How PayPal could have killed an independent conference
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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
#2> "I knew PayPal couldn't be trusted, but I used them anyway, and they shafted me, just like I thought they would!"
He only froze my money because he loves me, he won't do it again, I promise!
Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference
#3> "I knew PayPal couldn't be trusted, but I used them anyway, and they shafted me, just like I thought they would!" He only froze my money because he loves me, he won't do it again, I promise!
> WHY
From my experience in the UK it's the only option for accepting payment that doesn't have the serious admin and financial outlay of getting set up with a proper merchant account. Perhaps in this case going with EventBrite from the beginning would have made more sense but that's only an easy call to make in hindsight.
Edit: You seem to have changed your comment. Consider this a reply to the underlying message of your sarcasm.
Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference
#4I've seen a number of conference organisers complain of this so it must happen often!
Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference
#5> "I knew PayPal couldn't be trusted, but I used them anyway, and they shafted me, just like I thought they would!" He only froze my money because he loves me, he won't do it again, I promise!
> WHY From my experience in the UK it's the only option for accepting payment that doesn't have the serious admin and financial outlay of getting set up with a proper merchant account. Perhaps in this case going with EventBrite from the beginning would have made more sense but that's only an easy call to make in hindsight. Edit: You seem to have changed your comment. Consider this a reply to the underlying message of…
(Sorry, I thought I ninja-edited quickly enough.)
How serious is the admin and financial outlay? I want to say that it would be worth it to avoid the risk of Paypal freezing your funds (or worse), but that's a hard call to make without knowing exactly what the costs would be.
Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference
#6I've seen a number of conference organisers complain of this so it must happen often!
> I've seen a number of conference organisers complain of this so it must happen often!
That's not really a valid argument. You don't know how many conferences used Paypal and went off without a hitch. Not many people are going to write a blog post saying, "We used PayPal, and it went fine!" - and of those, fewer still would hit the HN front page.
Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
> WHY From my experience in the UK it's the only option for accepting payment that doesn't have the serious admin and financial outlay of getting set up with a proper merchant account. Perhaps in this case going with EventBrite from the beginning would have made more sense but that's only an easy call to make in hindsight. Edit: You seem to have changed your comment. Consider this a reply to the underlying message of…
(Sorry, I thought I ninja-edited quickly enough.) How serious is the admin and financial outlay? I want to say that it would be worth it to avoid the risk of Paypal freezing your funds (or worse), but that's a hard call to make without knowing exactly what the costs would be.
It's difficult/impossible to get a merchant account without a previous trading history and money to show off. The financial spend isn't too bad, but from what I can tell you need to have some sizeable accounts before you can get one. Basically they're aimed at the larger business end of things, which makes small projects that need online transactions a non-starter.
(I tried and failed to set up a merchant account and instead had to settle for PayPal as the only other option)
Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference
#8We use Eventbrite for all our Entrepreneurs Unpluggd events, and while they're not multi-day conferences, I still think Eventbrite is the best platform for any size event to use for ticket sales, registration, waiting list, and all that jazz.
Never once had an issue with them on any level.
And no, I don't work for them or get paid by them in any way. They just have a kick ass product. :)
EDIT: The reason I'm even saying this is the author mentions in his post that he switched from PayPal to Eventbrite.
Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference
#9It's been said before, but it's worth repeating. Conferences are a high risk business operation. For every SXSW, there's a thousand "Learn to Buy Real Estate with No Money Down" conferences at the Ramada Inn next to the airport. Paypal is not in the business of assuming your risk. They are in the business of processing payments while mitigating their own.
Re: How PayPal could have killed an independent conference
#10Paypal 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, when they get creditcard charge-backs it comes out of Paypal's account and not the fraudsters.
Does anyone consider it reasonable that Paypal take this risk ? - the reason for the 90 day limit is that's the length of time most consumers have to request a credit card chargeback. Paypal is simply protecting themselves.
If you're engaged in high-risk transactions you're much better off going with a specialist provider (i.e Amiando or Eventbrite in this case) as they have risk fraud models designed to handle the specific risk factors.