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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?

I hope this doesn't take off. I feel much better about letting companies like Google or Apple handle my money for transactions within apps, than horrible companies like PayPal. Here's a good resource for information about how PayPal treats its customers:

paypalwarning.com

Paypal regularly does this sort of thing. They'll freeze an account for whatever reason, refuse to give the money back to the people that paid in and refuse to give the money to the intended recipient. They use the guise of owning the money between when it's sent and received as justification for it. IIRC they did it to Minecraft as well as Wikileaks and they are hardly the only ones to fall victim to the scam. Paypal warning

Without a TLS certificate from a well-known CA, how do you recommend that a new small business take money from customers? My employer used to use PayPal, but PayPal cut him off after some Indonesians started using a bunch of stolen credit cards on the web site. It appears PayPal has cut off a bunch of other companies too.

And how do you recommend that someone securely authenticate to a non-commercial site, such as a blog, forum, or wiki, without a CA and without sending his account's username and password in cleartext over the Internet?

Posted anonymously to keep moderation.

http://www.paypalwarning.com/paypal_phone_number

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/

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?

He wasn't "Stealing from Banks". As you know, Paypal is not a bank. Google Checkout is not a bank either.

Neither are required to safeguard your money the same way a bank does. Paypal can and often does freeze the deposits in accounts for it's members without warning and your recourse towards unfreezing accounts leaves much to be said.

FWIW, there is a new Person-to-Person payment competitor to Paypal that is actually run by a bank and your deposits are FDIC insured. It's called Revolution Money Exchange. It's currently free like Paypal was in the beginning but I'm sure they'll add more fees sooner or later.

Sounds like Paypal wants a monopoly on stealing your money.

how about these folks? or these? or perhaps this group or maybe one of the paypal horror-story contributors on this site?

but chances are it was probably just this guy.

Precisely. A disgusting attempt by someone who is rich from money, a good proportion of which is stolen to buy his way out of death, while trying to paint it as philanthropy. Fortunately, even the rich can't buy their way out of the grave.

You should have called your credit card company and cancelled the payment *to paypal* citing the fraud. Paypal has a horrible history for this (see http://www.paypalwarning.com). *Never* use your bank account to fund your paypal transactions, no matter *what* they say abot their so called "coverage". Your credit card company's coverage is much better (read: 0 liability), because it is required by law to be so. Paypal operates in a weird void between a bank and a credit card company, and as such, they weasel their way out of being covered by many laws. I use paypal all the time, but I never ever fund it from my bank account (I have one registered with them, but it is a special paypal-only account I opened at my bank and I keep a $0 balence in it, and only use it for withdrawls from paypal).

Can't wait. Can't wait to drop Paypal and their horrible transaction fees.

I guess what aggrivates me more is "Not being allowed to post buyer pays paypal transaction fees on ebay purchases" in your ebay posts.

And all the other crap Paypal pulls out of it's mighty ass.

Semi-intersting links:

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

Paypal is excellent unless you happen to be one of these guys.

Paypal is way too dangerous to trust with your debit card (and almost too bad to trust with a credit card), which you will find out if you ever have a problem with a bogus transaction. The reason? Paypal is NOT a bank and consequently has much fewer regulations and controls. If Paypal wants to, they can declare any transaction valid and YOU would have to sue them to prove otherwise.

It sold again monday, i got paid, shipped it later that monday. yesterday i notice the payment is gone and paypal emailed me saying it might have been paid with stolen funds

Don't use PayPal!

"We're sorry. You're money is gone because it, uh... might have been paid with stolen funds. Yeah, that's it - paid with stolen funds. Good day."

For some light reading try PayPal Fraud Warning.

How a system that had true irrepudiable payments - i.e. once you have the money, it cannot be taken back. e-gold

Most of the people who are uncomfortable with Paypal are the ones who Think whining about it makes them seem experienced or intelligent.

Excuse the bluntness, but that is pure bull crap! Take a look at the thousands of horror stories in the Paypal Wall of Shame on http://paypalwarning.com/.

I would say that class actions lawsuits and thousands of horror stories are very legitimate reasons to be "uncomfortable" with dealing with a company. Unless you are an idiot.

As it says on the paypalwarning.com site:

Can PayPal hold my money with no explanation? The answer is YES.
Can PayPal freeze my account for no reason? The answer is YES.
Can PayPal take money out of my account without my knowledge?
The answer is YES.

We used to use Paypal to sell on eBay but after finding it impossible to to update our credit card and having no phone number to resolve problems, we started searching the net to see what kind of other problems people were having. When we found the Wall of Shame, we closed the account and closed the bank account it was linked to before we became one of the victims.

I wish more people would boycott companies that treat people so dirty and quit rewarding them just because it appears to be convenient today.

Take a look at the alternatives to PayPal. There is also e-gold.

Take a look at the alternatives to PayPal. There is also e-gold.

However, this is also an area where a monopoly is least desireable. This is shown by the abuses PayPal has done with their shoddy customer service, and the ripoffs they've done against many people. What it comes down to now is that you either use PayPal or you don't ... and a lot of people don't. If a seller is able to take my credit card directly, fine. If not, maybe I'll send them a money order or cashier's check. But I'm not risking my money in PayPal.

I do have an alternative system idea in mind, and I am preparing a document on how it would work. It involves a new exchange system between banks that parallels their existing money exchange systems. An auction seller or shopping site would generate an "open transaction" through their bank (or equivalent service provider). The transaction code is given to the buyer, who then can submit it to their bank for payment. The security is a function of buyer's arrangement with their own bank. Once the bank has determined they are truly dealing with their own account holder who has approved payment on the transaction, payment is sent through a central clearinghouse. It should take under a minute to go through to the seller. Responsibility for fraud would be at the sending bank. The system would also send no private information on the transaction; it would be a blind, and non-reversible, payment. Seller would not know where the payment came from, but would know it cannot be reversed within the system. If the sending bank made a mistake, such as letting an unauthorized person access the buyer's account, that's the responsibility of the sending bank, and buyer's would choose their bank on the basis of how well they deal with security. Both parties would never have to deal with entities other than the one they chose to be their bank.

This settlement closes one case:
"In early 2002, Plaintiffs Roberta Toher and Jeffrey Resnick filed separate lawsuits against PayPal, Inc."

But there was at least one other class action suit, "Kamdar & Kirill v. PAYPAL, INC". I wonder if that suit is still alive, and if participating in this settlement releases PayPal from any liability in that suit.

PayPal unilaterally froze my account (keeping the money) "for 180 days" when an "unusual" (legitimate) transfer triggered something, interrupting some crucially urgent business (that's why I used PayPal). They ignored email, and their webform, requests for more info, and were obnoxiously dismissive on their customer "service" (abuse) line. That's when I found the PayPal Warning. After the 180 days expired, they continued to ignore my requests to unfreeze the account (and return my money). Over a year later, more than double their arbitrary 180 days, they sent me an email notifying me that I could remove my money, but the account was still otherwise frozen. When I removed the money, some was missing, an unaccountable deduction adding injury to insulting injury. PayPal must die.

Unfortunately, the settlement of this claim means that PayPal writes off $3.5M as a cost of doing (unregulated monopoly) business. I might be entitled to remedy of my damages from the interrupted transaction, frozen account, and mysterious deduction. But PayPal will continue to act as an unregulated global banking monopoly. I wish the plaintiffs had continued their suit, and obtained actual justice, changing PayPal (and their possible successors) into a legitimate operation.

"One person's experience" does not constitute a habit.

I'm curious, if more people also had similar serious problems, then does it become a habit? If not, what does it take?

Warning: PayPal, the unregulated global banking monopoly, will steal your money whenever it deems opportune, and keep it as long as it deems appropriate to its purposes, perhaps forever. It will not be accountable for the theft. It happened to me, and I'm still not sure why I got my money back, suddenly and without warning, more than a year after the 6 months its spokesdroid emailed me that it would. They are the enemy, and they must be destroyed.

This website was established because of paypal doing this kind of crap.

I've never dealt with Paypal, but some of the stories over at PaypalWarning.com are pretty scary. Apparently Paypal has a habit of freezing accounts with almost no reason given, then sitting on the accounts which have hundreds of dollars tied up in them. Some of the stories also explain that it is nearly impossible to clear up the problem promptly, and that the best way to get your account unfrozen is to say you're going to complain to the Better Business Bureau or your local district attorney. Of course most of the stories I read were from two or three years ago. Maybe they've changed.

As the PayPal Warning site, to which I linked in my original post in this thread, makes clear, PayPal is a real ripoff, not just price gouging. I am one among many thousands who had a transaction arbitrarily siezed, and my account "frozen", without any recourse to any government oversight or internal customer service process. They siezed thousands of my dollars, supposedly for "180 days", and unfroze the money after over 500 days, keeping the interest. That's theft, not just price gouging. And the lack of alternatives makes it worse: they're a true global banking monopoly, without accountability, making billions of dollars by abusing their power.

Western Union, a popular Sears payment system, was never a wholly owned ripoff subsidiary.

PayPal Sucks
PayPal Warning
About PayPal
Google

That ougth to keep you busy for a few days ;)

Sorry about that (I guess I should have used the preview function).

Search Google for (paypal class action), and you'll find consumers' desperate attempts to protect ourselves from their online payment monopoly, like the PayPal Warning. If regulators were doing their jobs, PayPal itself would be on a leash. Their acquisition by eBay offers a monstrous power in eCommerce, which the PayPal unit has been steadily abusing. Any meaningful alternative in any online payments would help, whether they get micropayments right or not.

The benefit is that sourceforge gets the money and not PayPal. Besides, some people dislike paypal and would never purchase anything through them anyway. Also, you potentially have more visibility for a "donate" feature on the sourceforge pages themselves, rather than just on the custom page for your project.

If they did, Paypal would end up the big winner in all of this, keeping all the profits, considering their history of taking people's money.

And this is after thousands of people have complained about losing millions to paypal:
http://www.paypalsucks.com/

If you give him money DO NOT expect to recieve a system. From paypalwarning.com
"Merchants finding themselves on the wrong end of a frozen Paypal account will still have to find some way to pay their obligations and fill orders for the weeks and months while the account is restricted. A domino effect occurs when a merchant's account is frozen, leaving them with no means to fill orders. Those orders are then disputed by customers, creating more chargebacks and the illusion of fraudulent activity on the part of the merchant."

What this means is WHEN PAYPAL FREEZES HIS ACCOUNT, HE WILL NOT HAVE THE MONEY TO PURCHASE MERCHANDISE TO BUILD YOUR SYSTEM, so in the end you'll be out hundreds of dollars with no system, and he'll be flat broke and probably jailed for alleged fraud.

And if you don't think this really happens think again. Just go read the forums at PaypalSucks.com and you'll realize Paypal routinely steals money from users and nothing can stop them.

sad, isn't it?

Several months ago I was offering the general public a free copy of the popular OS called Linux 8.0.
(...)
PayPal sent me an e-mail saying that they were going to suspend my account unless I could provide proof that I had permission to distribute this software.
(...)
PayPal said that I had to prove that I had permission from Microsoft to distribute the software.
well, nobody accused them of inteligence, i guess

oh yea, links are good

If Paypay was used, the guy might end up trying to raise $192 billion dollars, since PayPay likes to rob people.

I've seen this on a couple of occaions as well, but for paypal as opposed to ebay. The URLs were more obviously fake but I notified the network admins anyway and the person who bought one of the domains is now being charged with fraud!

The obvious tip-off was that someone was just sending mail at random, hoping to catch paypal users. The account I received that message at had nothing to do with paypal. (And now I as will will have nothing to do with paypal.

I really would like to donate, but not through PayPal. Could you please offer some other method of payment like the Amazon Honour System [...] - Jucius Maximus

I really would like to donate, but not through PayPal. Could you please offer some other method of payment like the Amazon Honour System or Element5?

PayPal horror stories: PayPalsucks.com

Google search of "beware of paypal": Beware

PayPal Warning

Petition to shut down PayPal

PayPal horror stories: Boycott-PalPal.com

Google search of "beware of paypal": Beware

PayPal Warning

Petition to shut down PayPal My skin is crawling - really.

We are currently in the process of setting up the Group Defense and the PANIP Group Defense Fund. We hope to have it set up by the end of this week

Typically what happens with PayPal cases like these (they're extremely common) is that the account is "restricted" from some trivial reason like a cancelled payment or for no reason at all, and then it is impossible to withdraw money from the account. Then PayPal will start making unauthorised withdrawals from you bank account and credit card. They won't unrestrict the account until you fax them utility bills, social security card scans, drivers license scans, etc multiple times because they always claim they they didn't receive the information. Even then, it is rare to get the account un-restricted. Complaints and investigations by police, government, etc tend to get the account nuked. And of course you never get your money back.

Hence, you have been 'robbed' by paypal.

Can somebody explain how this theft occurred. It's not clear to me from the post.

How about this? Could Dom have been suckered by such a message? (More details here.)

Can somebody explain how this theft occurred. It's not clear to me from the post.

How about this? Could Dom have been suckered by such a message? (More details here.)

"There is no excuse for not having live telephone-answering customer service. Imagine if your local bookstore quit answering the phone because they do all their business in the store and none on the phone."

I dont see that'd be a problem. I live in area with sidewalk merchants. Are they dastardly because they dont have phone numbers? No. Of course not.

Make your choices, and have fun. But I think its stupid. If you perform 99% of all transactions with a company online, why should you switch to phone for that last 1%? It doesn't make sense.

The whole point of the Internet is that Its Not Phone.

Where are you coming from? It sounds like you are arguing that fraudulent business conduct should be condoned; you'd prefer we all just wink and look the other way. What, you don't think Pay Pal really does anything wrong? You'd do well to stop spouting and start doing your research.

Read here. I can personally assure you that this is highly accurate, as it has in fact happened to me.

Or if you prefer, read court documents. Yes, there are plenty of those to read.

Someone has...check out these sites:

paypalwarning.com
paypalsucks.com

I saw previous posters say they closed their accounts after they found out about AbiWord theft, I closed my account as soon as I've read through posts on the site above.

Do your research. I never donate if it's a paypal tip jar because of things like this and this. Paypal based donations are a disaster waiting to happen.

Sure they do. But they deliberately make it hard to find. But other people have found them and posted them for all to see.