudsman, their reply was along the lines of "they are a private limited company in this country, they can do what they want"

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#30

Post by ryanlol » Wed, May 20, 2015, 3:55 PM UTC

aleksandrm wrote: post #6

rip747 wrote: 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.

And the exact same thing could've happened with credit cards.