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How PayPal could have killed an independent conference

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Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference

#61

Post by pbhjpbhj »

geoffschmidt wrote: post #52
michaelpinto wrote: post #29

You know I keep seeing tech types going on about how much they hate PayPal - so why doesn't somebody do a startup to go head to head with them? I realize I'm just a humble designer, but I can tell that even from a usability point of view they're very vulnerable.

Stripe: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/28/stealth-payment-startup-str... WePay: http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/26/wepay-ice-paypal/ Both have Paypal founders among their investors.

https://stripe.com/ not live yet https://www.wepay.com/ - 3.5% fee, 50c min, US only.

Any one got a suggestion for the UK?

Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference

#62

Post by ig1 »

sprovoost wrote: post #59
ig1 wrote: post #10

Paypal classes events as high-risk transactions (as they require people to pay upfront often far in advance of the event) so you're at much more risk of being suspended if you breach their risk thresholds. Imagine if you're a fraudster, you've knocked up a fake event and you've sold $10k-$20k in tickets, you could withdraw the money and disappear before the date of the event. Now Paypal are on the hook for the money,…

I understand PayPal needs to take certain unpleasant measures to mitigate risk. The problem I have with them is their disrespectful attitude towards customers in general and their arrogant tone in particular. If something goes wrong they don't say "Sorry, we believe there may be a problem so we had to suspend your account. Not to worry, just send us X or call us on this number.", but rather something along the lines…

Could you post an example of the suspended account email ? - I don't think I've seen one. If they say something like "You're a fraudster..." than I agree that's inappropriate.

I had assumed it was something like the "Your account has been limited emails" which point you to their resolution centre and tell you to phone them if you have any problems.

Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference

#63

Post by sprovoost »

ig1 wrote: post #62
sprovoost wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand PayPal needs to take certain unpleasant measures to mitigate risk. The problem I have with them is their disrespectful attitude towards customers in general and their arrogant tone in particular. If something goes wrong they don't say "Sorry, we believe there may be a problem so we had to suspend your account. Not to worry, just send us X or call us on this number.", but rather something along the lines…

Could you post an example of the suspended account email ? - I don't think I've seen one. If they say something like "You're a fraudster..." than I agree that's inappropriate. I had assumed it was something like the "Your account has been limited emails" which point you to their resolution centre and tell you to phone them if you have any problems.

I'll try to dig one up. Obviously they won't use such wording. They send out a completely automated message with fairly vague instructions. If you then do what they ask and explain the situation, you get another fully automated response rejecting that attempt. This means either no human bothered to look into the situation or a human did look at my message, but did not feel the need to type an explanation or even apology for their decision. In stead, they press a big FY button and don't look back. Maybe it's because I can tell which part of an email represents human effort, that I tend to get more offended by this sort of thing. Even automated blurbs saying "we're sory if this caused any inconvienience" don't work for me.

Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference

#64

Post by jellicle »

mikeash wrote: post #57
jellicle wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happened to it was that credit card companies discovered that they could gain additional customers by removing that risk. The end result is now that most or all credit cards cover the cardholder in the event of a fraudulent purchase. What happened was that after defrauding customers became common practice, Congress passed laws regulating the credit card industry and putting the fraud onus on the party with the…

I didn't look into it deeply, but from the law I could find, it appears that liability is only limited by law in the event that the cardholder never authorized the transaction. For this particular case, the cardholder authorized the transaction, and just didn't get what he expected to get. Maybe that's covered by a different law I didn't find?

The Fair Credit Billing Act, a revision of the Truth in Lending Act, specifically covers this:

"(3) A reflection on a statement of goods or services not accepted by the obligor or his designee or not delivered to the obligor or his designee in accordance with the agreement made at the time of a transaction. "

Basically that's saying that if you ordered it, but the vendor didn't deliver properly, that counts as a billing error and must be handled like any other billing error - the credit card issuer must conduct an investigation, in writing, document everything, and can only bill the card holder for the amount in dispute if the card issuer is fully satisfied that the goods were provided as ordered. So the card issuer is in the business of adjudicating fraudulent disputes, whether they want to or not, which gives them a strong incentive (because they're going to be stuck with the fraud) to reduce and prevent fraud in the first place rather than passing it off to the card holder.

Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference

#65

Post by timjahn »

benatkin wrote: post #49
timjahn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. He said he was switching from PayPal as the payment processor to Eventbrite. We used PayPal for our first event, but their extra cut on top of Eventbrite's made little sense, so we too switched to using Eventbrite's processor and haven't looked back.

You have to wait until the event is over to get the money, right? It seemed to me that with PayPal, if it didn't get frozen, the author of the article would have gotten his money before the event started and been able to use it to pay for the event's expenses.

Yes, you get the money after the event is over. 5 days after, actually, as that's the timeframe Eventbrite gives you to handle any refunds.

Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference

#66

Post by mikeash »

jellicle wrote: post #64
mikeash wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't look into it deeply, but from the law I could find, it appears that liability is only limited by law in the event that the cardholder never authorized the transaction. For this particular case, the cardholder authorized the transaction, and just didn't get what he expected to get. Maybe that's covered by a different law I didn't find?

The Fair Credit Billing Act, a revision of the Truth in Lending Act, specifically covers this: "(3) A reflection on a statement of goods or services not accepted by the obligor or his designee or not delivered to the obligor or his designee in accordance with the agreement made at the time of a transaction. " Basically that's saying that if you ordered it, but the vendor didn't deliver properly, that counts as a bill…

Thanks for the info. Did credit cards not provide any such protection before this was made law, then?
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