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WePay Drops 600lbs of ice in front of PayPal Conference

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Re: WePay Drops 600lbs of ice in front of PayPal Conference

#81

Post by btilly »

nkassis wrote: post #79
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's a good way to get payments from customers to you, but it sucks as a way of paying for auction goods and freelance work, which is how I used to use paypal. International wire transfers are a lot harder to do without actually visiting a branch of the bank I'm with and filling out a bunch of forms, and they take much longer to process too.

"International wire transfers are a lot harder to do without actually visiting a branch of the bank I'm with and filling out a bunch of forms, and they take much longer to process too." That's my personal problem too. Sending money from US to Canada or Canada to the US is a pain. If only they had the same check clearance system, it would solve so much. Same as how having similar phone numbers makes it so much easier.

Heh. jacquesm lives somewhere that doesn't even have checks!

When I needed to get paid by a Dutch company, the easiest solution turned out to be for me to open a new bank account.

Re: WePay Drops 600lbs of ice in front of PayPal Conference

#82

Post by lsc »

citricsquid wrote: post #70

I don't get it? Wepay and Paypal are different . Paypal markets itself as a sort of online bank account, whereas Wepay markets themselves as a place to get money from your room mates. Their comparison page includes DonorsChoose, why would I (assuming I'm an online retailer looking to accept payments) care for DonorsChoose? They need to change their product and/or marketing direction if they want to compete with Paypa…

but paypal /is/ a way to pay your roommates. The draw of paypal is that it's a merchant account that is so easy to set up that anyone can have one.

They are actually doing a big marketing push in that direction right now. "paid out of pocket for tickets?" the paypal screen said earlier today, "Collect via paypal"

hell, I've paid employees, and yes, even roommates via paypal in the past. So yeah, while paypal seems to have a superset of the features and capabilities of WePay, there is a lot of overlap.

Re: WePay Drops 600lbs of ice in front of PayPal Conference

#83

Post by hugh3 »

mikeryan wrote: post #32
SandB0x wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Melt the ice somehow? Nice idea, but how? Wait.

store it somewhere private and warm, then wait. This is why he needed the pallet mover.

Probably sensible, if you can obtain a pallet mover. Though there should be one of those in any large convention center for setting up displays and so forth... you'll have to split the loot with the guy in charge of it though.

It also requires the security guard to have access to a private place with a large door whose floor won't be damaged when six hundred pounds of water gushes onto it.

Re: WePay Drops 600lbs of ice in front of PayPal Conference

#84

Post by hugh3 »

mlinsey wrote: post #54
bobf wrote: post #16

The funny part, as TC mentions, is that PayPal pulled a similar guerrilla marketing stunt in its early days by paying people to wear PayPal t-shirts at an eBay conference. Could we say... revenge is a dish best served cold ?

I think you mean PayPal pulled a similar guerilla marketing stunt, unless the people wearing the t-shirts were trained monkeys. ;)

If you want to be nitpicky, gorillas aren't monkeys.

edit: Really, people? You modded me up to 17 for making a nitpick about simian taxonomy?

Re: WePay Drops 600lbs of ice in front of PayPal Conference

#85

Post by ahi »

For my purposes WePay is close to being a perfect solution, but just falls short:

"Who owns the money in a Group Account? Groups make it easy to track finances and share information, but the Group Administrator owns the money in the Group Account and is the sole cardholder on the WePay Prepaid Visa® Card."

From the group perspective, it shouldn't be too hard to make a group administrator sign an agreement in regards to how they may spend group funds. The problem is that group funds are vulnerable to third parties. e.g. The fraternity president goes on a bender and runs someone over. The victim will be able to go after "group" funds due to the personal liability of the group administrator. I don't have a solution for this, though I imagine a lawyer could work one up. Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the paper work and legal fees for setting something up (trust? nonprofit?) are completely out of proportion to the assets trying to be protected.

As far as I can tell, WePay essentially provides a personal bank account with methods of billing and sharing information with other people. Useful, but handwaving about "groups" doesn't carry a lot of weight with the IRS or courts.

Re: WePay Drops 600lbs of ice in front of PayPal Conference

#86

Post by hugh3 »

mseebach wrote: post #65
TallGuyShort wrote: post #4

There are hundreds of dollars below the ice, and they chased down the pallet-mover? Why didn't they just get some ice picks?

Why would it be real money in there? It's not hard to fabricate bills that would look like real money through the ice, but not once thawed - not to mention cheaper. Say, using over-size, laminated cardboard and not printing the back.

I don't know. All I have to go on is the news report which states that it's money, and a photo which looks kinda like money.

It's a better marketing stunt if it's actually money, though. Leaving a significant (but not implausibly large) sum of money out in the open but apparently completely inaccessible -- it motivates people like us to think about ways to get the money out, and here we are talking about a company whose existence I would otherwise have forgotten.

If it turns out to be fake money I'll be very disappointed in you, wepay.

Re: WePay Drops 600lbs of ice in front of PayPal Conference

#87

Post by paraschopra »

csallen wrote: post #29
paraschopra wrote: post #15

Is it just me or anyone else also thinks it is bit too naïve. Organizations who handle finances need to have a serious no-BS attitude because they are playing with money. Of course, it doesn't mean that a organization has to be excessively serious but such real world trolling tells a lot about company's (mischievous) culture. Personally, I wouldn't do business with an organization that doesn't respect its competitors…

>> Personally, I wouldn't do business with an organization that doesn't respect its competitors. It seems every month someone is posting about their money being held hostage or outright stolen by PayPal. Most of these complaints are from well-known bloggers/engineers/HN members, so I can only imagine how many people without a voice online are getting screwed. When you're dealing with people's money, you have a strong…

> Why should WePay have respect for a competitor that doesn't respect its own customers?

A company has to have its own culture of respect irrespective of what culture its competitors have. No where in my comment did I say that I admire Paypal's practices. I just said I found what WePay did a bit naive and a cheap trick. It has nothing to do with Paypal

HNers: just because you disagree with a comment doesn't mean that you should downvote it. It is a personal opinion and in no way frivolous or off-topic.

Re: WePay Drops 600lbs of ice in front of PayPal Conference

#89

Post by noglorp »

jacquesm wrote: post #10

What a funny way to grab a ton of free press. They must have planned this for some time given the logistics involved and the time it takes to freeze quantity of water that size and get a nice and clear chunk. My own paypal saga isn't over yet, though there have been some surprising developments. I sincerely hope that someone will one of these days replace paypal with a better way of doing peer-to-peer payments, but o…

I prefer petty thieves to institutional ones.

Re: WePay Drops 600lbs of ice in front of PayPal Conference

#90

Post by davidw »

noglorp wrote: post #89
jacquesm wrote: post #10

What a funny way to grab a ton of free press. They must have planned this for some time given the logistics involved and the time it takes to freeze quantity of water that size and get a nice and clear chunk. My own paypal saga isn't over yet, though there have been some surprising developments. I sincerely hope that someone will one of these days replace paypal with a better way of doing peer-to-peer payments, but o…

I prefer petty thieves to institutional ones.

From what I read about some of their early troubles, some of the thieves trying to use the system were anything but petty.
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