Using the word "Donate" to describe a, uh, donation is reasonable. Hiding strange terms in the TOS no one is going to read and then keeping your customers money is not reasonable.
Google, Can Indie Stone Have Their Money?
11–20 of 26 posts
Re: Google, Can Indie Stone Have Their Money?
#12Why doesn't Indie Stone use Kickstarter? They fit the model perfectly, Kickstarter has no history of withholding money, and 5% is quite reasonable.
Re: Google, Can Indie Stone Have Their Money?
#13This is vastly disturbing. Surely there is a gap in the market here for a payment processor that doesn't do shit like this? Are there any startups in this area? Or is this just an inevitable result of working with money (having to be very careful to avoid scammers/criminals)? I really can't believe that's the case though. As @dexen said, perhaps there should be some provisions put in place to disincentivise current p…
the reason it hasn't happened is because money is hard to deal with.
Yup, Econtalk did a recent podcast on bitcoin which is a great intro for anyone interested. The discussion on HN:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/04/andresen_on_bit.htm...
Re: Google, Can Indie Stone Have Their Money?
#14Using the word "Donate" to describe a, uh, donation is reasonable. Hiding strange terms in the TOS no one is going to read and then keeping your customers money is not reasonable.
How do you know they kept the money instead of returning it to those who bought/donated?
Re: Google, Can Indie Stone Have Their Money?
#15Re: Google, Can Indie Stone Have Their Money?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Currency (at least metal coins) was, at first, distributed and did not depend on banks for transfer. Banks came about later on, as an additional help in some business and private money handling. Currently banks are pretty much necessary for two reasons: network effect -- everybody has bank account and expects you to interface with it, and better loan rates -- banks can give loans at lower percent than small time lend…
>> Bitcoin doesn't remove banks Yes, it does in this case. One can receive money electronically through Bitcoin, without account with a bank, PayPal or Google.
Which is the same as mailing cash. It's possible to do that without a bank as well.
Since the Bitcoin protocol allows third-parties to hold user's wallets, it's entirely possible to create a bank. In fact, the protocol seems to encourage the aggregation of wallets.
Re: Google, Can Indie Stone Have Their Money?
#17Sometimes I wonder if these payment processing companies behave like this so they can keep their books straight/solvent.
Re: Google, Can Indie Stone Have Their Money?
#18Why doesn't Indie Stone use Kickstarter? They fit the model perfectly, Kickstarter has no history of withholding money, and 5% is quite reasonable.
It's a good question. They've certainly reached the threshold of being a serious project, given the amount of press coverage they've received in the past.
The whole mess is an object lesson about the need to take non-development aspects of business seriously. They're trying to accept payments without reading the terms they agreed to. They're trying to run a web server while clearly not being experts on that (there's no need for a VPS or a dedicated server when their site is a perfect fit for something like Squarespace). If you can't afford to bring in an expert, you've really got to do the due diligence yourself, or it's bound to blow up in your face.
Re: Google, Can Indie Stone Have Their Money?
#19This is vastly disturbing. Surely there is a gap in the market here for a payment processor that doesn't do shit like this? Are there any startups in this area? Or is this just an inevitable result of working with money (having to be very careful to avoid scammers/criminals)? I really can't believe that's the case though. As @dexen said, perhaps there should be some provisions put in place to disincentivise current p…
I wonder what would have happened if Indie Stone was using Amazon Payments here? They seem to have better customer service and it seems more clear to me how to differentiate commercial from non-profit transactions https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/helpTab/Amazon-Simple-...
Re: Google, Can Indie Stone Have Their Money?
#20This is vastly disturbing. Surely there is a gap in the market here for a payment processor that doesn't do shit like this? Are there any startups in this area? Or is this just an inevitable result of working with money (having to be very careful to avoid scammers/criminals)? I really can't believe that's the case though. As @dexen said, perhaps there should be some provisions put in place to disincentivise current p…
> This is vastly disturbing. Surely there is a gap in the market here for a payment processor that doesn't do shit like this? While I agree that there is probably a market for a payment processor that doesn't punish TOS violations, I really doubt that's a market anybody would want to play in. Google's TOS disallow the use of the word "donation" unless you are a non-profit organization. And "donation" is precisely the…
d) Make the restriction on the word 'donation' more explicit and obvious.