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Burning man defeats PayPal

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Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#61

Post by callmeed »

pinksoda wrote: post #20

PayPal once made me refund every customer in the last 6 months. They said it was the only way to unfreeze my account. I gave them the thumbs up because I had no other options at the time, and they said, "you have to manually refund them one-by-one yourself and then call us when it is done". It was really strange. They permanently froze my account after I refunded everyone and refused to talk to me when I called. I wa…

We've been processing 5 figures a month with PayPal subscriptions for over 5 years (we've since moved to a different system but have a lot of legacy customers still on PayPal).

While I've had some odd issues here and there and the user experience for clients is poor, I've never had anything close to what you've described.

I have to say–either you're wrong about "your time will come" or there's simply more to your story.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#63

Post by ido »

awad wrote: post #45
Throlkim wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've yet to use it myself, and I'm not sure if it's entirely been released yet, but Amazon has a payments system in the works: http://aws.amazon.com/fps/

It seems to have been out for a while. Does anyone have any experience with FPS? I'm launching a new project soon and the one thing left is payment processing. I'm scared to be tied to just PayPal and am looking into Google Checkout and Amazon as well. I know, I know, just get a merchant account. And I will. But this is not really a startup or company and much more of just a small idea I'd like to test out. Ideally,…

isn't merchant account US only?

Seems like a pretty significant disadvantage for an internet business.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#64

Post by ido »

thinkcomp wrote: post #59
ido wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a better alternative? I understand Google Checkout also had similar issues in the past?

(My startup) ThinkLink / FaceCash http://www.thinklink.com

    Do I have to have a Social Security number and driver's 
    license with a photo to sign up?
    
    Yes. You can use a passport as an alternative to a 
    driver's license.
I assume that means you are not operating outside of the US?

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#65

Post by edj »

Reading this thread made me a little paranoid. So I logged into my high school reunion account (I'm the organizer) to withdraw the funds into our bank account, and lo!, of course there's a hold on one classmate's payment. That's $75 we may never see... at least not in time to pay our caterers and such.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#66

Post by randallsquared »

patio11 wrote: post #14
tomh- wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He forgot to mention it has an extremely large number of false positives using that system. The reason it might work is because they take/freeze money from innocent customers. The amount of horror stories about Paypal significantly outnumber the horror stories about regular banks or credit card companies.

The amount of horror stories about Paypal significantly outnumber the horror stories about regular banks or credit card companies. I surmise this is because you're a techy and you talk to people who run businesses online on a regular basis. If you spent a lot of time on, e.g., credit card discussion boards (they exist), or spoke to "regular people" about their payment issues on a regular basis, I suspect you would co…

Paypal is not a scam which achieves profitability by freezing accounts. That is crazy talk.

I don't know that Paypal ever achieved profitability. They raised a whole lot of capital, and then when it looked like they might fold, eBay stepped in to make sure they didn't. Paypal's lack of profitability was legendary when I was in online payments, since they were the Microsoft of the industry.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#67

Post by bad_user »

xal wrote: post #15
nkassis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that probably explain why their customer service is horrible, they see it as an afterthought. I don't have an issue with them trying to kill fraud but there needs to be better communication between Paypal and it's business customers. I wouldn't be surprised if at one point the government come in and tries to apply credit card regulation to them if thats not already the case.

Paypal has roughly 8000 employees of which 7500 work in fraud and customer services none of which is outsourced. It's not that they are not taking it seriously.. Their customer support tends to be really good in my experience, don't base too much on the one in a million horror stories that make it to this site.

> one in a million horror stories

Even if the stats are really that low ... why does that horror story have to exist? Why can't they be fair to everybody?

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#68

Post by bad_user »

xal wrote: post #15
nkassis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that probably explain why their customer service is horrible, they see it as an afterthought. I don't have an issue with them trying to kill fraud but there needs to be better communication between Paypal and it's business customers. I wouldn't be surprised if at one point the government come in and tries to apply credit card regulation to them if thats not already the case.

Paypal has roughly 8000 employees of which 7500 work in fraud and customer services none of which is outsourced. It's not that they are not taking it seriously.. Their customer support tends to be really good in my experience, don't base too much on the one in a million horror stories that make it to this site.

> one in a million horror stories

Even if the stats are really that low ... why does that horror story have to exist? Why can't they be fair to everybody?

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#69

Post by dhimes »

jrockway wrote: post #58
dhimes wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Customer service with PayPal is a hundred times better than customer service with Google, in my experience. I've never had a problem getting CS on the phone with PayPal. Google is a different story.

And Amazon?

I don't know about them yet. I hope somebody answers you, though.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#70

Post by awad »

ido wrote: post #63
awad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to have been out for a while. Does anyone have any experience with FPS? I'm launching a new project soon and the one thing left is payment processing. I'm scared to be tied to just PayPal and am looking into Google Checkout and Amazon as well. I know, I know, just get a merchant account. And I will. But this is not really a startup or company and much more of just a small idea I'd like to test out. Ideally,…

isn't merchant account US only? Seems like a pretty significant disadvantage for an internet business.

Not necessarily. There are international providers. Authorize.net, for example, allows for international payments.
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