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More Paypal nonsense

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Re: More Paypal nonsense

#91

Post by saurik »

einhverfr wrote: post #73
saurik wrote: post #62

"Donate" has a very specific meaning, at least in the US, and comes with numerous accounting connotations, including the ability to write off the expense. As many people don't realize that "charitable donations" do /not/ include "donations" to purchase toys for children, it is misleading to use the term "donation" in this circumstance. Meanwhile, often the person /accepting/ the donations doesn't understand this eith…

I don't see how Paypal is liable for taxes collected, so I don't see how that should concern them.

PayPal is not in a position to be running money for someone else's "dirty books" (which is a rather strongly negative term, but you have to realize that that is how PayPal is going to be seeing this specific pseudo-charity, and is the mental framework from which they are going to be dealing with this likely hostile person on the phone), and to the extent to which it "shouldn't concern them" (and it starts to, such as with 1099-K) it is a fair assumption that companies that are operating with "dirty books" are a "high-risk transaction" (one fraught with disputes, chargebacks, and investigations), something which PayPal simply refuses to traffic in (likely, as their entire concept of letting random people keep money and move it around is already "high-risk" enough ;P).

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#92

Post by DiabloD3 »

8plot wrote: post #72
jfruh wrote: post #30

Yikes, are you really only allowed to use "donate" buttons if you're a nonprofit? I use them as a "tip jar" on my blog. What's the options for for-profit when you're giving money for nothing in particular?

Bitcoin is an option.

Since HN removed public comment scoring, my up vote is not publicly indicative of the quality of this comment.

Thus, I would also like to echo this sentiment that Bitcoin is worth pursuing.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#94

Post by valugi »

this is not something new. In 2001-2003 I lost a lot of paypal money after they decided to block my account, because I was logging in from East Europe and ... they did not like it. If I had an UK account I should log in from UK, and I never recovered the money and never worked with them again. As most big companies they are abusing their position in the market, not by being a monopoly but by doing the rules they please.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#95

Post by danilocampos »

gergles wrote: post #89
danilocampos wrote: post #24

I've been sitting here for the last five minutes trying to make a point eloquently. I'm having a hard time with it. So I'll just put it like this: What else can we really expect from a product whose parent is eBay ? This company is a fucking fossil with all the hunger for customer satisfaction of a used tissue. Is it convenient for users? Yeah. Is it worth gambling your entire business on? Given the lack of accountab…

Wow, that's histrionic. PayPal's customers are the people who use it. You, as a merchant, are not a customer of theirs, but a necessary evil to keep the customers coming. PayPal's customers love it. PayPal's merchants don't like it because PayPal has fraud prevention methods that are opaque and hamfistedly applied. That's a fine complaint, but this breathless "for the sake of the world don't ever use PayPal" garbage…

> but this breathless "for the sake of the world don't ever use PayPal"

You know, I've been working on my condescension. I really have – my last girlfriend hated that shit. And it's gotten a lot better. But you just had to use a cutely loaded little word like "histrionic," so there's really no other course...

So what I'd like to do now is offer a brief explanation of how quotation marks work.

Generally, quotation marks are used to attribute their contained content, verbatim, to a specific person. By including words in quotation marks you are saying, in effect, "this person said precisely this."

I did not say precisely what you quoted. What I said instead (handily, the text is right there), was that for all our futures, where we is a group of people who care about building things and getting paid, that we shouldn't pin our hopes on a company that can declare our money limbo-ed on a whim. The more who avoid PayPal as a result of their flakiness, the brighter the future looks for a sane payment processing landscape.

It's okay to have policies. It's okay to have business models you will and won't support. What isn't okay is to both handle large sums of people's money and make your customer service a recourse-free black box at the same time.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#96

Post by 8plot »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #92
8plot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is an option.

Since HN removed public comment scoring, my up vote is not publicly indicative of the quality of this comment. Thus, I would also like to echo this sentiment that Bitcoin is worth pursuing.

Unfortunately the down-voters of my comment disagree. Until they present their argument against bitcoin, I assume they are only being ignorant.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#97

Post by darklajid »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #69
saurik wrote: post #62

"Donate" has a very specific meaning, at least in the US, and comes with numerous accounting connotations, including the ability to write off the expense. As many people don't realize that "charitable donations" do /not/ include "donations" to purchase toys for children, it is misleading to use the term "donation" in this circumstance. Meanwhile, often the person /accepting/ the donations doesn't understand this eith…

>In this case, this person obviously doesn't get it. "Why? These are my customers!" You seem to be confusing different things. After being unable to use donations, they tried to use sales. And paypal said no. That's the context of what you're quoting, after donations had been given up on.

Are you sure about that?

Because I think the sarik is talking about the whole idea itself, which according to what I understand from this complaint is

- 'Donate' money for the 'Give kids a random present'

- Blog author invests time to handle the flow of money, orders toys and selects/distributes to kids

What saurik is saying is that the first step, 'Donate amount of $currency to send a random toy of roughly the same value to a 3rd party' is pretty much a sale. The author itself is comparing his idea at one point with Amazon, purchasing gifts for someone else.

I'm sympathetic here and don't like the outcome, but I think your comment is incorrect: Saurik didn't confuse different things here. We might argue about whether these 'donations' should be considered sales, but - you misunderstood the argument, I think.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#98

Post by DiabloD3 »

8plot wrote: post #96
DiabloD3 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since HN removed public comment scoring, my up vote is not publicly indicative of the quality of this comment. Thus, I would also like to echo this sentiment that Bitcoin is worth pursuing.

Unfortunately the down-voters of my comment disagree. Until they present their argument against bitcoin, I assume they are only being ignorant.

Well, its worth mentioning that Bitcoin cannot do charge backs, cannot freeze your account, and doesn't charge astronomical fees.

I'm not sure why anyone would downvote Bitcoin.

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#99

Post by navyrain »

gergles wrote: post #89
danilocampos wrote: post #24

I've been sitting here for the last five minutes trying to make a point eloquently. I'm having a hard time with it. So I'll just put it like this: What else can we really expect from a product whose parent is eBay ? This company is a fucking fossil with all the hunger for customer satisfaction of a used tissue. Is it convenient for users? Yeah. Is it worth gambling your entire business on? Given the lack of accountab…

Wow, that's histrionic. PayPal's customers are the people who use it. You, as a merchant, are not a customer of theirs, but a necessary evil to keep the customers coming. PayPal's customers love it. PayPal's merchants don't like it because PayPal has fraud prevention methods that are opaque and hamfistedly applied. That's a fine complaint, but this breathless "for the sake of the world don't ever use PayPal" garbage…

Firstly, you've got it backwards. Paypal takes a cut of the merchant's revenues for virtually passing the money from the consumer to the merchant; therefore, the merchant is PayPal's customer, and the consumers the necessary evil.

Secondly, PayPal didn't simply say "stop that". They gave him the runaround, froze unrelated accounts, and stonewalled him when he tried to make whatever accommodations would please them. That they were rude and condescending during all of this only adds insult to injury.

"Don't ever use PayPal" is really a reasonable reaction to these sorts of stories. When a seemingly legitimate transaction can unexpectedly invite the fury of paypal's overzealous fraud protection drones, how could the reaction be anything but?

Re: More Paypal nonsense

#100

Post by masklinn »

danilocampos wrote: post #24

I've been sitting here for the last five minutes trying to make a point eloquently. I'm having a hard time with it. So I'll just put it like this: What else can we really expect from a product whose parent is eBay ? This company is a fucking fossil with all the hunger for customer satisfaction of a used tissue. Is it convenient for users? Yeah. Is it worth gambling your entire business on? Given the lack of accountab…

> Why trust a business to such a stagnant concern?

Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it.

Oh if you're in the US for the US you might be able (and want) to gamble on an other younger service, but in the wider world? It's a fucking wasteland, it's either Paypal or Big Bank Merchant Account, and those are no fun at all either.

My card expired (and was renewed) recently, I decided to stop using paypal (so I did not update the account to the new card), by the third christmas gift I tried to get I had to re-activate it, because either the gift in question wasn't available from anybody not using Paypal (etsy merchants, for instance) or because the CC gateway alternatives to paypal were unusable to plain broken.

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