Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 225 posts

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#101

Post by woah »

sshanky wrote: post #80
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 s…

I once did a chargeback against an eBay merchant who never delivered. PayPal was no help, and they strongly advised me against the chargeback. Ultimately, charge backs are part and parcel of receiving credit card payment, and as a consumer I am glad they exist.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#102

Post by Domenic_S »

jbrooksuk wrote: post #53

When I was much younger I was doing freelance work for some guy I was referred. He said he was using his girlfriends account because he doesn't use Paypal himself and this was a one off job. I thought, "yeah, that's fine, cool." Anyway, a while later he disputes that I didn't do the work for him (I did, with evidence) and Paypal take the money back, freeze both mine and his and that's that. They won't re-open my acco…

That's how these things work though. If you ran a brick & mortar store and some guy bought $1000 of items from you with his "girlfriend's" credit card (which turns out later was a stolen card), you'll eat the chargeback AND not get your product returned to you.

Anyone who accepts payments of any kind is taking that risk. Stripe/Square/whoever operates the same way. Even cash is a risk - if you get passed counterfeits and don't catch them at first, the secret service will confiscate them and you won't be compensated.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#103

Post by ewang1 »

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.

There's a $20 chargeback fee, but that's typically charged to the seller.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#104

Post by artursapek »

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.

You should be avoiding them already.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#105

Post by heyalexej »

sblawrie wrote: post #92
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…

What if you just need a page (the page can be external to your own site) that accepts payment and emails you a receipt, and you don't want to write any server-side code? Can Stripe do that the way PayPal can?

Absolutely. And it's incredibly simple, too: https://stripe.com/checkout

Alternatively you have always solutions like https://gumroad.com/ or https://simplegoods.co/ of which you can see a real world implementation here: http://foundersgrid.com/sponsor (No affiliation with any of these, just found it the other day.)

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#106

Post by colechristensen »

woah wrote: post #101
sshanky wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I once did a chargeback against an eBay merchant who never delivered. PayPal was no help, and they strongly advised me against the chargeback. Ultimately, charge backs are part and parcel of receiving credit card payment, and as a consumer I am glad they exist.

The real core business competence of a payment processor isn't handling or distributing money, it's dispute arbitration.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#107

Post by Domenic_S »

fastball wrote: post #89
jliptzin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use a virtual credit card number for such instances

What's a virtual credit card?

Some banks will issue one-time use numbers for your cards, limited to a certain transaction amount and then they're gone. A pretty cool idea, but until they have an app that generates these numbers at the push of a button nobody really uses them. Too much of a hassle.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#108

Post by heynk »

benihana wrote: post #100
joshstrange wrote: post #98

> The eBay-owned company has offered to settle the case, without admitting wrongdoing. I'm getting REALLY sick of this shit. Wish normal people could just pay off the government to avoid facing consequences for their actions...

They can. It's called a fine.

Yeah but you're still charged with something and it's still on your record. It would be more like if you could write the gov't a check to 'pretend this never happened', with nothing on your record, and probably a written promise from the gov't that they'll never say anything bad about you.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#109

Post by downandout »

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,…

> 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.

The problem with this is that people do jump through all of these hoops (and more) and still wind up with their money frozen for interminable periods of time. That is the source of frustration and anger with PayPal - legitimate businesses jumping through every hoop and still winding up with frozen funds, held for at least 6 months.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#110

Post by vezycash »

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.

About TransferWise. I checked their site based on your recommendation. However, something bothers me.

There's a form on the Top-right corner. "You send," "You Receive." I tried checking how much would be received in dollars if I sent $1000. However, the form wouldn't let me. It doesn't allow comparison between the same currency.

It felt shady to me.

I've sent this message to them already. But wow! They do support a lot of countries - far more than Stripe. I'm surprised I've never heard of them before.

Post reply on HN