PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices • Hacker News Board

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#211

Post by memonkey » Thu, May 21, 2015, 6:13 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #202

arprocter wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one of my old jobs I remember Paypal closing a dispute in favor of the buyer, who had claimed the goods were never received, despite the fact that we supplied a copy of said buyer's signature from when he accepted the delivery... Things like that would happen on a pretty regular basis.

I'm always curious about this. How would you know that's the right person's signature?

Usually the FedEx/UPS guy asks what your name is when you sign. It goes into their system as "Delivered at 123 Address by 'John'" as a two part 'proof' that it was delivered to the correct address and by a specific person.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#212

Post by anon4 » Thu, May 21, 2015, 6:28 AM UTC

hueving wrote: post #202

arprocter wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one of my old jobs I remember Paypal closing a dispute in favor of the buyer, who had claimed the goods were never received, despite the fact that we supplied a copy of said buyer's signature from when he accepted the delivery... Things like that would happen on a pretty regular basis.

I'm always curious about this. How would you know that's the right person's signature?

My ID has my signature on it. I suppose driver licenses or whatever Americans use have that information, too.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#213

Post by zyx321 » Thu, May 21, 2015, 6:57 AM UTC

sillygoose wrote: post #208

r2pleasent wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why? Is the govt forcing you to do all of that, or is there another reason for it?

I'd bet it's somehow related to losing thousands of dollars per month in fraudulent Paypal chargebacks...

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#214

Post by rlpb » Thu, May 21, 2015, 7:11 AM UTC

arprocter wrote: post #164

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…

At one of my old jobs I remember Paypal closing a dispute in favor of the buyer, who had claimed the goods were never received, despite the fact that we supplied a copy of said buyer's signature from when he accepted the delivery... Things like that would happen on a pretty regular basis.

On other hand I've heard of scams in "sellers" sending an empty box.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#215

Post by rlpb » Thu, May 21, 2015, 7:16 AM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #148

rlpb wrote: post #9

> The proposed settlement states that the company will set up a $15m fund to compensate affected customers and pay a further $10m fine to the bureau. Why must there be a fund? Paypal knows exactly who they gave the service to by default, and exactly what interest and other charges they received from them. So why can't they just be ordered to immediately return the full amount to each affected user?

That may be possible in this case, but the laws are written for the general case. The fund is an approach that allows users with grievances to get relief over a variety of mediums and timescales. Even here, who knows what data paypal has retained about who used the feature and when?

> Even here, who knows what data paypal has retained about who used the feature and when?

They will have records of how they get their income for accounting and tax purposes. If they don't, I expect they'd be in far more trouble with the tax authorities.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#216

Post by logicallee » Thu, May 21, 2015, 9:37 AM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #180

seiji wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they use your password to log in to your gmail account and that is a federal crime. Why do they go unpunished? There sure are a lot of products and services I'd like to create if I knew laws were just suggestions. Every massive-growth startup seems to have some underlying "we did these five illegal things to get started" backstory. Almost every garbage social media company either directly tries that (password-proxy…

Apparently they ask for permission to log in which is not a crime. There is a class action suit going on saying they only ask for permission to do it once but then repeat it: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/243419/linkedi...

so I don't know why I was downvoted, I pretty much reported the exact claim. it's worth pointing out that linkedin hardly has a reputation here and other tech places as scammy spammers, people seem okay with it, again, probably due to the benefits. (compare the tech reaction to uber's practices regarding lyft, or when people disliked paypal's freezing of accounts.)

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#217

Post by tluyben2 » Thu, May 21, 2015, 10:22 AM UTC

MertsA wrote: post #153

pjc50 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, absolutely; and this is one of the things that Bitcoin advocacy ignores. It goes in the other direction: all transfers are final, legitimate or otherwise.

The problem I have with just about every payment processor out there is something that Bitcoin does well with from a protocol perspective. Right now you can copy a credit card with a mag reader in seconds, compromising some website that accepts credit cards means no limits to how much you can spend with other merchants, even having your credit card number stored in an RFID tag that can be read from a few feet away in…

We have been working on a solution for exactly that and it works well. Launching soon with actual product.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#218

Post by ohitsdom » Thu, May 21, 2015, 1:11 PM UTC

logicallee wrote: post #216

tim333 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently they ask for permission to log in which is not a crime. There is a class action suit going on saying they only ask for permission to do it once but then repeat it: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/243419/linkedi...

so I don't know why I was downvoted, I pretty much reported the exact claim. it's worth pointing out that linkedin hardly has a reputation here and other tech places as scammy spammers, people seem okay with it, again, probably due to the benefits. (compare the tech reaction to uber's practices regarding lyft, or when people disliked paypal's freezing of accounts.)

I didn't downvote, but I'd guess it's because you seemed to dismiss/minimize the LinkedIn sneaky emails because it was obvious they were automated.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#219

Post by quadrangle » Thu, May 21, 2015, 2:21 PM UTC

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…

To be clear: it is stupidly obvious that when nobody has even heard of a thing called "Paypal Credit" and you see "pay with Paypal Credit" it sounds exactly like "pay with Paypal Balance" if you already have a balance.

Why the hell would anyone ever use credit when they have funds in their Paypal balance‽ Because they were tricked into it and then assume that they are done… until they get the late fee.

Re: PayPal penalised for 'deceptive' practices

#220

Post by Rmilb » Thu, May 21, 2015, 4:19 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #145

colechristensen wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, absolutely; and this is one of the things that Bitcoin advocacy ignores. It goes in the other direction: all transfers are final, legitimate or otherwise.

The thing with Bitcoin is that within the Bitcoin protocol the seller and buyer can choose an arbiter for disputes.