PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices • Hacker News Board

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#191

Post by Einstalbert » Thu, May 21, 2015, 2:51 AM UTC

atourgates wrote: post #63

quadrangle wrote: post #50

!@(*#& 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 n…

The fact that "Paypal Credit" is my default payment choice bothers me to no end. If you explicitly select anything else, it demands you log in even after logging in on most sites.

I never thought I'd be on the receiving end of the Paypal horror-stick, as I am a consumer and not a merchant, but wow.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#192

Post by analog31 » Thu, May 21, 2015, 3:00 AM UTC

This is only an anecdote, but I use PP to process payments for my side-business, selling a small gadget for a fairly specialized market. My experience has been overwhelmingly positive. And I closely monitor traffic on web forums for comments from customers, which are fairly frequent, so I think I'd know if PP had negatively affected their experience, or if they were hesitant to buy my product due to PP.

Most of the complaints that I've read about, concerning PP, have to do with the eBay side of the equation. And it probably helps in my case that I sell a tangible good at a pretty modest price. I don't have an eBay store, but sell through my personal web page and hand-crafted web order form. Simply based on the my little corner of the market, it wouldn't break my heart if eBay and PP split up.

Two benefits of PP for me, both are kinda weird:

1. I can just download the entire year's list of transactions, dump it into a spreadsheet, add some more columns, and it becomes my ledger. I spend no more than a few hours a year on accounting.

2. PP has a deal with the post office. You can generate a first class shipping label from your transaction, whereas the post office website only offers priority mail and above, so PP reduces my shipping costs. And I've also had fabulous service from the post office, so maybe I'm just a freak. ;-)

With all this said, I can't discount the horror stories. It's useful information, since I certainly wouldn't want a decline in PP's reputation to affect the trust that people put into my own business.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#193

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, May 21, 2015, 3:41 AM UTC

geomark wrote: post #181

pjc50 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ApplePay potentially meets that description. Also, chip-and-pin cards.

Estimates are that ApplePay is experiencing fraud rates as high as 6% at some banks. http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/18/technology/apple-pay-fraud/

Except that entire issue really boils down to the incompetence of the banks; Apple Pay itself is fine, it's the initial step of having the bank verify and confirm the payment info being loaded in that's the problem, since the bank will "verify" that a dancing bear with a party hat and a clown nose is actually you.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#194

Post by lawnchair_larry » Thu, May 21, 2015, 4:11 AM UTC

gress wrote: post #190

geomark wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estimates are that ApplePay is experiencing fraud rates as high as 6% at some banks. http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/18/technology/apple-pay-fraud/

That is describing using Apple Pay as a way to tender already stolen credit cards and has nothing to do with the security of Apple Pay itself.

The end result is the same. It's just like using a stolen card.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#195

Post by geomark » Thu, May 21, 2015, 4:21 AM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #194

gress wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is describing using Apple Pay as a way to tender already stolen credit cards and has nothing to do with the security of Apple Pay itself.

The end result is the same. It's just like using a stolen card.

That's right. ApplePay does nothing to mitigate the credit card fraud problem. And until banks get better at verifying a stolen card isn't being loaded into ApplePay the problem is actually much worse.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#196

Post by jotm » Thu, May 21, 2015, 4:27 AM UTC

NearAP wrote: post #168

jotm wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it work? I wanted to use them once, but it was the first time I heard about them and their site doesn't explain anything. If anything, it looks shady - "outsmart your bank, use us, we do it super cheap, promise!" but no explanation of how it actually works...

From their website (step 3 of how it works) TransferWise converts your money at the mid-market rate and matches you with people sending in the other direction. That's why it costs so little. My understanding - after you've given the money you want to transfer to TransferWise, they find someone in your destination country who wishes to transfer money to the country where you are (kind of like a swap). This way, they c…

That's how I understood it, but then I thought "what if there's no one in that country?" Do they use their own funds or does the recipient wait several weeks.

I imagine it's the former, but at the time I just used SWIFT - rather expensive, but guaranteed to work everywhere.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#197

Post by r2pleasent » Thu, May 21, 2015, 4:32 AM UTC

click170 wrote: post #186

r2pleasent wrote: post #133

Paypal has so many things wrong with their company. The majority of employees, even in the business support department, have absolutely no clue what is going on. They will give you an answer to a question, you will call back later, get a new agent, and then you'll get a completely different answer to the same question. Half the time the customer support is clearly just improvising, because the system is such a mess t…

What is collecting pictures of photo ID supposed to do for you? Honest question. Far as I can tell, it only means the scammer was able to copy the photo that was sitting on my computer (likely via the same malware they used to steal my other credentials to begin with). Why was it sitting on my computer to begin with? Because companies like yours demand a copy of my photo ID. Sure I could delete it but we both know mo…

In all honesty, we request a close up of the ID, as well as a picture of the buyer holding the ID up to the camera with their face in the picture, while holding a piece of paper saying they are buying from our website. It sounds ridiculous, but I know other companies who do this as well.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#198

Post by geomark » Thu, May 21, 2015, 4:33 AM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #176

joering2 wrote: post #174

People's lives have been seriously damaged because of this -- why no criminal charges?? This is no difference than being caught with $100MM bag of heist outside the bank and giving cops $1.5MM as a form of penalty. What is also very interesting, is that, yes PayPal is probably one of the most hated tech company in the world, right after Comcast, which I don't believe offers anything outside US. Then why we glorify th…

Ebay acquired Paypal in 2002. If anyone's held accountable it should probably be them rather than Musk.

PayPal's evil ways predate that acquisition. My own bad experience happened before it was owned by eBay. It was the usual - arbitrary freezing of account due to unspecified suspicious activity that they would provide no response about and was going to take six months to resolve. I eventually got my funds out and never kept a balance there again.

The "PayPal mafia" is such an ironically apt title for the group that founded it. So proud of their anti-fraud tech which is actually horrid - just sweep up anyone's account for whatever reason and call it successful fraud prevention.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#199

Post by atmosx » Thu, May 21, 2015, 4:49 AM UTC

Hm paypal. I used my account last month. I used paypal regularly to make online payments (never in order to receive money). I had no major problem, only strange thing is that... In order to un-subscribe from services (e.g. like the NBA league pass, which I wanted for a month, not lifetime) I need to follow a step-by-step tutorial because the subscriptions listing is literally hidden.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#200

Post by lucaspiller » Thu, May 21, 2015, 5:02 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #151

lucaspiller wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't allow comparison between the same currency. Their use case is transferring funds between currencies, why would you want to do that?

The site says "transfer money abroad". If for some reason they only want the more difficult kind of transfer, it would help to make that clear. I'm confused by you asking why when the answer is both obvious and explicitly stated in parent comments. Sending someone money in a different country, but they happen to use the same currency.

It wasn't clear to me which is why I asked. I agree for that case the headline is a bit misleading though.

In the EU it's nearly always free to transfer funds between the same currency, even between different countries. Banks still get people with the exchange rates or high fees to make transfers between currencies. TransferWise is a UK company, so that being their primary market, they took off from European workers in the UK wanting to send money home.

Just for comparisons sake, my use case is transferring money between Ireland (EUR) and the UK (GBP) and vice versa. Compared to my bank they have both better exchange rates, lower fees, and are quicker.