PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices • Hacker News Board

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#71

Post by dangrossman » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

arbitrage wrote: post #5

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.

> It's long overdue for some serious regulatory oversight.

It's hard to imagine there being more oversight than the over 200 governments regulating them currently, including ~55 separate agencies in the US.

https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/licenses

PayPal is a fully licensed and regulated bank in some regions including all of the EU, and is licensed and regulated by each US state it operates in.

Many of the startup alternatives people recommend seem to be operating on a "try to grow fast enough that we can afford to operate legally when states start suing us" basis, as they aren't similarly licensed.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#72

Post by ajtaylor » Wed, May 20, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

Any settlement which allows the company to only pay a fine and not admit wrongdoing is not a deterrent against future wrongdoing. The fine nearly always is far outweighed by the profit. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that the potential for fines are part of the product planning process.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#73

Post by marcosdumay » Wed, May 20, 2015, 5:02 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #41

Chinjut wrote: 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.

When did he get out? PayPal is misbehaving since essentially forever.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#74

Post by vidyesh » Wed, May 20, 2015, 5:02 PM UTC

ajtaylor wrote: post #72

Any settlement which allows the company to only pay a fine and not admit wrongdoing is not a deterrent against future wrongdoing. The fine nearly always is far outweighed by the profit. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that the potential for fines are part of the product planning process.

The fine is $10M the rest $15M is the fund to compensate affected customers.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#75

Post by s73v3r » Wed, May 20, 2015, 5:04 PM UTC

arbitrage wrote: post #5

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.

Why aren't they a bank? Because they claim they aren't?

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#76

Post by fsargent » Wed, May 20, 2015, 5:05 PM UTC

cmdrfred wrote: post #70

Moru wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Save yourself the trouble and just don't use them!

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#77

Post by GolfyMcG » Wed, May 20, 2015, 5:09 PM UTC

cmdrfred wrote: post #70

Moru wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I haven't gotten 'investigation fees' (or at least not that I've noticed) but I would just not use them anyways for the very reason that they're so much less accessible than stripe.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#78

Post by ohitsdom » Wed, May 20, 2015, 5:10 PM UTC

daj40 wrote: post #44

TorKlingberg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In theory, they shouldn't. Its not allowed by Blizzard, and if memory serves, Blizzard considers it a breach of EULA and takes the account down as a whole. PayPal was supposed to be cracking down when this was rampant, because essentially its an illegal product. Though really, paying for crap is different than selling it. More of an eBay domain problem than PayPal. Two totally different businesses.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but breaking the EULA does NOT make an action illegal. It puts you in breach with an agreement you had with Blizzard, so they could terminate your account. But that doesn't make it a law. Blizzard may have some means to enforce the "contract" in civil court, though.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#79

Post by ohitsdom » Wed, May 20, 2015, 5:15 PM UTC

seiji wrote: 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…

I'm missing the LinkedIn comparison. PayPal handles money. Their track record of horrible customer service has caused a lot of financial trouble for people and institutions.

What are the complaints with LinkedIn? As far as I know, it's more of spammy contacting behavior. Which I get that's annoying, but not even in the same ballpark as PayPal.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#80

Post by sshanky » Wed, May 20, 2015, 5:15 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 sold an iPhone on eBay once. More than three months later, I received an email from PayPal stating that I'd been charged back because the buyer was disputing her credit card transaction ("Buyer stated that they did not authorize the purchase"). Although I always pull any balance out of PayPal, I owed them the balance. I was required to find proof that I had received the order (right there on eBay), and that I had shipped it (shipping label had been created, and was also visible on eBay). They ended up reversing the chargeback, but the strange thing was how much work I had to do, when it was all systematically available to them.