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"PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

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Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have any evidence for the claim that PayPal would keep their money in a zero interest account for some reason?

You made the claim "its a 0% loan", i'm asking you to prove that. Its not on me to somehow counter prove they aren't as I didn't make the original claim.

Don't be deliberately obtuse. It's clear that PayPal won't pay interest on "frozen" cash unless sued, and it is also evident that any corporate cash is swept into money market funds at >5% interest.

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#132
post #22

Ok so I know a bit about this as I had the same exact thing happen to me in the past. The reason this probably happened is that their business was getting a high % of chargebacks from paying customers, paypal is not a specialist payment provider that wants to handle what they consider high-risk business like that, so they block your account and hold your funds for 180 days and during that time keep processing chargeb…

What payment provider did you switch to?

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#133
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people do risky stuff against recommendations. And yes, I am aware that PayPal is particularly popular in Germany.

Every third party integration a company relies on is risky, I just take an issue with spreading FUD and calling a probably top 5 by market share payment provider only fit for hobby projects. If you are searching for Stripe or any bank you'll find an equal amount of horror stories which are of course always louder than the millions of accounts and transactions that go on without an issue.

What I am hearing you are saying is that you can not recommend against big brands? I am currently looking for a new monitor, and according to your sentiment, all negative reviews of, eg., a Phillips monitor would be spreading FUD?

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#134
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not FUD if it's true. The fact that it's popular in Germany doesn't mean that they don't randomly shut down people's accounts and access to their funds. PayPal has a long and storied history of doing this.

Search for any other payment processor and you‘ll find similar stories. These services very often work on a „block first, ask questions later“ basis. Search for „Stripe blocked“: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30705500 „TELL HN: Stripe STOLE OUR $159k“ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36967159 „Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor“ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34614844 „Stripe Hold…

Well, I wouldn't recommend for using Stripe for anything but hobby projects either. Unless you have an account manager at Stripe. My guess is that OpenAI will do just fine using Stripe.

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#135
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iDeal is how all online payment should work in my opinion. The merchant only needs to know to which bank they should redirect you, and that's all. Your data and your money as as safe as your own bank is able to make them. The only downside is that it's only for Dutch consumers, and therefore international support is very spotty (Steam supports it, Lego does not). This weekend I heard a rumour that they might be makin…

As much as I like iDeal, I was annoyed when I first moved here since I came from an EU country with SEPA payments but it was really hard to buy stuff from lots of different websites. I also wonder if it keeps the barrier to entry high for new banks, etc - I would love it if I could pay for things using my wise.com account via iDeal, but I cannot.

I have no idea how that works, but in order to become a universal payment system, it should definitely be easy to add new banks. I think it started out as an agreement between the Dutch banks, but new banks have been added since then.

The biggest problem to making it work for all banks is that at the moment, you need to select your bank from a list. That list is going to get enormous. The browser should probably remember your bank for you.

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#136
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not FUD if it's true. The fact that it's popular in Germany doesn't mean that they don't randomly shut down people's accounts and access to their funds. PayPal has a long and storied history of doing this.

Search for any other payment processor and you‘ll find similar stories. These services very often work on a „block first, ask questions later“ basis. Search for „Stripe blocked“: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30705500 „TELL HN: Stripe STOLE OUR $159k“ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36967159 „Stripe is no longer a suitable payment processor“ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34614844 „Stripe Hold…

PayPal has an outstandingly bad reputation though, in a different (much worse) class to the others.

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#137
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only anxiety inducing, it can actively deny the customer the thing they paid for. I've heard of events that had to be cancelled because PayPal didn't want to release the money. PayPal making the chargebacks a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Your example is where naive business hits the wall of reality. Collecting money for events is the archetypal high risk credit card processing business. You get to spend all the money in advance, while the processor holds your chargeback liability that will only come due after your cash flow dries up Every processor mentions this in their t&c. Events require special underwriting.

The real problem is that the possibility of chargebacks makes every transaction uncertain. Chargebacks are an ugly fix to a broken system. Direct payment is better in nearly all situations. The one exception being dishonest merchants, but I don't think that's something you can really fix without lawsuits and/or police.

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. If you want to kill a competitors iOS app it's a well-known blackhat route, and testified to here before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=343060 In this case a competitor used fake accounts and stolen credit cards to buy a competing app to get it delisted - Apple's apparent policy once the chargeback total hits some arbitrary figure. Edit: Immediately downvoted for no reason. Catching these sort of…

You linked the wrong comment. I should like to read the right one.

Oh apologies, copy/paste ate the last two characters of the posted URL

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34306047

Re: "PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

#140
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is where naive business hits the wall of reality. Collecting money for events is the archetypal high risk credit card processing business. You get to spend all the money in advance, while the processor holds your chargeback liability that will only come due after your cash flow dries up Every processor mentions this in their t&c. Events require special underwriting.

The real problem is that the possibility of chargebacks makes every transaction uncertain. Chargebacks are an ugly fix to a broken system. Direct payment is better in nearly all situations. The one exception being dishonest merchants, but I don't think that's something you can really fix without lawsuits and/or police.

You still aren't accounting for the case of things sold in the future, like event tickets.

That's a unique situation because the event organizer (or kickstarter inventor, or travel agent, etc) needs the money now to invest in something they may not be able actually provide. That isn't dishonesty, but a question of competence plus the uncertainty of life.

Those types of businesses rely on loans. The money has to come from somewhere, and be spent before the product is delivered. A payment processor is not in the business of giving loans.

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