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PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

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Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#31

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?

I sell a software production online. The purchase page has a simple credit card payment form, and off the side is a small "PayPal" button an an alternative payment method.

Despite the fact that the PayPal button is tiny compared to the credit card form, a full 2/3 of customers use PayPal to complete the purchase.

That's why people use PayPal, because a large percentage of customers prefer it over credit card payments.

Also, I prefer PayPal disputes because they don't charge a chargeback fee like credit cards.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#32
post #30

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.

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

You have a lot more rights to fight them when fighting a bank. With PayPal you probably agreed to third party arbitration.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#34

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?

Well, here in Germany, maybe europe in general, you can't assume that your customers own a credit card. I like Stripe a lot, but using it as the only payment option wouldn't work for us.

Credit cards have become more common here recently but for a long time it was either Paypal connected to the customers bank account or plain old bank wire transfer. Sure, there are some niche services like Sofortüberweisung, but they never gained the status of Paypal.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#35
post #21

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 re…

Does PayPal even allow selling things like WoW accounts? Otherwise you don't really have a right to complain.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#37
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,…

How is it that these people can jump to another provider and not end up with the same issues then?

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#38
post #7

Unrelated, but still a bit shady. They still try to trick me into using back account instead of credit card, even though I've set credit card as default... I know CC processing costs them more, but It's so annoying.

This is typical of them. To do my best to take a jab at them every time I can, when I am forced to pay with PayPal, I specifically select my AMEX to pay because it has the highest transaction fees for them.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#39
post #31

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?

I sell a software production online. The purchase page has a simple credit card payment form, and off the side is a small "PayPal" button an an alternative payment method. Despite the fact that the PayPal button is tiny compared to the credit card form, a full 2/3 of customers use PayPal to complete the purchase. That's why people use PayPal, because a large percentage of customers prefer it over credit card payments…

For me, it's not that I prefer PayPal, it's that I don't want to give my credit card details to a business if I'm not sure they can keep it reasonably secure.

And the fewer places I have my card the better. You might get the same results with Amazon Payments, unless you have an international audience.

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