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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"

#41

Post by smileybarry »

lovegrenoble wrote: post #2

it's better to avoid PayPal anyway, so sorry for you, hope your post will be in the top.

The problem is a lack of "I want to pay you but don't want to give you my credit card" processors out there. That's 99% of the reason I use PayPal (with just one case of using buyer protection because the vendor just forgot about my order for months and didn't respond).

Google Pay & Apple Pay helps with this now (and the fact they're implemented as a payment type like VISA and not a processor like PayPal helps a lot to prevent lockout cases like this) but they're nowhere near as widespread as PayPal, at least from my experience.

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

#42

Post by shiroiushi »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #36
epolanski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has anybody ever really been completely robbed by PayPal and never gotten their money? On both ends of the spectrum of being an ebay buyer and seller. Once I sold a WoW account, and as soon as the buyer got the account charged back the payment. Another time I bought a piece for my motorbike. Never got anything. Asked for a chargeback. Got nothing. Did not use their service and I am still livid for their lack of tra…

Surely both of these had nothing to do with PayPal? (this is an honest question - I'm not trying to defend PayPal) If the buyer did a charge back on their credit/debit card, PayPal gets charged and passes it on to you. Likewise if you as a seller didn't get the chargeback isn't that on your card company?

For many years, eBay owned PayPal, so OP was likely referring to incidents that happened during that time frame.

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

#44

Post by gndk »

I have nightmares about this. The comments here saying that PayPal is just for hobby projects and should be avoided are living in a different reality.

For me (e-commerce business, mainly in Germany), PayPal makes up around 70-80% of revenue and isn't easily replacable.

I'm sure some customers would whip out their creditcard (if they even have one) or enter their long IBAN bank account numbers for direct debit, but many probably wouldn't. The convenience of PayPal is unmatched.

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

#45

Post by im3w1l »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #33
MrThoughtful wrote: post #7

I thought the finance industry is highly regulated? Can a company really "hold any funds in your account for up to 180 days" just willy-nilly? And what does this mean: Fun bonus, they hold $80,000 I won't get back. Has anybody ever really been completely robbed by PayPal and never gotten their money?

Know Your Customer, anti-terrorism, anti-drug money laundering, and many other laws have been enacted to keep "the bad guys" from being able to operate efficiently. Unfortunately, and perhaps even sometimes by design, these laws have created all kinds of loopholes that allow financial institutions and governments to prey on innocents, especially those who aren't doing anything illegal but sometimes things that are un…

It's gone way too far. My bank refuses to cash international checks (no banks in my country do). IRS refuses to do international wires. The result is that the united states government owes me money I can only claim if I actually fly there which is expensive enough and too much of a bother for the sum involved.

Like if even the fucking IRS isn't trusted enough to push money through the system then it's a complete joke.

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

#46

Post by Crosseye_Jack »

jeroenhd wrote: post #39
geek_at wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does that mean if a group of people don't like you they can chargeback-bomb you and get you banned?

If you take credit card payments on any platform: yes. The difference is in how much prior warning you're getting and how expensive paying for the chargebacks is going to be, but every major payment platform will either shut you down or massively increase prices if you incur too many chargebacks. This is one of the practical reasons why credit card processors generally don't take porn sites as customers.

> This is one of the practical reasons why credit card processors generally don't take porn sites as customers

Yup “buyer’s remorse” kicks in rather quickly when asked “Honey, what’s this transaction for xxx?” once the statement arrives.

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

#47

Post by emmet »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #31
MrThoughtful wrote: post #7

I thought the finance industry is highly regulated? Can a company really "hold any funds in your account for up to 180 days" just willy-nilly? And what does this mean: Fun bonus, they hold $80,000 I won't get back. Has anybody ever really been completely robbed by PayPal and never gotten their money?

It says they'll release it in 180 days, don't know why he figures he won't get it. What's missing here is a description of what he was doing to generate that money. Maybe he was completely legit, but we don't know anything. Does he perhaps have a reason to think he won't get his money? Maybe he was getting a lot of chargebacks or some other negative metric. https://www.headshotpro.com/ seems to be his business.

Literally every time these things come up it's because the person was doing something dodgy and refuse to admit it.

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

#48

Post by rmholt »

mpeg wrote: 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…

Not critiquing you but the approach - that's abysmal UX. If PayPal blocks your account with no feedback, that's incredibly anxiety inducing.

And in an environment like finance, good communication of the status of the account should be the difference between an "oh okay that's fair" and a lawsuit for theft.

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

#49

Post by helsinkiandrew »

gndk wrote: post #44

I have nightmares about this. The comments here saying that PayPal is just for hobby projects and should be avoided are living in a different reality. For me (e-commerce business, mainly in Germany), PayPal makes up around 70-80% of revenue and isn't easily replacable. I'm sure some customers would whip out their creditcard (if they even have one) or enter their long IBAN bank account numbers for direct debit, but ma…

What about adding Stripe/Google Pay/Amazon Pay as a choice, or if you have enough revenue history VISA etc through a merchant account.

The real issue is that if you start getting chargebacks - you will be liable for them. A bank might ask for payment, Paypal just grabs any money in your account and locks it. If you keep an eye on the level of chargebacks you should be able to sleep better!

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