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PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

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Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#61
post #52
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal isn't a merchant platform -- it's a payment service so yes you can accept personal payments, it might not be covered by seller protection if that's what you mean. That's no excuse for terrible security policies though. I mean literally every buyer had a stolen account!

How were you determining the accounts were stolen? Also, as much as we would love to say companies are responsible for the security of our accounts, losing credentials is also a user issue.

> How were you determining the accounts were stolen?

About 3-5 days after each payment was confirmed Paypal would reverse it due to it being unauthorized. More so the payment would show up as confirmed/valid initially, at no point during the process did Paypal make you aware of the possibility of the payment being reversed nor to help you confirm/validate that it was in fact authorized by the account holder.

> Also, as much as we would love to say companies are responsible for the security of our accounts, losing credentials is also a user issue.

Of course it's a user issue at a certain scale, but when it's that prevalent I am inclined to say that company is primarily at fault.

It was just a WoW account, so not a big deal for me, but I'd really hate to be a merchant or someone otherwise relying on Paypal day-to-day, that sounds absolutely horrible.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#62
post #37
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Part of why those other providers sprung up is because PayPal is a big bag of dicks.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#63

!@(*#& I was one of those tricked by this scheme which is 5,000% obviously deceptive. There is ZERO chance that Paypal folks were unaware that people would accidentally use the credit product. I wrote them a complaint and changed the default but never heard back. FUCK YOU Paypal, you MUGGED me and stole money from me. I am CERTAIN they end up getting more than $25m out of this scheme. This settlement just means they…

While I don't share your level of rage, I've used "Paypal Credit" and BillMeLater (before it became Paypal Credit) accidentally several times.

For a long time I refused to add a bank account to my PayPal account simply so my credit card would be my default payment option. Then BillMeLater had an attractive promotion, so I used it 1x and paid off my balance before it accrued any interest.

Since then, BillMeLater and now PayPal Credit are my default payment options. There's no way to change this, and it's a very consumer-unfriendly practice.

I'm glad they're getting fined, and I sincerely hope this results in their allowing user-defined default payment settings.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#65
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife uses Nordea and they go out on a limb for her every time she needs something (and she lives in the US with me, so hardly can go into the bank for things).

Nordea and Handelsbanken is probably the best big banks when it comes to service.

I can't pretend to know, but she always seems happy with their service.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#66
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,…

This all makes perfect sense. My only problem is that this is not communicated with the seller clearly. If it is a stated policy that Paypal will hold the host of a conference's money until the event materializes to cover their costs then no party involved has a right to feel cheated. Instead Paypal is classifying this risk which is inherent to their business, which is the risk of the conference materializing, as fraud. This, in my opinion, is diseptive

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#67
post #40

Wow, nothing but complaints about PayPal here. Interesting to keep in mind next time the Elon Musk hagiography starts up again...

Hey, he stopped having any influence on PayPal behavior years ago. Similar to how Apple decays into senescence when Jobs is not there running it.

That would imply PayPal started out good...

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#68
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife uses Nordea and they go out on a limb for her every time she needs something (and she lives in the US with me, so hardly can go into the bank for things).

Nordea and Handelsbanken is probably the best big banks when it comes to service.

I've heard good and bad things about both of them. I've been looking for a better international alternative, though.

Simple bank looks absolutely amazing (https://www.simple.com/), but sadly they are US-only. Does anyone know a similar bank to Simple that is friendlier to international travelers/EU citizens?

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#69
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.

with the volume that they do, they aren't paying the fees you think they are.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#70
post #26
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 fro…

$20 in 'investigation fees'? can anyone confirm this? I won't use them again if true.
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