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Good riddance, PayPal

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Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#251

Post by coopdog »

mattmanser wrote: post #14
Irfaan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If PayPal is so very terrible (and I believe it), Is there a reason Amazon Payments or Google Wallet haven't overtaken PayPal in this market? If neither Amazon nor Google's brand recognition hasn't convinced folks (buyers or sellers) to start pushing it instead of PayPal for Internet purchases, I can only hope it's because their solutions are equally terrible - otherwise, I have a hard time seeing how a new player wi…

When Google Checkout launched it was in a right mess. I remember trying to use it and it silently crashed without an error. It was bizarre, all over the forums, no Google response. It also had an even worse payment flow than paypal. Which is saying something. You can't ignore early adopters like that so no-one switched. Also seem to remember it didn't take payments from a lot of countries. Could be wrong.

It's hard to believe but Google merchant accounts still aren't available outside of the UK and USA. Even Stripe is still USA only.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#252

Post by georgespencer »

foxylad wrote: post #199

One of the comments in the article mentions gocardless.com for UK payments. This seems suspiciously good - an end run around credit card companies and much lower fees. Has anyone used it? Is there a catch? How do customers react?

We introduced GC as a route for customers because PayPal is slow and onerous for us to deal with. Some customers need persuading but mainly they really love it.

We also work from the same office as GC and they're good guys. Always on the phone with customers, helping out and listening to feedback.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#253

Post by cb_cthulhu »

asg wrote: post #122
michaelt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't use PayPal, how do you receive payment from customers who don't have credit cards? If a customer doesn't have a credit card or a debit card that your payment gateway accepts, you deal with them the same way you deal with customers who don't have computers.

In the western world, people without credit or debit cards are such a small portion of the population that this policy of ignoring such users is worthwhile. In developing countries however, there are many services that aim to bridge this gap. I dont know how good they are, or how successful they will be, but people are certainly trying to access this market. Examples (no affiliations): http://gharpay.in/ - Home cash…

Actually, as a student in Germany, most of people I know don't have or want a credit card (which is a major annoyance with Google Checkout, since they accept _only_ credit card payment). That's - depending on your product of course - not that small a market. I would argue that this is the case in other countries, too.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#254

Post by tit4tat »

I agree whole-heartedly. I have a personal and business account. I stopped usin PayPal when it froze my account after they made a refund to to an eBay customer who stole my merchandise but demanded a refund after claiming to have not received the item. I produced the receipt signature from the USPS but was simply told that it was not good enough. I told their customer service rep that I would never use them again and that I look forward to PayPal suing me so I could have my day in court. they never sued me, but they also never unfroze my account. Totally unprofessional! -G. King

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#255

Post by emilysviolins »

I hate PayPal with a vengance. I used PayPal with my small online music business a few years ago. But when there was one dispute by one customer, they froze my account, not just for that one transaction with that one customer, but for all transactions with all customers. And they refused to answer my calls or help me resolve the problem. They sided with the customer, even though she was wrong (it was about a disputed shipping charge), and I ended up not only losing the sale, the cost of shipping and insurance, but subsequent sales and deals with other customers. My rating on Ebay went from 98 to 65 over night with angry posts from other customers. It was a horrible scene. I ended up refunding everyone that had their money frozen, even though PayPal never refunded me! I switched eventually to Google Wallet and have been happy ever since.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#257

Post by bkunze »

davidmarcus wrote: post #148

Hey, everyone — I'm David Marcus, and I've been running PayPal for the past 5 months. Hard for me not to comment on this thread. PayPal brought a lot of goodness to millions of merchants, and hundreds of millions of users around the world. But yes... as the company grew exponentially we were met with growing pains. And developers, merchants, and consumers sometimes had to pay the price for it. I still want to stress…

Well, let' start by Paypal recognizing that money in an account usually belongs to the account owner. Automated behaviour checks went wrong too often, resulting in account freezes. No answer from Paypal what the offense was, of course "for security reasons".

Paypal, your transparency sucks. If my account is fishy, tell what it is. We're no longer in the McCarthy times.

And besides, I'm living in the EU. US rules are not always popular for us.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#258

Post by TheReincarnator »

davidmarcus wrote: post #148

Hey, everyone — I'm David Marcus, and I've been running PayPal for the past 5 months. Hard for me not to comment on this thread. PayPal brought a lot of goodness to millions of merchants, and hundreds of millions of users around the world. But yes... as the company grew exponentially we were met with growing pains. And developers, merchants, and consumers sometimes had to pay the price for it. I still want to stress…

I love the idea behind PayPal. Always did. But if my customers have to wait 10 for a login page to come, many leave these days. Experts say it is a requirement to get below 2. Please, get lightning-fast, it's lost money for all of us.

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#259

Post by joe_littlebiz »

OMG! I thought I was one of the Only ones this happened to!!!

I had nearly $40k (ALL of my upstart company's capital) held for 180 days, and I almost went out of business. My products unexpectedly sold better than we had planned for, and we received a few chargebacks, that we had asked Paypal how we should handle before they occurred. The chargebacks were a very small amount, but they held the ENTIRE BALANCE. I couldnt pay for any of the inventory, which led to a chain reaction of chargebacks.

What made it even worse - THEY NEVER REFUNDED the customers on time and did not allow us, the merchant, to process the refunds --- IT WAS THE ULTIMATE BUSINESS NIGHTMARE!!! We started out as victims of our own sucess. Instead of helping us, we almost became victims of Paypal!

Re: Good riddance, PayPal

#260

Post by joe_littlebiz »

tptacek wrote: post #192
Silhouette wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks already do ask for financials and corporate track record. You're required to stake your own credit when your financials are inadequate. As far as I can see, those providers who require personal guarantees usually do so as a standard condition for almost any new business. Effectively, they consider everyone's financials to be inadequate. You want that to be illegal? It's better than those companies not be able t…

If someone could make money by offering merchant services to businesses with no credit history, they'd already be doing it. No law requires banks to require personal credit checks for merchant accounts.

"SQUARE" (square.com) does.
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