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Online e-Commerce Issues w/ PayPal?
A concerned entrepreneur submitted this question for your consideration: "I run a very small online company and the main method we obtain payments for products is via PayPal. In this digital age having an easy way to accept payments for goods is critical to small business survival. Have you had problems with PayPal freezing your accounts, have you had any issues with PayPal harming any of your credit? Neither has happened to me but it
it still is a concern. Recently, I was sent this site, became concerned and wanted to ask Slashdot readers for their input on security and any problems they may have had with this service." If you send your money to a website for safekeeping, you expect it to be safe, and a large part of this perception is based on dependable customer support. According the warning site, it sounds like PayPal might be a bit deficient on this end. Have any of you experienced similar problems?
"I don't necessarily trust the website I linked to, nor PayPal's statements. PayPal requires you to register your credit card AND your checking account and could conceivably and legally(?) remove any and all funds and stop you from withdrawing a dime from your PayPal account as well as your own checking account at their whim. What is a small business to do?"
Just an aside, if you are signing up for a personal account, you only need your credit card. It's merchants who want to use PayPal's premium features who have to specify banking information as well.
I use paypal for Ebay transactions and have yet to be stiffed!
Nic Farley
Is this a new policy? Paypal asked for my bank info when I signed up ~6 months ago... for their standard service (no premium features).
-sid
The only problem I've had with PayPal was a looong delay in processing a bunch of payments for a group buy of webplayers. A lot of people in the co-op were highly irritated with the delay. They wanted the main buyer that we were sending our money to to prove his identity.. If anything this reassured me. I've also used it without a hitch to buy a few things off ebay.
I think the main thing to keep in mind is that PayPal is not a bank, and not FDIC insured.. I'd use it as a method to exchange money online, but not as a cash storage facility.
air and light and time and space
I think a lot of internet junkies are still wary because they're decent business-people too, and this being the case, the reason people distrust online banks and payment services are their apparent lack of physical stuff.
When you go into a regular bank, you look around and see they have pretty lightbulbs, nice counters, poorly decorated walls, and all sorts of plush chairs and things. They've even got those little pens. Other people are waiting inside. These things make you *want* to be there.
A website might be real, real pretty, but that doesn't have any physical worth. When I step into a pretty bank, I know that my money is probably going to be secure because in the worst case senario, they've got physical stuff to back my loan with. While this doesn't have practical application in the real world, this is a large part of how our brain percieves things.
Paypal is dubious because they've got nothing to look at. Sure, they've got a big customer base, but *where is* paypal, and who runs the thing? I think the digital world is still evolving in that we still can't estimate worth by a website. I hope we can in the future.
I paid to a "verified" seller, and PayPal refused to make good when he stiffed me. They took two months to even investigate my claim, and when they did, they responded that the bank account they had verified no longer existed. (Gee, no kidding). Since then, they've continued to send me spam, but won't do anything about the money. I look at using PayPal as being a step better than sending cash through the mail, but definitely several steps below using an actual credit card or even a check (since you can place holds on checks, and they take time to clear). I don't plan on using them ever again, and I steer clear of businesses that use PayPal as their only method of credit card payment.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
Never really had any problems in all honesty. I've been on the giving and receiving ends and never noticed any sort of blips or glitches. Everything seamlessly goes into and exits my checking account. Also, I've not only used the account with Ebay, but with a bunch of donations for other online gaming websites.
It seems that the majority of people who run non-sponsored websites (Popular ones, not Jim-Bob's Pinto Paradise) do their best to take in donations to cover the costs of maintaining their service, and a lot of them use that.
Paypal seems like it is a step in the right direction especially for online auctions but for now but it doesnt seem like it is quite there yet.
Make it idiot-proof and someone will build a better idiot.
Also good for a read:
9 22 2&mode=thread
5 21 2&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/17/191
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/31/193
Been using it since it first came out. Security has never been a problem personally (I have purchased and sold on Paypal on a regular basis).
Another thing too is the fact that up to a certain amount of your account is insured against fraud should that happen. Another option you have is that paypal can automatically deposit your balance into a bank account of your choice...
check out their FAQs and tutorials
I have had many issues from a Buyer's perspective with paypal. I won't get into it, but here's a tale that you may find of interest.
Open a bank and credit card account just for paypal transactions and keep your operating capital in your main business account.
// TODO: fix sig
...to sell premium accounts on my website ($15/year). I've processed 50-60 such transactions, and have never had a single problem with them freezing my account, and have never heard any complaints from users.
I think it all goes to common sense. If you're dealing with large sums of money (which, clearly, I'm not), then don't deal with people who don't have a solid history processing transactions on PayPal.
This is just another issue like immigration or "Homeland Security" which is a balancing act between trust and convenience. Whenever you are operating with a third party, you need to balance trust versus convenience. If you favor trust, you will take more time for your safety: background checks (of people or Paypal), getting legal advice, insurance, anonymity concerns, etc. If you favor convenience, you will worry about reducing processing time, reducing bad experiences, simplifying and generalizing requirements, etc. Occasionally, technology can help increase both trust and convenience. But ultimately, even then, you are balancing trust and convenience against the provider of the technology. For example, open source software can be more trusted than closed source, but only if you forego convenience by actually checking the source!
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
Any protection can be broken. Anything can be done given enough resources and time- RC5 as an example.
Of course they tend to be a bit jumpy on fraud issues- numerous articles about this happening.
Yes it's not a bank. Don't use it if you feel that way. There a reason you'd rather use PayPal instead of a credit card? What, cheaper? Well... Fraud's expensive- paypal has to cover their bases and if that means putting some people's cash in the icebox... that seems to be their choice.
You want to make a difference, choose not to use them. Frankly the protections they have in place are, IMHO, a bit over kill but then again I've never had my money misappropriated by another individual.
Obviously there will be complaints from legit users... but frankly it's got to work, else we'd see a few more of 'but all my cash was taken' etc etc.
Just some thoughts- the business model is successful because they stay 1 step ahead, sometimes, of the people intending to exploit them. They don't hve the infrastructure as credit card companies- based entirely on the 'net.
Who knows- try launching a suit against them for theft of property if they freeze yoru assets...
I represent Fitsworth McGibbons, the legal firm who have been retained to manage legal affairs for Paypal, Incorporated. Negative comments without merit are actionable as slander, and we demand that you remove such objectionable material from your site immediately, or we will be forced to pursue legal action against you on behalf of our clients.
Thank you for your attention with regards to this matter.
P.S. IANAL.
I also run a small online company that uses PayPal almost exclusively for its payment system. So far I've generally been happy. However, the one email I sent to customer service took a full month to get a response. Phone support was better, however the reps didn't seem like they were too knowledgeable. Needless to say, I'm a little bit wary of having so much money in my account, so I can only suggest sweeping the funds to a real bank account on a regular basis...
I use paypal to handle my banner ad payments. I average $200 a month. I've heard about problems with paypal freezing accounts, so I try to keep the amount stored at paypal to $50 or less. It's so easy to transfer money out to my real bank account that even if they freeze my account, I'm only out $50.
You could even to a daily transfer if you recieve enough money to justify that.
Travis
when I was purchasing something, the froze the sellers account for reason they wouldn't dislcose.
they also wouldn't give me MY money back.
after about 45 days, during which the seller went through hell, they finally got it solved.
but the fact that they wouldn't let me get MY money back, and just hung on to it really pissed me off. there where about 100 people buys an items for aboiut 50.00 per item, si it was a sizable amount of money they held.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Sounds like some angry guy who was stiffed was just trying to get the word out.
If you ever "go bad" and decide to start screwing people, Paypal is your weapon of choice. If you are a scrupulous merchant, Paypal is probably the best way to go because there will be few complaints on either side of the transaction. As I am also an ebay power seller who uses Paypal, things have been just fine on that side of the table as well.
Just my 2c.
df
I use it, and have not had major problems. No cash missing or the like. However, I can't use my credit card with them, and they can't/won't tell me why. I can tranfer funds from my bank account, but that takes 3-5 days.
Summary: PayPal works for me, but is inconvenient and their customer service is bad. Takes about a week to get an emailed response from them. I use it only when there is no other option.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
I got a spam about this web site too. At first I assumed it was one of my users (I have a web site that solicits donations via PayPal) but it turns out that it was just a spam. I'm not sure I believe all the horror stories. I'm paid for hundreds of dollars of auction stuff using PayPal, and I've received over $300 in donations to my site using them (but I send nearly $200 of that to their September 11th fund).
I am now using Amazon's Honor System and C2IT to get donations as well for people who don't trust PayPal, but frankly I don't see what the problem is.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Are you fearful of doing business on the Internet? You should be, as hackers, crackers, and other malcontents may be waiting to "intercept" your sensitive private data. That's why you should count on Bank of America ATM for all your private data money storage facility needs. No worries, no hassles, just smooth transactions and plenty of locations near you.
I am a sentient ATM.
I have used it several times, without problems to make payments.
The Anti-PayPal website is spamming all the Usenet newsgroups. They had a commercial interest in seeing a paypal competitor called c2it which is CitiBank's micropayment initiative. But c2it asked them to pull the ad. c2it had a link on Friday but not today (Monday)
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
Relying on a third-party (especially an internet company) for all of your transactions sounds like a bad business plan. Why not get a merchant account?
I have never myself had a problem with PayPal, but others have had some. Some good advice:
1) Transfer all money out of your PayPal account IMMEDIATELY. This doesn't give them a chance to freeze it.
2) Tell your bank to not allow PayPal to withdraw from your account without your authorization. I've heard of them dipping into the checking account if the funds aren't in the PayPal account.
3) Having your customers pay with credit cards... that way if anything happens they can dispute the charges.
Hopefully with these precautions you should be okay.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Regards
YES! I used to buy things through Paypal quite often. They then asked me to further verify my account by providing them my bank acount info. I did this, seeing as how they didn't make any mistakes with my credit card. After I registered my bank account, I was routinely double charged both on my debit card and in my bank account. I asked them to switch their default to my debit card, and they wouldn't. I asked them then to remove my bank information, which they also wouldn't do. Nor would they pay my overdraft fees that were their fault since they resulted from them double charging me. I closed my account and went back to using money orders and Billpoint.
I think that Paypal is a great service. It's fast and simple.
BUT
If that's your only means of accepting payment, you've got a problem. Paypal has a growing universe of users BUT it's still just a fraction of the market. Many people won't go through the hassle of signing up for PayPal and you lose a customer.
Imagine your customer is Homer Simpson.(Here in the US at least half the people are that smart!) Homer knows one way to do things, anything else confuses him. Most people can handle 1 task at a time, but when you give people more tasks, there's no telling what they will end up doing. Asking them to sign-up for a Paypal account and order from you may fry their brain.
Plus, although a merchant account is kind of a pain in the butt, at least you aren't completely dependant on one vendor.(I've seen several horror story's involving Paypall and their vendors.)
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne
I'm sure there are hundreds of these. But this one came up in a newsgroup that I read often (rec.games.video.classic):
A n auction for classic video games gone wrong
Then there is the followup:
Victory
I haven't been burned, but I use PayPal as little as possible now. There has to be a better way.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
As someone who sells (correction sold) items from Diablo 2 on ebay, relying exculsively on Paypal to receive funds i've a bit to say. I got stiffed when a person whom I sold an item to claimed their credit card they made payment with was stolen. Not only did I lose the payment of 17$ initially recived, but I got hit with a 10$ "chargeback" fee. This fee is charged by Paypal when the buyer claims the payment was sent using a stoeln credit card, and the seller cannot A)prove the item was received by the user, and B)the item was tangable. I payed the fee, but immediatly emptied out my account and cancelled it. For a poor college boy, 17$ is alot of pizza money. Im not gettting burned by paypal again.
Someone spammed this site to every newsgroup I visit, including some in the microsoft.public.* domain. Even though they've decried this tactic, I remain suspicious. That said, if what they claim is true, I wouldn't put a lot of trust in Paypal either. I remember when the current laws governing credit cards was first passed. Before that, you were pretty much S.O.L. if a transaction went bad or your card was stolen. It may be nearing time for regulation to enter the picture here as well.
Now the website mentioned (paypalwarning), was spammed into Usenet in a most obnoxious manner - implying that PayPal was invloved in a bigger scandal than Enron insider trading - (with coverage on all the major news programs etc). Since it also helpfully suggested an alternative to PayPal, I considered it to be a pretty darn worthless bit of FUD.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
The e-commerce software company that I worked for last year used USA Merchants extensively. I never heard of any reports of poor handling of funds or delayed responses. As a company who provides this kind of service grows, this is more and more likely to happen. It seems as if many users choose one or a few company(ies) to handle transactions with. This can only tend to downgrade the level of service available to every one who uses them. I think it would be helpful to try and spread the load a little bit. Just as long as they all shake hands at the checkout line.
Aparently, they wanted to be slashdotted. You just made them a lot of money -- I bet they'll be laughing all the wy to the bank.
I hate spammers, and I'm not too fond of slashdot being used to further their nefarious ends.
Pay pal has been good to me, but I always recomend keeping good records and recepts, even when using a traditional bank..
If you have good records if the worst should happen you will have the paper work necessary to do what needs to be done. Even if that would include small claims or whatever...
I've kinda sidestepped this issue with my own dealings with Paypal. What I did is:
1. Signed up for a Yahoo! Mail account, and told Paypal to send policy updates and transaction details there. I think alot of these companies want to keep in contact with you so you don't get trapped when they have to change policy.
2. Signed up, and received, the Paypal debit Mastercard. You get this by being a Premier or Business member. This debits straight from the Paypal account. I pay for art prints, supplies, and shipping through Kinkos, Mail Boxes Etc, and even the US Postal Service (yep, they take credit cards now).
Their main aim is to keep cash in the account, so that they can make money off of it. They make no jokes about it either -- clues are there if you go to their money market fund and read through the prospectus.
Also, Paypal *does* insure the accounts though The Traveler's Group (a well known, respected insurance company). They sidestep that issue.
Of course you could use Spamazon (more trouble than it's worth) or Yahoo! PayDirect (less features, more secure, more time consuming). But Paypal's the best bet here.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Would it be nice if Paypal was a little more customer-oriented? Yes, undoubtably. Unfortunately, their business model is all about minimizing costs, so they're really not in the customer-service business.
Really, there's nothing new here. You need to read all the fine print before you sign up for something. A "free" service will always have a lower level of customer service than a service that charges for it.
An interesting issue that's raised in some of the articles is how PayPal is ideal for money laundering. I never really thought about that, but it definitely looks like something that Ashcrft and Co. might decide to look into.
-Mark
I sent $200usd to an account on promise of an item (it was a complete scam), the turn around time for delivery was 4-6 weeks. At the end of this six weeks I could not contact the seller. I filed a complaint with paypal and they informed me they will not become involved in disputing a transaction older then 30 days.
I sent a longer, nastier, more descriptive e-mail, a week letter I recieved a note saying the funds were retrieved and credited to my credit card.
I got my money back and I'm happy, and this was a scam, but........ they violated the terms they provide to sellers by pulling the money from their account well after 7-8 weeks from the transaction date.
sometimes the buyer needs protection, which I got, but at the cost of PayPal violating the rights of the seller.
I'm glad i got my money back, but I would never SELL anything with paypal.
I've never had any problem with PayPal, but my use has been minimal. I think it is worth noting, though, that PayPal has got one of the more vigorous anti-fraud groups around. I think their fraud rate is around 1/2 of 1 percent, which is (IIRC) lower than many credit cards.
Some of this information is from an MSNBC Article that showed up on SANS NewsBytes. But I've also heard personal anecdotes from security professionals who'd rather have the Mafia after them than PayPal.
I've purchasd probably about $500 worth of stuff via paypal, in 7-10 seperate transactions and have not had a problem. I also use them for online membership renewals for a non-profit that I am President of. Granted, I do sweep the money to our bank as soon as it hits $50 - but I have not had any reason to be concerened. YMMV
One of the serious flaws in the Paypal setup is that once Paypal believes that a visitor is you (i.e. logged in) that credentialed visitor has complete access to any accounts that Paypal knows about.
About a month ago, I logged into my email to find email "receipts" for nearly $12K in payments, all of which were made while I was sleeping during the night before. Someone had gotten into my account and transferred to several other people various sums of money ranging from $75 to $5000 per transaction. Most of them were against my credit card, but several were against my personal checking account (used mostly for hobby spending so it didn't have much in it) including the $5000 one. I called my bank to protect the checking account and they were very helpful. The credit card company's fraud detection department called me before I even had a chance to call them. Paypal's fraud detection??? Nothing. When I called them (and getting that phone number is no easy task), that sudden burst of activity hadn't even made anyone curious.
My paypal account was put in restricted status and I detailed exactly which transactions were fraudulent. I moved the remaining checking funds out of the path of paypal and had the credit card number cancelled. You'd think that this would stop anything from going forward and efforts could be concentrated on reversing the transactions. Nope. The middle of the next week brought me a series of automated messages from Paypal indicating that my transactions to withdraw all that money from my checking account failed, but not to worry, they'd try again in 3 days. I called paypal and was told that those attempts were automatic and *nothing* could be done to stop them from completing their course.
My bank has been great, letting those transactions bounce and not charging me a dime for stopped payments or overdrafts related to this. The credit card company is treating it like any other fraud, and while it may take a bit to work out, they're working with my refusal to pay for these transactions. As for Paypal? Their handling of this was totally unprofessional for anyone handling money.
The icing on the cake was the emails I started getting once Paypal took the money back from the recipients. I was being accused of cheating them and being asked to resubmit the payments I owed. When I asked to what address they sent the merchandise (hoping to get the mailing address of the perpetrator), it was implied that it was for something related to warez in an IRC channel. At least one of the recipients still thinks I am just out to cheat him out of his money. So, whoever set this up screwed both sides over.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Or Ebay payments, or whatever they call it now? It takes credit cards and echecks and puts the money into your account in a few days. And your customers don't have to be billpoint members to use it. All you do is send them an invoice or they pay through the auction page.
Quite Funny:
Consumer reporting scam: Larry Lawrence (12/6/01)
PayPal continues to hold my $600. Illegally.
Several months ago I was offering the general public a free copy of the popular OS called Linux 8.0. This is a freely distributable program under the general license agreement. The customer only had to pay for shipping. ($5.00 US dollars)
I had hundreds of people that responded to the offer and I delivered the program as offered and according to the law. 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.
Well, I e-mailed them back several times and explained to them that I did programming on my own and would never consider distributing software that was against any law. PayPal said that I had to prove that I had permission from Microsoft to distribute the software. Microsoft has nothing to do with Linux. Linux has always been to my knowledge, a free OS.
I am e-mailing you first before taking legal action as this is the professional way to do business.
They have closed my account, which is fine accept that they hold my funds without paying me interest on the funds and refuse to return the funds.
I applied for a PayPal account at the suggestion of a friend long before I had any reason to use it. Luckily, I didn't store any money in the account, becaue when I came back several months later to make a purchase, I found that it had been frozen. The "customer support" responses asked me to fax them various forms of identification to make sure that it was, in fact, my bank account - I had registered my checking account as I did not yet have a credit card. This is understandable, in a way - I'm sure there are people who try to use PayPal to steal money from other people's accounts - so I paid a rather high price at my local copy shop to fax them what they needed.
They did not unlock my account, however; their stated reason was that the address on my driver's license did not match that on my bank statement. When I explained that I was a college student, they simply repeated their first request, but now they wanted a credit card statement as well, despite the fact that I never entered (and did not own) a credit card. Without anything else to do, I simply removed all of my banking info from their records. I would have closed my account, but it's not possible to do that when you're suspended.
I have a credit card now, so I could probably get it unlocked. I don't feel like spending the time and money to do that, though, and I don't have enough confidence in PayPal to trust them with my money, either. So I've made do with waiting for people to process personal checks, or paying the extra few dollars for money orders.
I think your sentiment is ok, but I don't agree with you that "any site can be hacked" or "any protection can be broken" or "anything can be done". It is possible to develop systems and then prove them unbreakable/unhackable, even relatively complicated ones. It's just that almost nobody bothers to do this (because ad hoc methods work pretty well and are much cheaper), not that it isn't possible.
I'm not sure how much it costs for online stuff, but for bricks and mortar stores, you can lease the equipment cheap, and the fees per transaction are not much. You are much better protected in this case.
So double check your needs. Maybe you can rationalize accepting credit cards directly.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Granted, you have to take everything you read on the Web with a grain of salt. However, it should scare the pants off of every business person who uses Paypal, that Paypal isn't regulated in any way, unlike credit card companies and banks. Paypal is being like any business run by people with few morals, anything to make a buck. If we think banks and credit card companies are bad, imagine how bad they would be if they weren't regulated. Take about bending over. :)
George
i'm a happy customer... no complaints...
all of those of you who use it to pay for ebay, ubid, etc... how much are your paying for their services?
I recently tried to purchase something via PayPal. According to the site, the person I was sending money to had specified that they'd only accept "Confirmed Addresses" (or was it certified? I don't know). Even though there was no reason for my address to be sent with this transaction (the vendor already had it), Paypal wouldn't let me continue without entering a *credit card number* (for them to use to confirm the address).
After a few rounds of emailing, the vendor was pursuaded to remove that restriction so I could send the funds over.
The issue was avoided, and I'm trying even harder to avoid using paypal whenever I can.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
The only downside to "real" processing is the barrier of entry. You've got to fill out a bit more paperwork, talk to at least one real human (the banker), and there are some startup fees associated with it. But once you are up and running it quickly will become more economical than paypal, because of the difference in transactions rate (5% vs. 2.5% as mentioned above), not to mention you won't loose sales to people that don't want to sign up with PayPal.
And just as you thought I was posting to get karma...no, you guessed it, it's Shameless Plug(tm) time!
The only Open Source payment processor in the business: TrustCommerce
Mention Slashdot when you sign up for a test account and you'll get a free...um, well nothing, but at least we'll know you're cool.
Slashdot gets suckered once again!
The little shit-squeeze that Slashdot has just graciously provided another bijillion hits to, is getting paid to scare people away from PayPal. He's trying to scrounge CitiBank referrels.
Way to assist the spammers and slimeballs, Slashdot!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I have a PayPal account and since the acquisition of X.COM by PayPal, it has remained dormant (if it even still exists).
On 8 Feb 2000, I opened a checking account with X.COM, the web front to First Western National Bank of La Jara, Colorado. (Incidentally, they had some security problems when they started operation in December 1999.)
It was actually a nice setup, with online checking, printed checks, line of credit, a Visa/bank card, and even high-yield, short term CD's!
Soon after X.COM aqcuired PayPal (March 2000), they stopped offering overdraft protection, and stopped opening new accounts. Then they began to charge a $12 monthly fee to maintain accounts with a balance of less than $100, and finally stopped reimbursing ATM fees. This was September 2000.
X.COM officially closed operations on 9 November 2000, and were still emailing users to clean out their funds by 1 December 2000. The whole mess left a bad taste, and I've absolutely refused to use PayPal since then.
It's a good thing I never actually used the account as my sole checking account! I shudder to think what might've happened if I had started using direct deposit or automatic funds withdrawal.
-- he's not heavy, he's my sysadmin!
I think that some of the ire toward PayPal is because you only hear about the bad things that happen. When a transaction goes well, no one stands up and screams.
I've been using PayPal for a long time, and I've never had a problem with it. I wish I could say the same for some of the vendor sites out there (e.g., I'll never buy again from half.com, but that's another story).
In case anyone's wondering, this isn't astroturf support. I'm a real person who just happens to like PayPal.
Tim
My boss recently had his paypall account hacked. The hacker changed the password and the email on the account, and has charged all the credit cards to the max. Pay Pal has not even contacted my boss after weeks of him trying to contact them every day. I just removed my credit card from my account. Considering their we can't help you policy, I don't think I'll be useing them much if at all again.
I wonder... When did Linus Torvalds give up the rights to his OS?
There is no escape from The Muffin.
Paypal only makes sense if you're pretty low volume. If you're making any real money with your business it's always safer to sign up with visa/amex/whoever and accept credit card payments. It's not much more expensive than paypal and it's a lot safer for both customers and merchants.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I have had them freeze my account and hold payments (supposedly randomly), but I have had them do it more then a few times. I am by no means someone I would consider suspcious, I occsionally sell extra things I have on eBay and use PayPal for payments, also occsionally buy things and use PayPal to pay.
But on 3 separtate occasions I have had payments held, and also on one occasion I have had my account frozen. And yes it did take me FOREVER to get a hold of anyone on the phone (thank god for "free" LD on my cell). I was told it was a "routine" random freeze, blah blah blah, several days later they "unfroze" my account. And yes it was a major and total bitch, but there really aren't any other shows in town, so what do you do?
I've used Paypal as a buyer on occassion and I have had successful transactions but I have heard several horror stories. Particularly with international customers trying to get money transferred back to their own personal accounts.
In light of this, what other online alternatives are there for international money exchange?
------
Objects in Mirror are Losing!
Recently I had a problem with UPS delivering a package to a customer off of ebay. The customer put in a claim against me with paypal, and my account was frozen for about 2 months. I wrote to them almost daily and rarely got a response back from them. I searched their website for a phone number but was unable to find a customer service number for them. I finally did get it resolved, but only because the person who filed the claim failed to follow up after 2 months. To top this all off a month after this was resolved, and after the customer had cashed the refund check I sent him, he put in a dispute with his credit card which again put my paypal account on hold. This was resolved by faxing a copy of the cashed check to paypal.
One thing I will say favorably is that it does state in their terms that even if you owe them money they will not take it out of your bank account. THey will only go through legal channels to get the money.
With the amount of time you spend racking up sellable items in Diablo II, you could get a part time job.
I've heard some good things about ProPay.
http://www.propay.com
It doesn't require users who are paying you to create an account, but it does have a higher per transaction fee.
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
I do some work for one on the side, http://www.echo-inc.com. They allow transactions with credit cards and checks online. They are also working on getting some shopping carts with direct transactions enabled in them. I beleive they charge like $15/month for an account and they have been around for a very long time. If you are looking in to doing business online dealing with cc/checks, i recomend looking into them.
-mwhahaha
Okay, I took a gander at the horror stories and it seems that most of them flow along as such:
Buyer PayPal's somebody money for good/services. PayPal withdraws money from Buyer's bank account, holds it and places it within the Seller's PayPal account. Seller sees money in PayPal account and then sweeps it into their own bank account. Buyer never gets goods and complains to PayPal.
Well, duh. PayPal no longer has the money, why in the heck would they start shelling out money from their own pocket becuase -you- purchased something from a crook?
Use your heads... if you don't feel comfortable sending money to somebody use an escrow service or take your risks. Personally I think it's a great service. I mostly used it though to split bills w/ my roomate. No checks, no running to the bank, and I knew the guy wasn't going to hawk my half of the rent and run out on me.
PayPal's not trying to rip anybody off here. No evil corporation trying to take all of your money, no conspiracy theory and no black helicopters. Move along n ow.
The problem isn't that Paypal is an online bank, it's that it's not a bank at all!
Real banks have state charters and are closely supervised, have strict documentation and recording requirements, etc. I don't give a damn about the physical appearance of my bank, I do care about that little sign on the front door saying "FDIC insured." This doesn't mean that I'll never have problems, but it (and the state charter required for that insurance) does guarantee that they keep sufficient records for problems to be resolved, that money in accounts won't go *poof* if the bank goes under, etc.
But Paypal is nothing. If it goes under, the money it holds just disappears. If it says it's never heard of me, I have no way of proving that I have an account with thousands of dollars. If they make a payment, they have no statutory requireemnt to document that it was authoritized or to refund my money.
I'm not totally without rights, but instead of strong local oversight I have to deal with a civil suit in the Federal courts for a contract dispute. If I could prove that we had a contract (did you ever get a signed document from PayPal?). If I could afford the expense. If I could affort the long delays before the case is heard. And all of that assumes that they haven't changed their "terms of service" to require binding arbitration by an arbitrator of their choice.
During the early days, this may have been justifiable. Not just because it costs money and time to do it right, but because the regulatory agencies wouldn't have known what to do with something like PayPal. I know, because I actually checked local laws and discovered requirements for things like a physical location open to the public, cash reserves, etc.
But not now - even if PayPal is completely honorable (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), the lack of oversight limits how much confidence we can have in them. If they are acting like a bank and being perceived as a bank, it's long past time for them to BE a bank. Until then, they're no different than trusting "my buddy Bob" to deliver you the cash promised the next time he's in town.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
read this.
http://www.freedomhound.com/PaypalFraud.html
Just an aside, if you are signing up for a personal account, you only need your credit card. It's merchants who want to use PayPal's premium features who have to specify banking information as well.
First of all, some corrections of what was stated above...PayPal requires only a credit card, but you can only make $1000 worth of transactions with the account. This doesn't mean that it's a $1000 per transaction limitation, but more like all of the money you can ever use with them. Once you give them a bank account, *then* this $1000 restriction is removed. I believe their single transation limit is $250, but this might be for accounts without a banking account linked to them.
About 6 months or so ago, I noticed a $250 charge on one of my credit cards from PayPal. It struck me as odd, since I had only performed a single $50 transaction. I contacted PayPal and my credit card company, and found out the following:
The card with the $250 charge on it had actually not been the card I registered with PayPal. The info had been stolen from some other online vendor, and the thief created a new PayPal account with my card. The PayPal rep I spoke to claimed that the name on the account has to match the name on the card, so, obviously, this person found a way around their system (or the rep was wrong).
But, both PayPal and my credit card company handled the problem well. I wasn't accountable, and I had all of the money returned to me. The moral of this story is to make sure you check your credit card statements, because when mysterious charges start popping up, it's ultimately your own responsibility to catch them. How many people even bother to look at their monthly statements?
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
If you sell normal items with PayPal, I can say that I've never had a problem with it. I know a few people on here have horror stories to tell, but I really can't.
If you are selling anything where the sender is most likely going to specify a different address (i.e. gift sales), DON'T USE PAYPAL UNLESS YOU'RE DESPERATE. PayPal insists that the two addresses agree. I did a payment system for a Chicago popcorn business, whose main revenue comes in at Christmas when everyone's buying those big cans of caramel corn to send to their relatives. At that time, PayPal allowed different shipping addresses.
As Christmas season started, they changed their policy and stopped allowing it, basically axe-murdering my neat little scripts. :\ I wrote a work-around so they could specify their shipping address on our site, then buy the popcorn using PayPal...but it's ugly and I don't recommend it.
So if you're a gift company...be smart...keep in mind the constraints you have to work within if you're going to do a front-end to PayPal. PayPal doesn't work for everyone, although it can be really useful sometimes.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
To unfreeze it, I needed to fax them:
Despite the glaring violation of privacy, I did get the account unfrozen in under 24 hours, and I did find them easy to communicate with.
FYI, if you're using C2IT.com: CitiBank has been unresponsive to fixing their security holes. They do not secure your CC number or bank account numbers and other sites can script transactions out of your account. My note on security holes.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I have been using paypal's webshop stuff for about 6 months for my store and it so far seems to be reliable very very doable for a small hobby/business like mine. Its just me here, selling the stuff I make and not wanting to worry about processing credit cards. That is not my core competancy, it is, however, paypal's. I also jumped through some hoops to verify some extra accounts and now have my business account set up as a money market account. So now the money I make selling my jewelry online earns monthly interest. This pleases me. I have also never had any trouble scooping out those funds and electronically transferring them to my normal checking account at Wells Fargo. They seem to be a careful business, and the only complaint that I ever got from a customer was that PayPal can be pretty picky about verifying credit card accounts. This seems like a small price to pay for added security.
-- Switchvox: Bringing big business phone sy
I am a Canadian... I went through their stupid process, and it decided to "reject" both of my credit cards, one saying that it was "locked" and the other one just didn't give me a reason. So I sent them an email and got a canned response back in return:
Thank you for contacting PayPal. We apologize for the delay in responding
to your service request.
I apologize for not being able to add this card to your PayPal account.
Unfortunately, this card was not accepted by our verification system. This
does impact valid cards occasionally and is not reflective of your credit
worthiness. For our security, we cannot register any cards that cannot be
verified by our system. Sorry for this inconvenience.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.
However, to my surprise, BOTH CARDS were billed for their $1 fee... So I wrote them back saying "here's the code from my credit car statement proving that I own it, would you like a copy of my drivers license as well?" (well, I went on for more than that, asking them about how come their credit card verification system is so flawed), and what did I get back in return?
The same goddamed response.
So I replied again.
The same goddamed response.
I gave up. They get a bigass F- for customer service, and a A+ for incompetence.
If God gave us curiosity
For small online businesses, I would advise looking into using itransact. They work rather well, don't require quite as much financial disclosure, and have an online API for webshop developers.
Disclosure: I don't work for them, though I recently built an online shop that uses them, and we've had only minor glitches that got resolved quickly.
- passion
Paypal has horrid customer service. When my account was working they were fine. As soon as I tried to buy two things that went 7 dollars over my artificial $1000 Paypal limit I was in for a tough time which culminated in me canceling my Paypal accounts, sending a money order to an understanding ebay seller and give up on them never having spoken to anyone there.
After this they spamed the crap out of me with credit card offers even going so far as to claim that I had applied for one. They then called me at home to confirm my application after I responded that I didn't apply and didn't want one.
If at all possible stay away, sadly if you want to perform online transactions I don't know of any easier method.
First off, there happens to be an article in a special section of today's (Monday, Dec. 10, 2001) print edition of the Wall Street Journal which lists some of the payment sites like PayPal, c2it, billpay, etc.
I'm developing a web site that sells links on our site to select merchants. It's building up a following, so we're thinking about how to accept payment on-line. Based on the WSJ story, I was thinking of recommending PayPal to the owner, but after reading this slashdot article, I'm not so sure. Each sale is on on the order of $200 - $200.
Scenario: our sales person calls a potential client and makes the sale (though sales are currently made in person, we're also considering selling over the phone.) The question: What is the best way to get the money from the client to us?
In short, I don't have the slightest idea where to start, and would appreciate hearing other's experiences in setting up such a system. (FWIW: Our web site is hosted on an IIS 5.0 server. I know, I know, but the price is right and we get unlimited bandwidth.:)
I have been trying to implement Paypal's "Instant Payment Notification" service within my website. Before I go live though, I want to thoroughly test all my code and the interface with Paypal. There is no documented way to test the payment interface with Paypal.
Their customer support people have been totally unresponsive to my question. "Is there a way to test IPN without actually sending money?" is the question. I don't want to go live with my code until I have a chance to test it out thoroughly.
Their service is useful and fairly inexpensive, but their customer support is absolutly horrible.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
I am the webmaster for a scrapbook artwork site.
PayPal has worked for us with one exception-
We use the shopping cart feature and need to differentiate between the "shipping" and "handling" charges for customer's orders. Their instructions indicate this is possible, but it doesn't work because their back-end database does not handle sessions properly. When I pointed this out to them, they replied via email that they were aware of the bug and a solution would be "coming soon." This was four months ago, so now my question is:
Is there anything else worthwhile out there, or do I have to roll up my sleeves and start java-scripting?
Here is a list of some past slashdot discussion on PayPal. Do keep in mind that these discussions, as well as the site references, are anecdotal evidence, I.E. not something I'd make a real business decision based on.
FWIW, the site now has a disclaimer on the front page that they had nothing to do with the spam.
I sell mil surplus through a web site. I used to take payments through PayPal, before they froze my account and maxed-out my credit card. They claimed that because I am in the "business of murder," that I was subject to have the money in my account forfeit and a fee charged. I sell mainly sleeping bags and tents surplused from the Finnish army. The CC number I gave to them was a card I that pulled from my checking account. Don't ever give PayPal one of those. I still haven't gotten back the money from my checking account or they money they stole from my account.
I regularly have people sending me money through PayPal. Never intentionally... They make a simple typo in the address, and the money comes straight to me. I always return it myself; sometimes I even notice the oops before the person who sent the money. I don't know if PayPal has any means to correct for typos. I doubt it (it's the sender's mistake), so be sure you have a fairly unique email address.
Consumer reporting scam: Larry Lawrence (12/6/01)
PayPal continues to hold my $600. Illegally.
Several months ago I was offering the general public a free copy of the popular OS called Linux 8.0. This is a freely distributable program under the general license agreement. The customer only had to pay for shipping. ($5.00 US dollars)
I had hundreds of people that responded to the offer and I delivered the program as offered and according to the law. 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.
Well, I e-mailed them back several times and explained to them that I did programming on my own and would never consider distributing software that was against any law. PayPal said that I had to prove that I had permission from Microsoft to distribute the software. Microsoft has nothing to do with Linux. Linux has always been to my knowledge, a free OS.
I am e-mailing you first before taking legal action as this is the professional way to do business.
They have closed my account, which is fine accept that they hold my funds without paying me interest on the funds and refuse to return the funds.
Linux 8.0, eh?Pretty Crediable! The guy is so knowledgable about the software he's selling **HUNDREDS** of copies of, that he doesn't even know if it's Mandrake [which I'm guessing it is [if it is even Linux and not MS-Office 8.0 for the MAC or something similar]] or whatever flavor. You'd think he'd be descriptive about what he was selling or how he was being scammed by pay-pal. Being the "programmer" he is, you'd think he'd know something about the operating system he was peddling.
Sounds like the only fraud going on around here are the accusations stated on this poorly prepared "hate" website.
But then again, that's just my two cents.
------------------------------
Ray Raspberry
raspberry@b3l33t.org
counts
When you are an international user of PayPal, it is impossible to be covered by the Seller Protection Policy (unless you have a US bank account), because your address cannot be confirmed; BE WARNED: an account status of "International - Verified" does not mean that your address is confirmed! I got burned by this the other day. The PayPal site is unbelievably unclear in that regard. I've since reverted to using Money Orders.
The thing is, it's not this site who is doing the spamming. It's a unaffiliated 3rd party. Probably someone angry with PayPal. I don't think you can trust them any less because of the Spam, I seriously doubt the site spams and they have made counter claims denying their responsibility for spamming.
Frankly PayPal would look better if their detractors spammed as it would make the detractors look bad. For all you know they could be paying some teenager to spam the usenet with this anti-paypal site in order to make the site look bad.
You left out hot grits down your pants and Natalie Portman.
I used to work for paypal, I quit from there.
They were doing really terrible things.
They sometimes remove a few cents from random accounts on a daily basis. People never notice this. This would add up to a couple hundred $$$ every day. Nothing right? They were doing this for over 3 months, until some employee threatened them. He quit.
They are a bunch of cheaters and liar's. Never use them
In their user agreement, it states that if you are not a resident of the United States they reserve the right to remove funds from your account without asking/notifying you if a transaction is faulty in any way... So basically here's my story - I'm canadian. I got paid for something over ebay (200USD) using paypal. The money comes in, I click accept, it shows up in my account, yah! I ship out the item. Two months later I log into my accoutn and find the balance is at $0 - WTF, right? Well turns out I was paid using a stolen credit card (Or "illecit means"), and paypal only found this out ONE MONTH after the transaction was completed, and said that in their user agreement because I'm not American they have no responsiblity to pay me back the money! Total B.S.!!!!!!!
> electronic payment
good heavens, is that BofA or Wells Fargo?
There should not be a charge. You're at the wrong bank. I'm not even sure it's *possible* for a bank to not participate in ACH these days. If you have a checking account, and your checks have a routing number, that's all that's needed . . .
hawk
In the meantime I had contacted the credit card company, cancelled that card, and investigated the 2 other changes made by the thief. One of the charges had been refunded before I even contacted the vendor (they'd found a string of stolen credit card transactions). The second change (apparently for something called gay-per-view)was refunded to the card as soon as I informed the customer rep for that organization that the card number had been stolen, they even provided me with the address and email that had been given to them by the theif.
I've never used Paypal and have no intentions of using it in the future.
Let me start by saying that I have, in the past, always been pleased with Pay Pal's service. My only complaint, up until 4 or 5 months ago, was that it took a lot of time to get the money from my PP account to my real bank account. However, this is always the case when you are doing e-transfers through a real world bank.
I tried to put my credit card number into the PP system at a time when their servers were down. It could not authorize my number several times because of "internal server errors." After so many times, I was told that my card number would be flagged in the PP system and that it was no longer valid on the entire PP system ever again!
I tried customer support and explained the problem, but got no response and have not been able to use my card on PP since.
Though my experience is probably not typical, I am without paypal service on my only credit card.
user@host:/usr/bin$ whatis
java: nothing appropriate.
How curious. Just today I got a forwarded e-mail from a friend who hadn't set up her PayPal account to receive a payment I sent her. The e-mail read :
Dear [recepient's e-mail address suppressed],
On 09/03/00 you received $10.00 from [my e-mail address suppressed].
Our policy is to cancel unclaimed payments after 30 days, so
unless you sign up for a PayPal account these funds will be
returned to the sender. Don't let your money get away!
Note that this warning was sent some 14 MONTHS (!!) after the payment was sent. This is in gross violation of the stated policy of returning funds after 30 days. Moreover, as a sender, you don't have any clue in many cases whether the funds were actually credited or not.
In my case, it was only $10 at stake, but if many other payments were similarly misused, the interest racked up could have been quite substantial.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
I clicked on the link for "things you should see". The first article is about how some church was robbed out of a bunch of money. They start off by telling how their PayPal account was ilelgally accessed and that paypal was screwing them out of money. Then they go on to make this accusation:
In fact by a search on the internet, it appears PayPal is the largest money laundress for organized crime and pro-terriorist organizations that raise money with Gambling sites that are off-shore and not regulated. Most major credit cards will not allow use on these sites, so PayPal fraudulently shows the credit card usage is a PayPal payment rather than a gambling debt to the major credit card companies. http://paypal-casinos.com/
If you go to the paypal-casinos website it clearly says it isn't affiliated with PayPal, and it seems rather obvious that they are misappropriating PayPal's trademark to their own ends. The registrant's e-mail address is at freecasinocash.net, another very disreputable looking site.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I've been using PayPal for 3 months to sell a variety of items and I've been very happy with it.
My tips are:
1) Setup a "Firewall" bank account. This allows me to receive payments from sellers to my PayPal account, then have PayPal direct deposit the money into this "firewall" bank account. This bank account has no money in it and once money has been transferred from PayPal to this bank account, I use the bank's tools to transfer the money to a checking account or savings account. This way, if someone gets into my PayPal account, they'll have very little or no money to rob from my associated bank account.
2) Use a dedicated Credit Card for Payments. With so many Credit Cards offering me free cards with 0% interest rate, I have the ability to use one just for online transactions. When the bill comes every month, it is easy to review. Fraud, or simple mistakes like double billings, should stick out greater than they do on my primary card.
3) When making Payments, use an affinity credit card that provides you with some benefit instead of your bank account. Using a bank account is preferred by PayPal because the cost to withdraw money from your bank account is significantly lower than charging your credit card. But their savings doesn't give you anything, so turn this neutral into a positive. By using an affinity card you can earn points on each of your PayPal purchases. I even had one case where someone on ebay bought something for me from $300 and due to problems I had to refund it. His $300 went to my bank account, then $300 came from my credit card to refund it back to him through PayPal, then I used the $300 in my bank account to pay off my credit card. I lost a little bit of money in the process due to PayPal's receiving fees, but at least I got 300 frequent flyer miles out of it!
4) Withdraw money promptly from PayPal. ANY company can suddenly go bankrupt from bad financial decisions you don't know about. It is therefore wise to use PayPal as a payment service and not a virtual bank account. When someone makes a payment, transfer it to your firewall bank account immediately so that it's in your control.
5) Read the fine print on PayPal's website. They have some very good fraud protection services that will protect you from evil people. But these services require specific things like "advertising PayPal as the only electronic Payment service you will receive." This really isn't much of a problem, it seems, since 90% of my ebay electronic payments have been made through PayPal (other 10% are BillPoint/Ebay Payments or Money Orders.) But you need to realize that if you take them up on their fraud protection, they have many ways to disqualify you if you don't follow their rules.
6) Trust your credit card. If you're using Credit Cards to handle purchases, many states like Maryland have VERY tough credit card laws which protect consumers. If you're using a 'new' service like PayPal, hide behind more conservative, regulated things like traditional credit cards and bank accounts.
I had used paypal for quite a while, and was pretty happy with it. So the time came when I needed a new bank (my current one at the time apparantly just didn't feel like issuing me a new debit card, or something), so I figured I would give x.com, paypal's bank, a try. I used them for about 4-5 months, and everything seemed to be going just swell. Then they announced they were closing the banking end of things to just focus on paypal, and to click on the big button for information about closing the account. Too bad the button didn't give out info, but just CLOSED the account. Those fuckers then held on to all the money I had for FOUR MONTHS, during which time I yelled at them a lot on the phone and filed multiple BBB complaints. So no, I no longer trust paypal with my money.
I refuse to use Paypal, and there is more than one company who's lost my business by routing their billing through Paypal.
I knew there was a big potential problem when I saw their business model, and resolved never to use it; then, when it got popular, I tentatively began to order a product from one website. When Paypal asked for all sorts of personal info, I aborted.
Another thing I like about Kagi is that unless I sell something, I don't get charged anything. And when I do, it's a flat rate, and very reasonable for the ability to take checks, credit cards, and foreign currency.
I'm not affiliated with them, but I am a satisified customer. If you're looking for a way to safely process a small number of payments online, look no further.
- Vincit qui patitur.
I had been occasionally paying for Ebay purchases through PayPal with a credit card. When the total of those purchases approached $1,000, PayPal started demanding my checking account information. (ABA number and account number)
I explained to them that they didn't need that information to process a credit card transaction, and that the risk was mine and VISA's, not theirs. Further, the fact that $1,000 of transactions had gone well was a lot better verification of my trustworthiness than the fact that I have a valid checking account.
They responded that, basically, nobody else has a problem giving up their identity, so that's the way it works.
I responded with a few choice comments about their business model, directed them to fuckedcompany.com, and I'm done with them.
I've reached my limit as an "unverified buyer", so now I send postal money orders. Good riddance to bad rubbish. I understand that they cost the seller a lot of dough anyway.
From reading these posts and linked websites, I think I have some advice. I understand PayPal could be a great way to accept payment over the Internet, but there are some things companies need to do if the absolutely rely on PayPal for commerce.
First, have your PayPal checking account seperate from your company's checking account. This will be good for several reasons. If they dispute your account, and freeze your funds, your main checking account will be fine. Next, if you transfer all funds from you PayPal account to it's associated checking account (nightly, hourly whenever), and then from that checking account to your checking main account, the money will be safe. And since most banks nowadays let you manage your account online, this becomes very simple.
Second. If you are relying on PayPal, have more than 1 account. This is called redundancy. I'm sure most of you have heard it. If your main paypal account goes down, fall back to your secondary. And if you have 3 or 4 accounts, this only makes you more protected. Having these multiple accounts, you will need a quick and easy way to change from one to the next in your ordering procees.
Now, I've never dealt commercially with PayPal, only buying a few ebay items, and making my monthly donations to PennyArcade.com. I don't even know if what I said abaove is "allowed" in PayPal's TOS (or TOU, where U = Use), but if they aren't, and all these problem occur as often as I've read, then PayPal isn't something you should be relying on anyways as a company.
Just My 2x10^(-2) Dollars
Th
Anyway - This story you quote, if true, indicates not only that PayPal is guilty of the annoyingly common MS-is-god-above-all attitude, but also the poster is doing somethng a bit strange too. Notice he didn't call it Linux 2.4.x, or something like that. He called it Linux 8.0 - which indicates to me that he's reselling a full DISTRIBUTION, perhaps Mandrake or SuSE - and THAT could include add-ons that are not free, and THAT would still make what he's doing illegal.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Remember, this was the same company that was giving away (yes giving away) $10 effectively the same as cash in order to sign up, and also giving away the credit card transaction fees every time you made a transaction. All this on the theory that they were going to make it back by investing the float. And all they need from you is your credit card, bank account, and a signed contract that on paper at least authorizes them to steal your identity. You were expecting honest professionalism? Duh! I keep looking for page 666.
If you want an honest service, use eBay's Billpoint . Yeah, it costs a little money. Honest and professional services generally do.
There's no free lunch. If you think you're getting a free lunch, it means you just havn't figured out the cost yet.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
If you work the numbers, you will see that this is a manifestly false conclusion based on the example given.
:-)
PayPal's merchant fees are 2.2% plus 30 cents, or 0.7% plus 30 cents for those with "Preferred" accounts.
On the $50 example transaction, that is $1.40, or $0.65 (65 cents) for Preferred. Compare that with the interest earned on a money market deposit or similar investment for two weeks - 5% annual yield equates to 0.192% over two weeks, which brings in 9.6 cents. Even if you assume a more risky mutual fund investment yielding 10% annually, it is still only 19.2 cents, and there will be a risk to account for which is not present in the upfront fee collection. Not to mention that not a whole lot of mutual fund or other investments are yielding double digit returns (many of them are well into negative territory for some time now).
You can multiply 9.6 or 19.2 cents by thousands if you want, but I'd much prefer to multiply 65 cents or $1.40 by thousands
I have sold a couple of things, and requested payment via Paypal. No problems, but then paypalwarning.com did say that Paypal was seller friendly. Has anyone used the recommended billpoint.com with success?
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
My complaint about PayPal is the fact that their terms and conditions place pressure on retailers not to accept international payments. I would go as far as to say that they paint a picture of international purchasers being untrustworthy and potentially criminal. Yet with two faced arrogance their general marketing spiel proclaims that international transactions are some of the advantages of the system.
What about shitty security that lets other people spoof being you and use your account for their purchases?
What about the shitty customer service where when you have a problem you can't get anyone to talk with about it? The fact that mistakes are made from time to time is inevitable with an operation the size of PayPal. The fact that they stick their heads in the sand and pretend there are no problems, and assume all complainers are lying is not acceptable.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I signed up to use paypay so my roommates could pay their share of the rent via their credit cards (great idea!).
But I stopped because there is no one to call when I had a small problem. No phone numbers, e-mail address, etc. To me this was the sign of a shaddy company.
I bounced a rent check to him about 4 months ago. I've been waiting till he notices to give him the money.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
We wish to close this manner quickly for all parties concerened. I have been authorized by my client to make financial restitution concerning such negative comments.
Please submit your PayPal account number to commence monetary transfer. Thank you.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
The $1k limit PayPal imposes is their -own- problem. If I ever reach the 1k limit I'll just forget about the account and open one with their competition. The idea that you can only spend 1k with them is foolish, but it's -their- foolishness.
No one but a confirmed idiot would 'register' a bank account number with PayPal - unless you put together an account -specifically- for those transactions and call it 'play money' or something like that.
Paypal is somewhat of a pain to use, especially for real time transactions... the way it works:
1. customer deposits cash to your cgi
2. cgi redirects user browser to paypal site with appropriate information, which includes callback url.
3. User dances around and then completes transaction.
4. Paypal when confirmed transaction submits on POST https request to you a completed transaction details - on return URL, you must call back to paypal, to verify that transaction is not a hoax.
5. Transaction is done, you have the money, so you reimburse user in goods and services in completed amount.
Trouble is, there is TWO urls, one is RETURN url and other is POST url. Paypal will post transaction details to POST url in some arbitrary length of time, while user will got to REDIRECT url right away. This poses a problem for web services, fact that money is not on website when user IS!
I have yet to see a good (from technical point of view) implementation of web cash services.
2c
Spooky timing. Just this week I got an e-mail from Paypal saying that I had sold something to someone involved with credit card fraud. According to the very lawyerly doc, I had 72 hours to send them MY SIDE of the story (?) to qualify for their Seller Protection Policy. I also had to meet a six or seven other requirements, most of which I assumed were handled by Paypal. (How would I know if I shipped to his verified credit card mailing address or not!? He was a "verified buyer" according to PP.)
So I get 700 characters to tell them that the guy had said the item arrived broken (see UPS thread here for that) and I should file a claim and send him the money. I offered to take the item back and give him the money back, he declined. (Now obvious why.) UPS kept saying things were being investigated and I haven't followed-up very often.
I go through the Paypal form (no other contact permitted, they make this quite clear). Then I log into my account to find they have debited the $1800.00! I don't keep much money there, mostly for impulse E-bay items, but it's gone now. I have received no communications from them at all.
Basically they seem to try to pass the fraud buck along to the seller if at all possible even though the breakdown was clearly on their side. It's even worse because like most people I never would have dealt with such a transaction without Paypal's supposed verification and protection. So they are just facilitating fraud if their protection is no good. This review process had better be simply nominal or I'm going to pitch a fit.
Saludos, Mig
I don't know, I don't use PayPal.
BUT... The people behind the web site have been spamming Usenet with multiple warnings, using bogus email addresses. I'd take it with a grain of salt.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Last year I was REALLY strapped for cash and my wonderful lovely fiance was willing to help me out and send me some cash. She was at college at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, MO while I was at wichita state in Wichita, KS. So - to get me cash, we used paypal from her CC to my confirmed bank account. She didn't want to fuck with it so she had me do it, since I set up the account after all. After doing two transfers of cash, my paypal account was closed for fraud! I tried contacting them electronically for quite some time, but I had no results. It was a PITA! because I was trying to win ebay auctions at the time! I was never able to resolve that issue and ended up just removing my CC #s and setting up a new account w/ a different e-mail. It was great tho that even with a closed and defunct account, I still received email!
The big bitch I had was that I was not able to contact anyone about the issue!
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Kinda ticked about the 'over rated' mod, but hey... slashdot screwed up my end link.
A much more plausible attack is the man in the middle- or even an employee. Given that much wealth concentrated in one spot... one 'accidental' release could wipe out a few 10s of thousands of dollars.
Hasn't anyone figured out that greed motivates quite a bit of crime? Why should paypal be immune. It can be and it will be attacked... although frankly with their tough lockdown proceedures I think they are doing customers a good favor at limiting liability and losses.
Thank you all for your comments about PayPal.
I realize there are some concerns whenever a site such as PayPalWarning comes up, but please realize:
a) the internet is a free forum where users can state whatever they want
b) you can find horror stories about many companies on the internet
PayPal is a payment service that allows parties to pay one another for a variety of reasons. All customer situations that do not violate our terms of can be resolved.
Account restrictions, which are brought up on a regular basis, are quite rare (reasons for an account restriction can be found in our terms of use) and they can be resolved with the assistance of the user.
Points to ponder
-PayPal continues to add 20,000+ users per day.
-We also conduct well over 200,000 transactions daily.
At times, our anti-fraud measures do catch legitimate users, but these can be rectified. These measures, while viewed as extreme at times, has allowed us to keep our fraud rates extremely low.
Some of the issues on PayPalWarning involve:
-Seller not shipping goods to a buyer (we offer limited protection and do not guarantee recovery from a seller)
-Payments reversed due to chargebacks (explained in the terms of use)
I was a loyal PayPal customer for two years, and in the past several weeks they put my account on "restriction." I can recieve money, but can't transfer it to my bank account, or send money. So money sits there and earns PayPal interest. Their customer service refuses to respond to my requests for an explanation, and the only means to lift the restriction is to add another bank account, which I can't do. I'm less than happy.
Paypal is not an escrow service.
Paypal is not a bank.
Paypal is not a credit card company.
Paypal IS convenient, and easy to start using for the merchant.
Paypal DOES take a larger chunk of your money than, say, VISA would.
Given that.. you should be able to figure out what the right thing to do is.
Offtopic...wtf - that was sooo Troll!!!!
Slashdot, the site where everything's made up and the points don't matter
See this usenet conversation for some interesting info about the recently-spamvertised anti-paypal site:
f rame=right&th=553b4b974475ac63&seekm=hii01uo9o1hlo dbhtro1ufeqhrlg1jddr4%404ax.com#link1
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&
This might help you out.
Postal Money Orders via US Mail are usually the route I go. It's better than sending payments through PayPal, as it is liquid, and can be redemmed for cash at any Post Office. Plus, if someone mucks with you via a Postal Money Order, they could be invesitgated and ultimately charged with mail fraud, a FEDERAL offense.
Think again. When a major bank declares bankruptcy, you will suddenly see that all those cool skyscrapers and stuff don't belong to the bank at all. All major banks have a number of 'subcompanies' (building companies etc) and they move their (and your!) money to these.
When a bank declares bankruptcy, none of the fancy stuff will be sold to give you back your money.
C2IT.com run by CitiBank. It's a real bank, FDIC insured and their transaction fees are less than PayPal.
I haven't been burned by PayPal, but I have dealt with their customer support. They've never responded to my emails, and after FINALLY finding a phone number, half the time they say they're experiencing high call volumes and hang up on me, and the other half I deal with incompetent people.
So even though I haven't been burned, I'm not really going to stick around and wait for it to happen. I'll heed the advice of others and use C2it by CitiBank. Not only are they a real bank and FDIC insured... but all their fees are much less than PayPal's.
Just wondering if your experiences with billpoint are better, worse or same as paypal.
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
I looked around on your site and I could not find the link to download the source code for your payment processing system. Please post it here.
my bank said the only way to do this was to put a $.01 stop payment order in for PayPal. That's fine and dandy but it costs $15 (CDN) and expires every month... that just isn't reasonable - I haven't looked at what other banks would do given this request, but doubt that there would be any difference since they are all cut from the same cloth.
I am looking at creating a new chequing account just for the swept funds which then I will transfer the whole balance to an account that PayPal doesn't have access to.
It doesn't care that I make my living buying and selling commodities on EverCrack.
w00t d00d i g0t ur FBSS r1ght h3r3!!!
Horses are good for the economy, damnit. Maybe the US government should start selling horses, and marketing cat people.
Pointless crap side, I like PayPal. It's established, and it's been around for awhile. There's some other money transfer sites cropping up, but frankly, until they've been around awhile, I wouldn't trust them so much.
- e-gold The first and biggest
- GoldMoney More offshore
- E-BullionWe try harder because we're smaller
The key difference from a merchant point of view are the total lack of chargebacks - as payments in these currencies are non-repudiable, and the completely cheaper fee structures. I believe all of the above are less than 50 cents for any size payment to be received.There is an article in the January 2002 Wired on these types of currencies that provides more information and their plans to take over the world.
They have thousands of dollars of my money and locked it up when I tried to get it out. They ask for all kinds or crazy information to get it released then change their stories (and their rules) to suit themselves. Beware of these crooks. They are just stealing other people's money to bolster their bottom line!
I chose to bring as much "in house" as I could, thus eliminating much of the liability with other businesses and the flow of money. My bank, KeyBank, also had services for businesses as well as personal accounts, and had their own Merchant Services.
Through this, I was able to get the terminal, account, PinPad for shows and conventions (great to take ATM cards), and the whole works, for about $28 a month including statement fees, for the lease. If it breaks, they replace it. Great product.
We also do our own e-commerce solution online, and process through this merchant account. If any money is frozen, it's due to my own account, no one else's.
However, with all merchant accounts, you must give a checking or holding account when you sign up for it, and sign an agreement that they can pull funds out of it. This is because if you refund more money than you charge, they have to pull that money out of your account, for the entire amount of those refunds.
This is why PayPal also requires it, and without limit. The only problem is, I wouldn't trust PayPal with that kind of power. I trust my bank more because it's all of partnerships and one major corporate conglomerate. If there's a problem, I can go to the bank to get information, instead of getting a runaround.
I highly recommend any and all people who run small businesses *not* to deal with any outside firms if they can help it, and ask their bank where they have their business accounts which merchant services they offer. Price them out and get the one proper for you.
And above all, when it's too good to be true, or it seems as though there are no fees, THERE ARE. Read the fine print, or ask other people who have dealt with the business before. Investigate, because it's not only your money, it's all your customers' money, too.
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
They demanded (with NO justification) that my wife
and I (who were NOT sellers or merchants) turn over our checking account routing numbers to them or we could not use their services at all, for any reason. This demand was supposedly so we could "verify" ourselves to them.
This struck both me and my wife as the equivalent of a shopkeeper demanding the keys to my house as a condition of my buying from him. You can guess whether or not I'll ever do business with them again.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.09/paypal.htm l
It turned out that visa's auth systems were broken for a bit :-) Paypal hasn't been a problem since!
Berto
This article explains why they aren't a bank... scary or not, they couldn't attain their goals under the constraints of a true bank. Wired Mag Article
Go down to your bank and go open another paypal only checking account.
Then when you need to pay for something or get payed its not all jumbled up with all your other money.
My buddy does this and is yet to have a problem. Plus it insulates you from them freezing your checking account and a whole bunch of automatic withdrawals failing!
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I am currently in the process of trying to resolve a PAYPAL problem where I paid $250 for an item, yet never recieved a thing. PAYPAL said they'd like to help me, but since I exceeded the 30 day policy they have on handling claims I was screwed. The only thing that has turned out helping me is that I paid with a credit card to PAYPAL (which after this experience I will always do!) and so I'm taking it up with my bank.
Hope it helped....
saving the world from themselves every day.
I had hundreds of people that responded to the offer and I delivered the program as offered and according to the law. 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.
Well, I e-mailed them back several times and explained to them that I did programming on my own and would never consider distributing software that was against any law. PayPal said that I had to prove that I had permission from Microsoft to distribute the software. Microsoft has nothing to do with Linux. Linux has always been to my knowledge, a free OS.
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
When I auction things off on Ebay I make it very clear that I only accept personal checks or money orders (and I will not ship the merchandise until the check clears) Guess how many cash problems I've had?
That's right..zilch.
FYI:
Be warned that Paypal is not a bank and is not FDIC insured. In fact, if you read the Paypal terms of service, you will see that you can't even sue them should you have a legitimate claim. Their terms of service make it very hard to sue them! If you follow the links below, you may find yourself reconsidering doing business with Paypal.
Any Paypal customer with a problem typically has an impossible time calling and talking to a real live person, and personal attention to electronic mail is virtually non-existent. Vince Sollitto, PayPal spokesman was quoted as saying: "As for the customer service, [we] intentionally make the phone number very difficult to find in order to save costs." This is fine, except their Email "customer service" also leaves a lot to be desired. Many times you will get a canned response that doesn't address your initial Email message, if you get a reply at all. It doesn't do any good to complain anyway. When asked about customer complaints, Sollitto said "the company reads them, but takes them with a grain of salt..." (source MSNBC article, above).
Go to http://www.paypalsucks.com for a collection of horror stories, news reports and other information addressing problems with Paypal, Inc.. While they do not have the resources to verify each and every complaint we receive, we do believe that all reports posted there are true based on their own experience with Paypal and the growing number of corroborating horror stories they receive every day.
haha!
There's an interesting article on PayPal's fraud-busting success. http://www.techreview.com/magazine/dec01/schwartz. asp
Cheers, Peter
After reading www.paypalwarning.com, then i went to www.paypalsucks.com.
I've yet to be burned, but hey, why take the chance.
The court was tired of recounts, and demonstrated how to take care of it.
There's a very simple solution... why trust someone when you don't have to?
This is what I do:
1. Create a separate bank account with a separate creditcard to it, and conect it to paypal.
2. Don't ever have more money on that account than you can afford to lose. If you are planning to buy anything you send money to that account and then buy it directly. Don't leave money hanging around on it.
Or if you are a business you withdraw all incomming money to another account.
The police, post office and Visa were extremely interested, and urgent to act. PayPal, on the other hand, couldn't be bothered to involve themselves. And unfortunately, without PayPal's involvement, none of us could do a thing: PayPal was technically the merchant, and wouldn't involve themselves with me, Visa, the police, or the post office despite my trying to get them involved for nearly all of the two days before the package was signed for and the merchandise vanished.
PayPal doesn't seem to want to dirty their hands with anything criminally related. I ended up contesting the PayPal-related charge, which proved to be a three week ordeal, even with Visa, a police record and a trail of calls and emails to PayPal to back up my claim.
PayPal made a huge headache and no win out of what should have been a slam dunk against a credit card fraudster. Unfortunately, PayPal is pretty much the standard for a class of purchases right now. It's tough to do some business without it, so I still have PayPal. However, I refuse to send more than petty amounts through it, or link it to my main banking accounts.
i once sent money from my bank account via PayPal when i didn't have enough money to cover the payment. I previously used my credit card with PayPal, so i was unfamiliar with how it worked with my my bank account. I called PayPal's Customer Service, and the woman assured me that the money would not be taken from my account for 3 - 5 days. She was wrong, of course. My bank charged me $25 to stop the funds transfer from bouncing. PayPal's Customer Service changed its tune and said that money comes out of the account immediately. I still use it but don't expect anything from Customer Service if i have problems. I have heard from eBayers who have said that PayPal is of little help during an auction dispute. And i am worried that someone at PayPal may decide to withdraw money from every uer's bank account and then move to the Caymans. --- gaunt
So instead, why don't you see people who are really complaining about paypal? Forum at Auctionwatch. Sure, lots of them are actually complaining that Ebay infected them with viruses that make popup ads happen, but there are a couple of people who aren't completely stupid.
When paypall was new, I had to choose between PayPall and Kagi to give some money to http://www.dyndns.org. I searched for comments, good or bad, on both, and found very little. Since PayPall was new, that didn't surprise me. But Kagi has been around for a very long time, and it's used by quite a few vendors, and I haven't seen any complaints. That must mean something. :-)
I hate it when I make a joke and I get modded "+5 insightful". Mod the stupid comments "funny", not "insightful", pleas
The easy answer to that is to use a credit card via Paypal, not a bank account. They tried to screw me once like they did you. I paid the guy and never got the goods. After 2 weeks of no contact, I called them and asked to have the transfer nixed. They gave me the run around and kept transferring me to different people. I seriously think that they do what a cartoon I once saw did. In that cartoon was a helpdesk. One person had an irate customer on the phone demanding the supervisor of the tech they were talking to. The tech put them on hold and looked around at his colleagues in the cubical farm and asked who wanted to play super. Someone said I'll play super for you if you play super for my guy on line 6. I swear they did that to me. I know I got a couple of those people twice and they played super a couple of times too. After a couple of weeks of getting jacked with by them, I threatened to call my credit card company, contest the Paypal charge, and let my card carrier sort it out. The person playing super that time bucked up and sent me to a person whom I think really was a super, or the designated person to call when that happened. He told me in a really pissed voice that if I did that, they'd "turn the matter over to our legal department and sue my ass off". Yes, I can quote those exact words. I told him to [censored] and hung up. My next call was to my Visa card carrier. I told them what was going on and that I wanted to contest the charge in the amount of $abc.de. They happily responded. They contested the charge and credited my account. They said they would get back with me if they needed more information. A few months later I received an official letter from my card company saying that they had investigated, received little cooperation from the and that they were siding with me and the credit to my account. It worked like a charm. I absolutely do not use bank account transfers from them. I use my Visa Check Card that withdraws straight from my checking account. It affords me all the protection from Visa like contesting charges and fraud protection. However I should use a card with a limit so that if it's stolen, my real $$ funds aren't possibly in limbo while I wait on a credit. I hope this helps someoen.
My girlfriend used to use X.com as her bank, which was bought out by PayPal.com during the bubble. They offered great interest rates regular checking accounts, roughly 4%, which is generally unheard of for a checking account. Well, as most internet things go, if it's too good to be true, it'll go under. After about 9 months in service, the PayPal people decided it was not part of thier "core" technology to keep the back part of biz, so they let it go. Everyone's accounts went into limbo-land for about a month (this happend to me too at another online back) while they were transfered to another bank and/or sent you money by mail. If you were lucky, you got out quick before your account went into limbo, but some didn't. Nothing was actually *lost*, but x.com (paypal) left a lot of upset people looking for another bank. Does this relate? Sure: If it's too good, or cool, to be true, it won't be around for long. Example is the "unlimited" credit card payments PayPal first offered. After a while, they put a $100 cap on it. Also, they've got a really skeleton crew over there, and I've heard customer support sucks. In my view, PayPal is just a really snazzy front end for one of those CHECKS CASHED stands you see on the bad side of town. Most transactions work fine, but when you get screwed (usually by a bogus seller and now a failing transaction), you ain't getting your money back. You just got screwed.
After visiting that same site myself, I decided not to use PayPal any longer. I had never lost any money through PayPal, though I've used it only a few times to buy stuff on Ebay. I went to cancel my PayPal account to simply be sure nothing would happen (it had zero, but it could have potentially be used). However, I could not log in on the site, and got an error message saying I did not have cookies enabled, even though I did (and confirmed it by logging in to here and a couple other places that use session tracking with cookies). I sent email to their various support addresses the web site indicated. The reply on those said I needed to submit the request on the website. But I needed to login to do that, which I could not. I called them on the phone but got stuck in menu hell and voice mail hell. No one ever returned my calls.
A few months later I got email from PayPal. It was promotional. Technically it was not spam, since my account was still active, but now I really wanted it canceled. I tried the web site again, and it had not yet been fixed. I tried mail again and got the same stupidity. I tried calling a few phone numbers. I actually got someone on the phone, but it sounded like the phone system redirected incorrectly as they were not expecting an inbound call. As soon as I explained what I wanted, they said I needed customer support, and forwarded me to menu hell. After spending at least $5 for long distance calls I gave up calling.
I then proceeded to "get attention". Since the email was on an automatic bounce, I set up an automatic system to send them email. It was adjusted to send every 2 minutes so as not to cause damage, but perhaps get attention. After a couple hours of this, it did indeed get attention. I got email back from someone with a direct phone number. I cut off the process and called them. Although this person was in the technical area, he did promise to get my account closed out. He was unaware of the technical problems, and I tried to convince him he needed to get them fixed, although I didn't know what the cause was. We tried a few things, but it didn't fix it.
It's a shame that the only way to communicate with a company is by tactics like this, but this is not the first place this kind of thing has had to be done.
I have since found the problem and I know what fix is needed on their server(s) to correct it, although obviously that's not my job to do, so I won't.
My whole point is, this is a company that does not give a damn about customers, only about money. If they cared about customers, they would have much better customer support. If they had better customer support, they might be able to deal with some of the fraud problems people have a little better. Instead, they seem to be trying to cut back on staffing costs by cutting out customer support and trying to discourage customers from calling them. I even read in one of the various news articles that were linked from here that the president of the company had actually said they don't want to deal with people calling in to complain. To me that means they don't want their service to get better.
This is definitely a company that needs to go into bankruptcy. Just be sure your money is out before that happens. And if you have any reason to send me money for anything, please read my /. signature first.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
(this post has breaks, unlike the first one.) My girlfriend used to use X.com as her bank, which was bought out by PayPal.com during the bubble. They offered great interest rates regular checking accounts, roughly 4%, which is generally unheard of for a checking account.
Well, as most internet things go, if it's too good to be true, it'll go under. After about 9 months in service, the PayPal people decided it was not part of thier "core" technology to keep the back part of biz, so they let it go. Everyone's accounts went into limbo-land for about a month (this happend to me too at another online back) while they were transfered to another bank and/or sent you money by mail. If you were lucky, you got out quick before your account went into limbo, but some didn't. Nothing was actually *lost*, but x.com (paypal) left a lot of upset people looking for another bank.
Does this relate? Sure: If it's too good, or cool, to be true, it won't be around for long. Example is the "unlimited" credit card payments PayPal first offered. After a while, they put a $100 cap on it. Also, they've got a really skeleton crew over there, and I've heard customer support sucks.
In my view, PayPal is just a really snazzy front end for one of those CHECKS CASHED stands you see on the bad side of town. Most transactions work fine, but when you get screwed (usually by a bogus seller and now a failing transaction), you ain't getting your money back. You just got screwed.
For one thing, your facts are wrong. Paypal is much less expensive than online credit card processing. Secondly, your post is a blatant advertisement. If you want to advertise buy a banner ad like everyone else.
Methinks that this website is just a little FUD put up by a competitor.
I've been using paypal for sometime, and find it a very nice service. I use it for the usual auction trading, as well as accepting payments for my small ISP business and occasionally exchanging money with friends for various reimbursements. I've always been happy with them, except for the fact they keep raising the rates. Much more and the convenience won't be worth it. As for security, everything I've read says that one of the reasons they're successful is that they are very proactive about fraud, and the corollary I should think would be that they're very security conscious. I've not run into any insecure web misfeatures there as I have even on ebay itself (like defaulting to insecure logins). Still, it's not a bank, and I don't leave more than a few hundred in it ever. I would be really ticked off if someone damaged them by suing them because they weren't a bank, as only the banks have anything to gain by that. And if they would adopt a secure smart/cash-card based payment system, they'd put paypal out of business. That'll never happen because then the government couldn't snoop on all our financial transactions though.
All you have to do is use NeoTracePro.
Registrant:
Confinity, Inc (PAYPAL2-DOM)
1840 Embarcadero Rd.
Palo Alto, CA 94303
US
Domain Name: PAYPAL.COM
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Billing Contact:
PayPal, Inc. Hostmaster (PI2724-ORG) hostmaster@PAYPAL.COM
PayPal, Inc.
Palo Alto, CA 94303
Palo Alto, CA 94303
US
650.251.1100
Fax- 650.251.1101
Record last updated on 03-Nov-2001.
Record expires on 15-Jul-2010.
Record created on 15-Jul-1999.
Database last updated on 10-Dec-2001 05:16:00 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.NIX.PAYPAL.COM 65.206.228.70
NS2.NIX.PAYPAL.COM 65.206.228.71
NS1.SC5.PAYPAL.COM 216.136.155.4
NS2.SC5.PAYPAL.COM 216.136.155.5
Has some interesting info, including some stuff about their bad press.t z. asp
http://www.techreview.com/magazine/dec01/schwar
This post will probably just summarize what everyone else has been saying all along, but I felt the need to toss in my opinion, so what the hell. It really doesn't make any sense to use paypal if you do the bulk of your business online. There is very little government supervision of their activities and it looks unproffessional. Imagine telling a client who lived some distance from you that though you couldn't take his money directly, you would be sending someone by their house shortly to pick it up. How do you think that client would react?
On the flip side I adore paypal for paying for auctions on ebay. It's a ton faster than anything else outside of things like billpoint. I flat out refuse to keep any sums of money in my account on paypal though, because as long as it's not in my bank, it doesn't really exist. The only downside I've expirienced as a small time auction buyer/seller is their consistent "if you pay with your credit card and not your bank account you're a fool" attitude. Everytime I goto pay for something with the good 'ol platinum card paypal feels obligated to inform me that my bank would be a better choice. They do it when I pay with my DEBIT card too. So, to say what everyone else is saying, if you're a serious online merchant, look into going directly through the creditcard companys. If you're small potatoes, stick with paypal. And of course, as is the case with any financial transaction, make sure you've always got a paper trail of each account in case something goes wrong because in all likely hood, something eventually will.
Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here
The website the original post references was advertised in a SPAM message sent to hundreds of newsgroup. I wouldn't put too much weight on what it has to say.
Additionally, as of last week, that site was making money off referrals to a paypal competitor.
I run a unix shell host (www.freedomshell.com)
I use PayPal to collect payments from my users. I had a difficult time getting their system to accept my credit card, to set up the account, but eventually everything worked out. Their tech support was about as helpful as an autoresponder.
One feature I really like is their instant payment notification which, with a bit of coding on my part, allows me to set up accounts automatically.
I have also investigated other payment methods and found PayPal transaction rates to be quite competitive. I orginally tried a site called Globill.com. They refused my site because I wasn't flogging porn (they only do "subscription based content") If I had charged $4 a month with Globill I would have lost somthing like $3.75 to them, what a joke!
Anyway, so far PayPal has been good technically, so I am in no hurry to get a merchant account.
I provide E-Gold exchanges and used to use paypal. They flat out told me that they will not allow any E-Gold to paypal transactions.
They are now holding my money for six months and have told me there is nothing I can do about it.
You can get the full story at FreedomHound.com
The California attorney generals office is currently going after them for this practice. It seems this is standard operating proceedure for these crooks.
- Man starts online bookstore, running it out of his home. Achieves modest success with a small but loyal customer base.
- Nationally syndicated columnist discovers online bookstore, interviews owner. Writes it up as example of ordinary guy doing Amazon.com on a small scale.
- Thousands of people read column, go to bookstore site, place orders.
- Man gives resulting credit card transactions to his bank.
- Bank says, "Whoa nellie! That's a lot of money! How do we know you can fulfill these orders? Your account is frozen!"
- Online bookstore suddenly has no income, folds.
It's tempting to point fingers, especially at the bank. But that's shortsighted. Our monetary system has been around for so long, we forget how cumbersome and convoluted it is. Ultimately, every transaction carries a risk of fraud and loss. You shouldn't be suprised if anybody involved, merchant, buyer, bankers, whoever, does their best to avoid getting stuck.And all of them do get stuck occasionally, not just the little guy. Difference is the big guys can spread out the cost of fraud over more transactions.
That aside, I love PayPal. In terms of prosecuting online fraud (where having an evidence trail is key), it's far superior to almost every other method of payment, including credit card payments. For victims of online fraud, a credit card (and the safety protections of your card's customer agreement) and the best bet, but the cases I get with Paypal are just great.
Paypal creates a great paper trail showing where the money goes - from your account, to the target, and on to the target's checking or credit card. people who pay with checks or money orders are usually out of luck.
Paypal also has great fraud investigators who work to catch the bad guys. However, as another poster pointed out, they will not reverse the transaction when you get ripped off. The user agreement clearly says that fraud losses are the user's risk, and while they help authorities prosecute, they don't internalize the loss.
Hey, it's your own fault for not using one of the tons of escrow services out there.
Ok, first thing, if you're running a business and using Paypal to accept credit card payments, you look very unprofessional, cheap and just plain silly.
Why? First a new client would have to register with PayPal, they want a confirmation from the client that it's their credit card by using the special number they attach to your bill, if your client can't access their transactions online then he's waiting until the next bill arrives in the mail before he can even begin to pay you.
I use Intuit's Quickbooks' credit card services, very easy to setup, no monthly fees and a reasonable 3.5% transaction fee, if I did more business via credit card I would look at my own merchant account, but until then the Quickbooks system works just fine. My clients also see MY business name on their bills.
They do keep a 5% rolling reserve for 180 days, but hey, now I have a steady stream of residual income over time and I didn't have to put up several thousand in reserve funds either.
I considered PayPal, but quickly realized that would be foolish and I really didn't want to cheapen my business by slapping that icon on the front page.
is that they screw the vendor out of way too much money. They take at least $2.50 from every order, which is just something I will not tolerate either as a buyer or a seller. If I'm registering a $5 piece of shareware, I don't like the idea of Kagi sucking half that down their throats when my intent is to reward the author for a good program. At least PayPal is reasonable (or at least comparable to CC companies) when it comes to taking their cut. Sorry, but I will never again use Kagi (I did use it once, for GraphicConverter, before I looked into how high their fees were) to register software.
here is paypalwarning.com whois info for those who want to do more research.
PaypalWarning.com
2934 Ingelow Street
San Diego, CA 92106
US
Domain Name: PAYPALWARNING.COM
Administrative Contact:
USE WHOIS.CommercialNetworkServices.com FOR INFO abuse@CommercialNetworkServices.com
CommercialNetworkServices.com
2934 Ingelow Street
San Diego, CA 92106
US
Phone- 619 719 0109
Fax- 619 523 3862
Technical Contact:
USE WHOIS.CommercialNetworkServices.com FOR INFO abuse@CommercialNetworkServices.com
CommercialNetworkServices.com
2934 Ingelow Street
San Diego, CA 92106
US
Phone- 619 719 0109
Fax- 619 523 3862
Record updated on 2001-04-26 16:02:34.
Record created on 2001-04-26.
Record expires on 2002-04-26.
Database last updated on 2001-12-10 03:18:56 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.COMMERCIAL-ILLUSIONS.COM 209.242.130.2
NS2.COMMERCIAL-ILLUSIONS.COM 209.242.130.3
The previous information has been obtained either directly from the
registrant or a registrar of the domain name other than Network Solutions.
Network Solutions, therefore, does not guarantee its accuracy or
completeness.
What the subject says. I think, as a couple of other people have said, we really only tend to hear from people with complaints. So I'm going to post a message for what I suspect is the silent majority. :-)
As someone who's used them quite a few times over the last 1-2 years to pay for things, I've had no problems at all.
Hello,
:-)
/.'ed or reprisals for just asking the question or to be considered a spammer trying to generate hits for my own site. I promise you this was not a flame nor a troll. Just an honest question neeeding a response from many people to get an accurate sample. From the response here I believe I will open a merchant account with a real bank and forgo this paypal system. I realize I was losing sales due to only having paypal as a system, but I was hoping I was at a minimum secure.
Thank you for all the responses, I am not trying to flame either the person with the paypal complaint site nor paypal itself. I just did not know who to believe. Someone had asked me if I had any trouble with paypal to which the answer is no. It did however get me curious so a quick run through google and the usual sources pointed me to that site and a few others as was pointed out above. From past experiences I've learned if you wait till something goes wrong then it is just too late. This is why I asked the question here because of all the sites I trust this is it for straight from the gut info.
I have a personal site that does take donations as well as make sales and most of my money was in the checking account linked to paypal (I know it was stupid and it's changing tomorrow). I get about 1 or 2 transactions a week but that is increasing (building a good website has its downsides
I did not include my name or link to my site because I did not want it
Thank you for taking the time to provide the information and I hope I can contribute to your questions in the future.
(Meanwhile, Lik-sang have recently denied a credit card payment because of some peice of information that Australian banks don't give out.)
I was one of the customers who paid with credit cards. When I went through PayPal's dispute process, they claimed that an investigation would take 60 days. Guess what: nearly all credit card issuers won't let you dispute something more than 60 days old.
You guessed it: PayPal came back and said that I was in the right, but the seller removed all money from their account, so they couldn't collect for me.
My suggestion: give PayPal a firm dispute deadline of 60 days from the date of the transaction or the date of the statement (whichever your bank uses) and stick to it!
I've run my online business for over 2 years mostly using PayPal and I've never had a problem. In fact >95% of the transactions have used PayPal in the last year.
A friend did have problems will Billpoint a while ago. Someone fraudulently used a credit card to pay for something using Billpoint and Billpoint at first did the transaction showing the funds where there but days later stole the money from my friends account after they determined the payment was done fraudulently. This is called a "chargeback" for those in the know and Paypal *does not* do this.
My only advice is don't leave large ammounts of money in your PayPal account and don't use Billpoint.
I cancelled my account after they refused to stop spamming me. The account had opt out options for spam but they seemed to ignore my settings/wishes. After several ignored emails to customer service I just said forget it and cancelled the account. I get enough unsolicited spam, I sure as hell don't need it from a company when I'm actually paying for their service.
i think that nay company that deals wiht more thatn 100$ a month wshould use a merchant account, it is sometimes chaper than paypals but definetaly a lot more effective. vikas
I've had a problem with paypal, but contacted customer service, and was quite happy with the thourough and prompt responce that I got from their customer service ppl. I haven't ever had a problem since.
Just had a little argument with them this weekend ending up me asking to close the account.
.com with poor managing skills or seriously not committed to their customers.
Basically what happened is I "referred" my friend here at my job so he added his buisness credit card and created an account. He did the steps (following the link I cut and pasted from the browser to make a "click to this link so I can get my 5$ referee" used his account to buy 105$US goods, (so basically upgraded the account to international verified, plus email checked, he even received his 5$ bonus after completing the steps). Problem? I didn't get my 5$ as refering person.
5$ is nothing, but it's a damn good test to see how customer service works. I e-mailed them, telling the situation, that he did complete all the steps, but I don't even see him in my referee database, and that it's like maybe the cookies or the fact that he used the same computer that I was logued on before manage to screw up something in the automated process. I gave the information of the other account, and told them that they could email him to confirm (or even check the logs, they would see it came from the same IP address (intranet here and 1 internet feed).
Now, any good customer service wouldn't have argued, seeing that they made already more than the lousy 5$ of profit with my buying habbits, it would have been a no-brainer to just doublecheck the logs and fix that. They didn't. They say I probably missed a step (I didn't, triple-checked). I assumed it was their system, I never for a second thought that maybe it was on purpose, etc...
I found their responde not really good, I was a bit dissapointed at that kind of attitude toward a stupid 5$ so I went on the web and looked if anyone else had problems or if it was current practice, you know, just to check if everything is okay and since you have no control on what they could actually do, might as well doublecheck before receiving money. I found a site "paypalwarning.com" that really rang a bell... I responded to paypal mentionning that site and the fact that I was starting to feel uneasy doing buisness with them, seeing how bad they hang on a 5$ that they owe me for refering someone, and the fact that it seems to be current practice to do bad stuff to their customers... they didn't move. So I asked to close my account and my CC expires in january so I am not too much worried.
While a lot of people are trying to abuse the system, or any system in place, there are honnest people that aren't asking for the moon and understands that buisness are there to make a profit. Acting unethical like that with people that are like me drives off buisness and worse, usually you keep the bad apples and/or newbies altogether which can become a nightmare to manage and hard to turn to a profit because of the support costs.
It was only 5$, but the principle is if you can screw me or your system screws up on it, what will happen when I'll process 100s of $? Making people feel safe about their transactions is the KEY to E-commerce, price is only one small factor. Service and security are bigger concerns IMHO.
The concept is superb, I thought paypal would become the next "Ebay" of the net, seems like they are another
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
The courts recently decided that comments on bulletin boards are assumed to be personal opinions - you know kinda like free speech....
There's your problem - we're all talking about PayPal! Best check those URL's before you try again! And don't be fooled by "PaiPal"!
I was on vacation in Thailand.
I got an email from Paypal.com saying I had $200 that someone sent me. I logged in via the link they provided and tried to xfer to my checking.
Frozen.
It took along time to find out that it's because I was in Thailand. I got the money after a 60 day freeze and closed the account since they were terrible to deal with.
I could go on and on about emails and phone calls, but suffice it to say they suck
YES, there is a McDonald's in Hanoi Square.
paypal bastards in customer service
I had zero problem with PayPal for a year till two months ago my account got hacked. Someone stole $985 to pay for two eBay auctions. The shipping address was trackable but the local police said the place was a very bad area and they don't know whether they can find the person. FBI is too busy to handle this, although there are evidences showing that this hacker may have stole much more money from other people.
The best part was, you feel pretty good with PayPal because of the third party insurance. But when you really need it, PayPal is not very helpful. I reported to PayPal right away and then realized that they don't even have a phone number regular users can call. It took them six days to reply my email asking for affidavit. I sent out my affidavit with police report right away via priority mail and it took them two weeks to reply me this time saying that they have never received it. Upon my request they finally gave me a fax number. About a week after I faxed everything to them, they reversed the two transactions, but then restored one, and then charged another $625 without any reason given. So my account actually got a even bigger negative number than before. I've sent tons of emails to them checking about this. And after 20 days silence, PayPal wrote me another email on Dec. 9, exactly two month since the hacking attack, claiming that they had never received my fax. Fortunately I did keep the receipt of the fax to prove that I have sent the fax and they had received it.
Today I got a statement from my bank saying that because the recurring overdraft situation has not been resolved for too long, they have closed my checking account and filed a record for five years. Next they will pass my case to an agent to collect the money from me. PayPal has no comments at all so far.
PayPal is a neat thing when there's nothing wrong. But once there's a problem (and the problem is likely to occur again since the hacker is still not tracked down yet), they just leave you aside. It reminds me a joke I've heard, something providing you a false feeling of security while you are actually being screwed. It refers to condom before... now I think it fits PayPal better.
I am working on suing PayPal since I have to get my banking record straight up. If anyone has similar experience and want to work on it together, please contact me at hook@263.net (sorry to use such an address... I only use it for first contact because it has spam filter.)
I have sufficient documents to prove the story. Including my certified affidavit, police report, bank statement, email history and transaction summary.
Hook
The next question is why you would want a payment processing system written in Perl.
That PayPal horror stories website is running ads for a PayPal competitor -- c2it.com
So this website has a good deal of interest in shocking and horrifying its visitors.
if Paypay got DDoS'ed by all the nice slashdot readers who have the ability to do that :)
No big deal, but I was charged three times in a Paypal screw up when I joined.
$3 is surely a laughable amount, but if a screw-up like that can happen, then surely bigger ones can and do happen.
My advise is only use it if there are absolutely no other channels that you can send money through.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
MIT's magazine the Technology Review recently did an article on PayPal. Here is the link:
http://techreview.com/magazine/dec01/schwartz.asp
I found the article interesting, I am personally kind of torn on the PayPal issue. I have an account, but am hesitant to push it. I just don't get the "warm and fuzzies" from PayPal, though it is by far the simplest and easist thing out there that I have found to accet the occassional payment.
-MS2K
Use a second bank account for PayPal to put money in. Don't use your primary business checking.
I know...I've used it. I suppose it's best for charities and shit like that, but for business, it totally sucks a pig dick. At least set up some sort of snail mail address so's I can pay your arse with a money order, capiche?
So ya wanna email me, eh? Change
Anyone have anything to say about
Click Bank?
It's not free but it's a much better service for both the merchant and the consumer. It's $50 to join and then $.50 per transaction plus 5%. You get a real shopping cart - real items - calculated tax, shipping, etc.
Works great, instant setup...
tbdean
I have just been scammed by a seller for $608.50. The seller committed a U.S. FELONY by selling me pirated software, which he claims was genuine. I verified the authenticity of the software with the original maker, and officials of the company confirmed that the product I purchased are both illegal and non-working. This to me is the same as non-receipt of the product. I tried numerous times contacting the felon for a full refund, but to no avail as he now ignores me. This felon is continuing to sell the pirated software on Ebay at http://cgi6.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?MfcISAPI Command=ViewListedItems&userid=visteoninc&include= 0&since=30&sort=3&rows=200
I have warned all the winners of the auction already. When I filed a complaint via PayPal's Buyer Complaint Form, this is what I got in the reply:
"PayPal has concluded the investigation of your Buyer Complaint. Case Number:259556 Transaction Date: 11/24/2001 4:54:00 PM Transaction Amount: $608.50 Seller's Email: visteoninc@usa.net Seller's Name: Michael Bruhl PayPal's Buyer Complaint Policy does not apply to disputes about the attributes or quality of goods received. As a result, we cannot reverse the transaction or issue a refund. We encourage you to continue to work directly with the seller for an amicable resolution. PayPal does not tolerate fraud or illegal activities."
PayPal suggests I contact the felon, even though I have told them specifically that the felon is not responding and has not responded since he took my money. Furthermore, PayPal makes an ironic statement -- "PayPal does not tolerate fraud or illegal activities". What attributes of PIRATED SOFTWARE, that does not work, sold to an unsuspecting consumer is not a fraud? By not recognizing that this felon has committed fraud against an innocent consumer, PAYPAL IS HARBORING CRIMINALS AND THEIR ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES.
Many of us may ask, why are there no regulations against PayPal? Because PayPal is privately held (LLC), they are not subject to the same federal regulations as bank. This means the PayPal can declare bankruptcy and no one will ever know what happens to your money.
I want to encourage legitimate banks to come into PayPal's space. They are the natural heirs of of e-currency and they can definitely offer customers better support and fraud protection. PayPal was programmed by an inexperience 23 year old script kiddy who has no knowledge of real programming. That is why they were hacked. That is why many of the members also had their accounts frozen. We need a real company that is FDIC insured to take over this space.
I want to warn the entire auction community to avoid PayPal. I have never been more upset at a company for incompetence and negligence.
1. Person buys new equipment from me (via ebay)
2. He sends payment via PayPal paid via credit card
3. After equipment arrives, buyer says it's broke (I ship ALOT of equipment and pack it extremely well to avoid such problems)
4. I say fine, send the machine back and we'll repair it or replace it.
5. Buyers says no, he needs the equipment and will look around to get it repaired.
6. Buyer sends email saying he had it repaired and wants me to send him $400 via PayPal
7. I respond saying fine, but let me know where you got it repaired (this problem could not be repaired at any shop near the buyer it just so happens)
8. Buyer sends email with name of shop.
9. I hunt down the shop and find out that it is a used camera shop which would not be able to do such a repair.
10. Buyer seems surprised, then says it was a friend who repaired the equipment.
11. Warning bells are going off, but at the same time, I don't want to make an enemy of a customer. I say I'll consider sending him some other instead of $400.
12. Buyer says okay and we leave it at that.
13. A few weeks later, my wife has an emergency appendectomy and I am with her in the hospital for about 48 hours.
14. After things calmed down and back to business, I check my email and get a message from PayPal saying they need details on the previous transaction within 72 hours or will charge the amount back to my account.
15. By the time I receive the email, the 72 hours are already up. All of this happened when my wife was in the hospital.
16. In a few days, PayPal deducts $1800 from my account so that I am running a negative balance.
17. Angry, I send PayPal emails but get no response.
18. I call numerous times and I ask a PayPal representative what about the equipment I sent. When will that be returned? PayPal tells me that is my responsibility and that I should talk to the buyer. I say that they buyer is unlikely to return equipment after they already get their money back. PayPal tells me that is my problem and that fraud is a part of doing business.
19. As the weeks pass, I tell PayPal that I at least expect the buyer to be kicked out of PayPal, but get no response.
20. Months later after lots of badgering, PayPal emails me and says that they are returning my machine.
21. The machine arrives and it is a $30 piece of junk, not the high-end equipment that I sent.
22. In the end, I'm out the money, the expensive machine, and a lot of time and effort.
I had paypal send me a check, which I then third-partied to my credit card company. The CC company lost the check.
Interestingly, I had to go back to paypal, get them to cancel and reissue the check. Needless to say, they were not prompt. It took months to clean up the mess, and my credit interest built up (was a very large check).
Moral? paypal did reissue the check, but I wish they were more prompt. If I were dealing with my local bank, all I had to do was go in and raise a fuss witht he manager. With paypal, they are digitally insulated.
From: Larry Lawrence (12/6/01)
PayPal continues to hold my $600. Illegally.
Several months ago I was offering the general public a free copy of the popular OS called Linux 8.0. This is a freely distributable program under the general license agreement. The customer only had to pay for shipping. ($5.00 US dollars)
I had hundreds of people that responded to the offer and I delivered the program as offered and according to the law. 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.
Well, I e-mailed them back several times and explained to them that I did programming on my own and would never consider distributing software that was against any law. PayPal said that I had to prove that I had permission from Microsoft to distribute the software. Microsoft has nothing to do with Linux. Linux has always been to my knowledge, a free OS.
I am e-mailing you first before taking legal action as this is the professional way to do business.
They have closed my account, which is fine accept that they hold my funds without paying me interest on the funds and refuse to return the funds.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
From working at a bank, I can tell you this much. When a company such as paypal charges your credit card and delivers the funds to the intended recipient, you have none of the rights to "dispute" the charge that you would normally have. When you use a card normally, you deal directly with the merchant and can dispute the charge if they fail to fulfill their obligations. But, if you use a service as an intermediary, THEY are the merchant, and their only obligation is to deliver your funds. If you never get the item, or whatever, from the 3rd party, you're SOL as far as your credit card company having any rights to help you.
I can't help it - I'm a 19D.
Hi,
The merchant team has information suggesting that the product being offered was XP. I believe you have a direct contact within the department to assist you with your matter.
My god!!!
Thank you for sharing. THIS IS HORRIFYING!!!
IN CASE THEY GO BANKRUPT! I heard their lost will be over 125MM and they need an IPO to take in 80MM. What happens if they don't get the IPO in today's volatile market? I'M NOT TAKING MY CHANCES.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
I've never used PayPal, but to give anybody access to my bank account would require a VERY high level of trust. Simply hearing from 5 Anonymous Cowards that it was hard to phone them would be enough for me to say "NO WAY!!!" Not only can I phone my bank, but I can also stop in personally and talk to someone resembling a human being. Until PayPal is comparable, I say NO!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
This is not the first article I've seen about PayPal; I don't trust them any more than I trust Microsoft; think 30-foot pole, and future visits by the local branch of the Homeland Security Police on their behalf.
Enby in Waltham
I've not only cancelled it, I've asked my credit card and bank to restrict them. After reading all these bullshits that they pull, I'm watching my money!