21–30 of 366 posts
> Crowd funding is an adventure.
I don't think PayPal are as enthusiastic in joining you in an "adventure" as you think. Especially if that adventure includes credit card chargebacks.
> "... unless Mailpile provides PayPal with a detailed budgetary breakdown of how we plan to use the donations from our crowd funding campaign they will not release the block on my account for 1 year until we have shipped a 1.0 version of our product." I'm a little confused by this. What crowd-sourced funds is PayPal withholding, as I thought that went via IndieGoGo? ( answer: IndieGoGo uses PayPal ) What on earth do…
Have a large number of donors issued charge-backs (or whatever the paypal equivalent is)? Has Mailchip missed some sort of deadline that might have caused donors to complain to paypal? Regardless of any of those things this action seems on the surface to be a huge overreach by paypal, but at least in those cases it would make some kind of sense.
Also, I assume there's something in the paypal use contract that gives them authority to take this kind of action? Clearly not a good idea to keep any significant balance in a paypal account.
This is not the first time Paypal did that [1] and it most certainly won't be the last time. That's one of the reasons Bitcoin was invented. I hope that events like this will drive its adoption as a safe alternative for crowd funding and online shopping. [1] http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-04-23-skullgirls-... and probably there's more of this
> "... unless Mailpile provides PayPal with a detailed budgetary breakdown of how we plan to use the donations from our crowd funding campaign they will not release the block on my account for 1 year until we have shipped a 1.0 version of our product." I'm a little confused by this. What crowd-sourced funds is PayPal withholding, as I thought that went via IndieGoGo? ( answer: IndieGoGo uses PayPal ) What on earth do…
> What on earth does PayPal care about the financial planning of the recipient of the funds? This doesn't seem like it has anything to do with fraud detection. Because PayPal provides users with the option to ask for refund which can be very expensive for them. If they deem the risk is too high they won't do business with you.
I assume this is to protect against chargebacks. If Mailpile were to empty their PayPal account and then buyers start requesting refunds for non-delivery of the described product, PayPal would be left holding the bag.
Recently I sold a bunch of hardware on eBay. Took photos of it being packaged, photos of it at the post office, added express shipping and a tracking number. The tracking number says delivered, so I withdrew the funds back to my bank account. Next thing I know, PayPal debited my account for the full amount because the buyer filed a non-delivered complaint.
End story is, PayPal doesn't leave themselves with no options for recourse.
(I'm still fighting that one)
They will only release the funds when version 1.0 ships? Does PayPal not understand that it costs money to create products? That's the entire reasoning behind crowdfunding! 'Well you see this money you said you needed to make version 1.0 of the product? Well you can have it after you've finished'
> That's the entire reasoning behind crowdfunding! They're not a crowdfunding service, they are a escrow service. The whole point of escrowing is that the service keeps the money safe until the transaction is completed (ie the buyer gets what she was buying).
What makes you think PayPal is an escrow service akin to escrow.com?