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One of the oldest anti-company sites on the internet is paypalsucks.com

I'd want to switch to some payment service I've never heard of and don't trust...... why?

Everything at some point in your life is something you've never heard of, including Paypal.

Now the real question is do you want to research, learn about and subsequently trust a large company headquartered in a state with strict banking laws, that offers multiple banking services including credit cards, debit cards, and online payments, and is subject to some pretty sane laws....

or... do you stick with Paypal, a US company for all intents and purposes except for legal intents and purposes where it instead decided to be headquartered in Luxembourg for the sole purpose of dodging those pesky banking regulations.

I've heard of Paypal: http://www.paypalsucks.com/ In comparison a company which I don't know or trust would be a welcome change.

" i also use PayPal a lot."

Ha! Hahahahaha! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

They're one of the worst.

The suit alleges that Pandora purposely "latched itself on to the increasingly popular" PayPal logo look-and-feel as part of its efforts to reverse its fortunes.

Because everyone loves PayPal.

Well, isn't that precisely why Pandora is doing it? They obviously wanted that lawsuit, considering how they rejected Paypal's forewarning, and how Paypal would obviously sue, and most certainly win. They wanted some of that sweet sweet David and Goliath PR... Pretty lamentable...

The suit alleges that Pandora purposely "latched itself on to the increasingly popular" PayPal logo look-and-feel as part of its efforts to reverse its fortunes.

Because everyone loves PayPal.

So companies should partner with a transaction processor so that they do not have make a new account for a one time purchase. [...] Pick your favorite among the various top 10 or so options.

And have half your customers leave because "your favorite" happens not to coincidentally match theirs. A user tries to check out, and the site accepts PayPal and credit cards, but entering credit card payment credentials is too cumbersome, and the user has been a victim of a PayPal hold.

http://paypalsucks.com/

You're either a fool or a liar. I've had funds frozen for months by PayPal with no explanation (eventually released with no apology from them), and I've also disputed recurring PayPal charges stemming from a shit VPS provider who had completely ignored several of my attempts to cancel services. In the latter case, PayPal decided to rule in the shit provider's favor anyhow. I walked away from PayPal permanently after finally getting the last of my money out of that account (again, several months later, and I still never got any of the fraudulent VPS fees refunded), and I will never transact business with them again. In fact, since January of 2012 I've continued to receive an email entitled "First Invoice Overdue Notice" from the shit VPS provider every month. Those emails serve as a nice reminder to encourage folks to avoid PayPal at all costs; people continue to use them out of sheer stupidity.

Paypal Policy - A License To Steal Your Money
Funds Stolen By PayPal
PayPal - Beware of PayPal, 6000 USD seized by Paypal
180-Day Hold Sparks PayPal Suit
Paypal Can and Will seize funds...Atwood Knives
Another PayPal victim $4000.00 seized from my business account.
PayPal Horror Stories

If you get bored, try these as well:

Exhibit A
Exhibit B

So, which is it? Are you a liar, or are you a fool?

Flame away, but [...] People want to trade one fiat currency, for another? Okay. What's the point?

Our economic challenge is one of resource scarcity. Coming up with schemes to trade compute time for fiat paper is not doing anyone any good.

Your post was neither inflammatory nor derisive. Ask, and it will be answered.

Crypto currency has three major advantages over state-issued currency: reduced transaction fees, no counter-party risk, and lower barrier for use.

1) Counter party risk in this case is where some agent involved in a transaction does something which is not in the interests of the participants.

For example, consider the parties involved in making an eBay purchase: eBay can sell your purchasing habits to advertizers, PayPal could take your money and not give it back, ChoicePoint can lose your identity info, VISA can sell your buying habits, and your bank can give all your history to the government.

Each party adds a little bit of risk to your transaction without any benefit to you and without your consent.

Cryptocurrencies eliminate these risks entirely.

2) Transaction processors charge a hefty fee for their services - upwards of 5% in total cost, with a high minimum charge.

Crypto currency transactions have much smaller fees. With no employees or physical cards or credit scoring mechanism, there's very little overhead - just a few cpu cycles per transaction.

This will push prices down (or profits up) by 5% or more for anyone who uses the new system. A merchant could lower prices by 5% for crypto-currency transactions, and make the same profit with a competitive advantage over their competitors.

That's huge.

Lower fees will admit micropayments. That's also huge.

3) Crypto-currencies increase market liquidity in two ways: the reduced fees allow micro-transactions, and they have no barrier to use.

Anyone can use cryptocoin without a credit check, permanent address, or bank account. Cryptocoin is similar to a "prepaid" credit card with no fees. If you have the money, you can use it... there's no need to connect to government or the financial system. Anyone with a cell phone and the money can make transactions online, which will be popular in poor nations. The world economic market could skyrocket.

That's also also huge.

Overall, crypto-currencies hold a lot of promise for being more valuable and easier to use than traditional systems. Whether this added value is enough to foster widespread adoption is up for debate, but there's enormous incentive to do so.

How much does PP pay you to suck their rancid cock in public?

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

High time was when I first read a few stories on here:

http://paypalsucks.com/

In like 2006.

As a professional flack, I have massive respect for the PayPal flack who got this on the front page of Slashdot, I would not even have tried. There is a reason for sites like PayPalSucks. Speaking only for myself, my personal experience with PayPal has been HORRIBLE. Currently, I use We Pay and thus far have not had any issues. Speaking ONLY for myself.

At least provide the link.

In my experience they are not evil, they are just thevies who will keep the money unless you make one hell of a fuss and even then they might just keep it anyway. They don't eat babies or anything but they do have a very long history of stealing other peoples money.

That fax number charges 10p a minute, I think there is a rule that says you have to state that when you post it. The London local rate number appears to be +4420 8605 3001. (verify by entering PayPal's registration number which is 226056.) That's from http://www.paypalsucks.com/faqs.shtml.

Exactly.

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

Customer support which is a mere deception, instant automated account freezing for the most ridiculous and trivial of flags, holding people's account balances hostage for a year or more.

It's a bad company in need of a bashing by both customers and regulators.

Where you see censorship and fees I see authority, standards, and trust backed by social institutions.

The parent was talking about Paypal. You know who Paypal are right? The payments company with a very long history of robbing their customers?

http://paypalsucks.com/
http://paypalcomplaints.org/

Search google for 'paypal scum'.

"Here goes your facebook ID, oops so bad, you had a bank account interconnected to it...."

That would be Paypal ID, not facebook, and it's not as if nobody had told you so already one million times

Paypal would support that!

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

Yeah, I'm aware of that - but satire, enumeration of defects, and collection of consumer complaints are perfectly legitimate and reasonable uses for a name-is-stupid or name-sucks domain.

> you got burned by the other buyer/seller

I beg to differ. If I am involved in a transaction, I trust the middle man (aka. PayPal) to look after my interests to ensure neither side gets burnt in the transaction. PayPal do not give a sh**, as long as they get paid.

Your experience carries as much weight as my 6 year old son. He said to me "I have never fallen when climbing", but the very next week, he was in hospital ... he tore his arm open falling from a tree at school. Your argument that it "hasn't happened yet" provides me no comfort. Read http://www.paypalsucks.com/ for plenty of examples of people being burnt by PayPal.

PayPalSucks

Because they're a bunch of scummy thieves.

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

Aha, now I understand why PayPal's customer service sucks!

I think it's pretty commonly known that paypal sucks. Not that long ago Paypal locked the account of the indie developer of Minecraft for no good reason, holding over $600k hostage.

It happens to lesser known entities too.

Really? Stick a sign outside your private business that says "we don't serve black and jews" and come back and tell us how well that works out. Depending on the condition it very much CAN be illegal not to serve someone.

As for TFA, it really doesn't matter what Paypal thinks of Cryptome or not, as of this moment they are thieves. They have taken money which doesn't belong to them, money donated by people to cryptome, and taken it for themselves. since I'm sure any money held by Paypal will be drawing interest they will be profiting from their theft as well. This is why I have not done business with Paypal since they were bought by eBay. It has become nothing but bullshit, scammers, and thieves. If they wanted to quit doing business with him they could have given him his money and closed his account instead of robbing him, but that wouldn't be profitable, now would it?

For further reading on why all should avoid doing ANY business with paypal, just read some of the mounds of horror stories at paypalsucks for yourself.

Pay Pal Sucks comes up everytime there is a story about Pay Pal. Suspiciously, the "Alernatives To Paypal" section is but one vendor. In fact the "Alternatives" button leads you to the vendors website.

A list of various alternatives would be fine. But just the one, it passes discredit to the whole site. Are the stories even real?

Here is a lovely site for some light reading... http://www.paypalsucks.com/

Also an interesting story on a new scam in Boston on a scam using facebook, twitter, and Paypal http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/03/6000_fall_prey.html

IMHO, considering all the abuses of non-banks like PayPal, being subject to bank regulations is actually a good idea and one of the very rare occasions where oversight by the State may be desirable.

screw-paypal.com is a sham in it self. You can tell, they disable the right click so you cannot get the menu to link or copy material from that web page.

I recommend any of those web pages instead.

http://www.aboutpaypal.org/
http://www.paypalwarning.com/
http://www.paypalsucks.com/

We'll find out whether people care or not when there's an alternative.

I've asked that question a lot. The answer is that there are several other options.
Most of the rest of the world uses Moneybookers as one option of several. It is allowed to use more than one, though most people appear not to know that.

It's inexplicable that sites that otherwise spend effort on usability and accessibility then say 'fsck you' to their potential customers when choosing ways to transfer money. It's very rare to walk into a store and see 'paper money only, no coins' or 'Visa credit cared only, no cash' or 'Mastercard debit, no credit cards and no cash' and so on. Why should the same be tolerated online? I've contacted some of these same sites that have paypal as the only payment option and found that they wonder why they get little to no business yet won't add other options for payment.

If you provide only one avenue for payment, and many people don't use it or even like it, don't be fscking surprised that many people won't give you money.

it's not like there is no alternative to pay pal. Just use something else.

For example?

Here is a list...
http://www.screw-paypal.com/alternatives/alternatives.html

Here is a list...
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0802/gallery.paypal_alternatives.fsb/index.html

And some more sites...
http://www.paypalsucks.com/
http://www.paypalwarning.com/

I mean, did you even look at all?

Unfortunately Paypal is really the only option for a lot of smaller sites for whom a merchant account is too much hassle and expense.

Uh... No... http://www.screw-paypal.com/alternatives/alternatives.html Also, having your account frozen and cash pulled from you bank is a bit of a hassle too. http://www.paypalsucks.com/ Never trust PayPal.

Still amazed that no one at wikileaks has seen http://www.paypalsucks.com/ yet. No way I would trust paypal with anything, ever.

Banks can't take or freeze your money simply because they don't like what you do (which Paypal often does)

It's actually worse than that... they can take and freeze your money because they don't like what one of your business partners does...

They can screw you for just about anything, and have. http://www.paypalsucks.com/ Old news, but for some reason, no one knows.

I think this is somewhat justified. Sure, where do you draw the line but this site was registered under a false name -- that of someone in Parliament. There's always the mature way and the immature way to handle things, and in this case with the people who created the same, they took the immature route. There's a time and a place for things, this sort of thing is more suited to personal jokes between friends and groups on Facebook.

Your argument reminds me of the Alien & Sedition Acts which would have made it a crime to criticize or mock the upper members of Government. Well, that is free speech.

Furthermore, the "mature/immature" argument is often just a deflection from the real argument, inserting in it's place an ad hom attack on the attackers in its place. No substance. Time/place is a further deflection.

I wonder, if you had your way, would this site be banned because it's a "false name" and not really paypal, or it's not following some gentlemen's agreement about protocol?

Or how about the now-defunct but infamous whitehouse.com?

Other services, like moneybookers, have had public APIs for years. IIRC the moneybooker's one has been around since 2004. There are even development accounts that can be set up for testing and several levels of detail or complexity.

I'm not sure what the slashdot editors' fascination with paypal is about. A quota to peddle 'news' about M$ partners?

Except on accepting the terms with Paypal you waive your right to contest credit card charges against any charge made from Paypal.

http://www.paypalsucks.com/credit-card-waiver.shtml

The functionality isn't what's important, it's the community that is.

Yup, critical mass is extremely important. It's the reason we're stuck with eBay and Paypal even though BOTH PRETTY MUCH SUCK.

It's clear that many don't cash the checks, so PayPal would have the privilege of hanging on to $2.56 times the number of people who find mistakes, interest free until they are cashed and then PayPal can collect fees on that too.

There is always the chance that PayPal will freeze his account, with little recourse, and seize the funds.

Wait... Paypal isn't regulated? What the hell? How can a company who deals with stuff like this not be accountable to anyone?

If/when they do this in the U.S., I will stop using eBay. I'm no longer gong to deal with PayPal after the fiasco on a group buy I've been involved with.

Backstory: A bunch of us on a home recording bulletin board set up a group buy to purchase microphones, preamps, shock mounts, etc. from a manufacturer in China. This is about the third or fourth group buy organized by the same person, so his reputation is darn near unquestionable.

After order taking was done, we got sabotaged. Someone (who we strongly suspect works for a company that imports from this vendor and sells at a huge markup) signed up for a Yahoo email account and joined the group buy and requested a small item. Once about 10% of the people had paid their invoices, this person paid for the item, then sent in a claim to PayPal. The problem is that this person claimed to be a member of a bulletin board, yet that person has never been a member of the board in question. So basically the whole complaint was one giant fraud, and we're pretty sure we know who did it, as they have tried to sabotage group buys in the past....

Since the complaint was filed, PayPal's story keeps changing. First, they said that the person claimed he hadn't received an invoice, which is absurd, but easily rectified if the person had contacted anyone involved. Next, PayPal provided lots of details about how the group buy worked (way more than you would normally expect) and said that it wasn't a type of transaction that they wanted to deal with. That I could believe, but it isn't a violation of their TOS as best I can tell. Finally, they claimed that someone had claimed the product was "not as described", which is pure comedy since the manufacturer hasn't started making the products yet. Basically one half truth after the next (and even that half is giving PayPal the benefit of the doubt...).

After about a week of this crap, PayPal finally released everyone's funds. Fortunately, this time, one of the people they were screwing was friends with a highly placed executive at PayPal, so we had some leverage to get the situation expedited and get our funds back in a timely fashion. The last time PayPal screwed over a group buy, it took several weeks before we got our money back. (Yes, these dirty tricks have happened before thanks to a certain company who will remain nameless at least until I can prove it was them---if anybody in Yahoo's mail team would be willing to help with this, you'd have about 400 fans for life....)

Unfortunately, however, the person who set up the group buy had received another payment for an unrelated sale and needed the money to pay his taxes. His account is frozen for something like six months, after which he'll get his money and his account will be closed... all because of a single complaint by someone who could not provide one shred of documentation of any communication with the seller prior to filing the complaint.

Having seen how PayPal treats sellers, I'm no longer inclined to do business with PayPal. If I can't trust them to hold up their contractual obligations and do so in an equitable and reasonable fashion, then why should I trust them with my hard-earned money? I'm not protected any better than I used to be back when eBay sales all happened with cashier's checks, so why should PayPal be getting a cut if they aren't providing any real additional protection for the transaction?

At this point all I can say is this: PayPal Sucks, and if you deal with them long enough, you will eventually get burned. It's just a question of when.

With feedback like that, there's no way I'd bid.

You aren't at all mistaken:

Paypal doesn't give a shit about anything but making money from themselves, and don't hesitate to take money from anybodys account for almost any reason.

PayPalSucks.com

It is kind of silly, forcing people to access PayPal with secure browsers when money stored at PayPal isn't secure from PayPal itself.
(PayPal isn't a bank, nor does it even try to pretend to be one, so don't let them have any EFT account numbers, and never store any money there.)

Sounds like Paypal wants a monopoly on stealing your money.

and what is wrong with boycotting ebay? they own paypal remember? ;)

Using Paypal to support an individual's crusade against poor customer service and corporate indifference? You, sir, owe me a brand new irony detector!

The paypal shopping cart has a feature to allow you to specify shipping on a per-item basis. This feature was also broken on the same day. The very example on their website

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_pdn_ cart_overrides_outside

Does not work, and adds the item with the default shipping.

I called to complain and got the typical run around, they send me to the example on that page, I'm like that's the example I'm using, oh can you please hold. What am I going to hold for. Well I need to check your website. What is the address of my website? Long pause. Can you please give your website address. Well why were you about to put me on hold if you didn't know my website name. Sir, if you would please just give me your website address then I can assist you further. Yeah right, you suck. Sir if you are going to use that type of language I am going to have to put you on... discontinue the call. Wait did you just almost say that you were going to put me hold if I used abusive language? Is that your company policy.



obligatory sucks link

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

How anyone could work at paypal knowing how they deliberately screw over people, without any concern is beyond me.

I know Paypal is having trouble recruiting good people. About a year ago, they picked up my C.V. and tried to get me to apply for a job. I wrote back saying I'd never work at a place with such an awful reputation. Normally that would be the end of it, but the H.R. person kicked it up to his manager, who tried to lay on the sugar about how it was such a great place to work.

Yeah right. I guess having a decent live potential candidate on the line has to be a rarity there. I can't think of a time when my initial contact has gotten kicked up to an H.R. manager. Usually the internal recruiter tries really hard to handle it, lest they look bad and/or get reduced credit.

Anyway, so I asked the manager that, if what she said was indeed true, how would she respond to some of the recent complaints on paypalsucks.com? I never heard back from her again.

Top technical talent is hard to find these days in Silicon Valley. Serious outages like this shouldn't happen in the first place. But they will when you have less-than-stellar people involved. What this, and my own experience, tells me is that Paypal is having trouble getting good talent. And their reputation isn't helping any.

I wouldn't be surprised to see further problems down the road.

Uhh, most people's issue with Paypal is not their technology choices, but their corporate choices. Hundreds of people with funds frozen for the most tenuous of reasons, refunds not issued, etc, etc, just see http://www.paypalsucks.com/.