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Burning man defeats PayPal

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Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#91

Post by lsc »

callmeed wrote: post #61
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 sto…

my experience with paypal has also been largely positive. I process between USD$10K and USD$20K a month in paypal payments.

As far as I can tell, they aren't much worse than most other payment processors. Most payment processors, if someone with bad credit comes along, or someone gets lots of chargebacks, or if someone is in a funny business sector, they keep some percentage of your money in escrow for a certain number of months.

Now, personally, I have a very liberal refund policy (and really, I think anyone who accepts paypal or credit cards should do the same... because anyone who wants to, with either of those methods, can get their money back, if they really want to.) so I generally don't get chargebacks on my papal account. My last 'dispute' in fact, was an accident... the guy says he meant to dispute the next transaction, with a different company.

and hell, if you tangle with the IRS, your regular bank account will get frozen.

Now, I have heard many, many paypal horror stories from non-profits.

I wonder if paypal is going overboard in cooperating with the US government (in this case, the government harassing not-for-profits who haven't lawyered up enough) to avoid the fate of e-gold?

The e-gold guys, as far as I can tell, were told 'freeze your business or we will throw your asses in jail.' I've still got around a hundred bucks in e-gold I can't access because of that.

E-gold was set up a the way a privacy nerd would set up a banking system, and they built a fairly secure system, but they ignored fraud, saying they were trying to be 'like cash' and first accumulated a reputation for serving the shady and outright fraudulent market, before being shut down by the government.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#92

Post by cloudbrain »

This is why I withdraw all funds from PayPal every weekday morning.

PayPal has been the sole payment solution for my software company for more than 5 years. 99% of all of my money, my families money and my employees salaries goes through PayPal. When I bought my first home (at the end of 2005, oops...) I had to call PayPal to get some financial details for the mortgage company. I spoke with a nice person on the phone from PayPal and they faxed me the documentation I needed write away. Every time a new payment processor comes on the scene I check them out, but none have been able to offer the pricing or features I get via PayPal.

That being said. I have read all the horror stories. So I just assume that any money left in my PayPal account overnight could be potentially lost. No problem, I just withdraw it every morning so my lost potential is always minimal (a few grand).

I don't de recurring subscriptions. I imagine things would be different then. If I did subscriptions I think I would want my own merchant account - you want to own as much of the customer as you can.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#93

Post by vl »

philwelch wrote: post #77
russell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is well taken, but I have never seen a comment, here or elsewhere, where someone lauded the great PayPal service or the quick conflict resolution. It's always about being blindsided. Folks, if you have GOOD stories, those are worth posting for balance.

I am, among other things, pwelch@gmail.com. Of course, this means that every Patrick, Patricia, Pedro, Paul, or Penelope Welch who leaves a numeral or something off their email address thinks they are pwelch@gmail.com. Or one of their colleagues or friends thinks they are pwelch@gmail.com. Long story made short, some idiot set up a Paypal account on my email address and now I can't get it off. I've contacted Paypal a…

But how this idiot confirmed your email address?

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#94

Post by cubicle67 »

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…

I have a client who owns a bricks and mortar store that's been in business for about 15 years and employs about 20 people. They were using PayPal for payment processing on their website, when one day PayPal decided they didn't like the way the company was structured, and froze all funds.

Nothing they could do to appease PayPal. Six months later they got their money back, they now hate PayPal with a passion, and use eWay who have been great

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#95

Post by philwelch »

vl wrote: post #93
philwelch wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am, among other things, pwelch@gmail.com. Of course, this means that every Patrick, Patricia, Pedro, Paul, or Penelope Welch who leaves a numeral or something off their email address thinks they are pwelch@gmail.com. Or one of their colleagues or friends thinks they are pwelch@gmail.com. Long story made short, some idiot set up a Paypal account on my email address and now I can't get it off. I've contacted Paypal a…

But how this idiot confirmed your email address?

As far as I can tell, PayPal doesn't require address confirmation.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#96

Post by ahoyhere »

jrockway wrote: post #57
ahoyhere wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks in Europe are tightly controlled. You have no idea what it's like in the US. Imagine a system where… 1. You pay a 20% fee to withdraw money from an ATM that doesn't belong to your bank. 2. The bank puts thru a charge they shouldn't, you run out of cash, and you get whacked with a $35 fee. 3. The bank charges you a monthly fee after that - another $35 fee. 4. The bank shuts off your card because you're in anothe…

1. It's a 20% fee when you request $10, or a 2% fee if you request $100. 2. Overdraft fees are disallowed by law and are opt-in now. 4. Also, it's not typically the banks that cancel cards, it's the processing network that does. Most problems people have with banks are user-error, plain and simple. When you misuse a computer program, you waste time. When you misuse a bank, they charge you money.

The most I paid was $6.50 to withdraw - $2 on my bank's end and $4.50 on the end of the usurious ATM.

That kind of thing is illegal in other countries.

Even a 2% fee is usurious. That right there sucks up any potential interest gain you'd ever have.

In Austria, all ATMs are free, on both ends.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#97

Post by wallflower »

jimbokun wrote: post #84
wallflower wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I simply do not understand why there are not more competitors to PayPal If you read the excellent interview with Max Levchin in Founders at Work, he alludes to the fact that PayPal is really just a state-of-the-art, best-in-class fraud detection system with a payment frontend. He also says that Banks are more conservative than PayPal - in that they can't go after a business model where there is going to be fraud -…

"He also says that Banks are more conservative than PayPal - in that they can't go after a business model where there is going to be fraud - and the game is to minimize the losses." It seems to me that deal with fraud is an important part of any bank's business.

From the interview:

"We started with this, 'Fraud is going to kill us. What can we do to save ourselves?' They started from, 'We have no fraud. How can we build this and not let any fraud in'

He also goes says something about how in the Internet world it is very hard to verify someone - the more information you get to verify (e.g. PayPal verified account) - the more 'safe' user you are. And something about how the Banks couldn't do this (virtual transactions) because most of them were public companies and couldn't hide $10m/month in fraud losses (what PayPal was losing a month to fraud at that critical point) and not spook their institutional investors.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#98

Post by loewenskind »

callmeed wrote: post #61
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 sto…

Uhm.. there's another option you know? Like maybe your time hasn't come yet?

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#99

Post by xal »

bad_user wrote: post #67
xal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

law of large numbers. At 100 million customers, just about any conceivable thing that can happen will happen.

Re: Burning man defeats PayPal

#100

Post by mironathetin »

blahedo wrote: post #89
mironathetin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to read that. I thought it is only Paypal Germany whose customer service is bad. My experience with Paypal is, that they deliberately freeze my account and ask for private information and business details, that you really don't want to distribute. If I don't send them, the account remains frozen - well, I may upload money any time ;o). And indeed, Paypal also doesn't talk to me anymore. They don't close m…

He did ?? Does he know the iTunes Music Store contract is a whopping 23 pages long, with some 112 sections? At least, it was as of early 2009, which was when I A) really read the thing and B) decided I was done with iTMS. (Full details at http://www.blahedo.org/blog/archives/001060.html .) (EDIT: iTunes ≠ iTMS)

Well, iTunes is not for HIM to sign, its for YOU.
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