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Class Action Lawsuit Says PayPal Restricted Funds
trenton writes: "CNET News.com reports a class-action law suit was filed Wednesday in California Superior Court in Santa Clara County. The suit charges PayPal with illegitimately restricting customers' access to their money. The suit asks for an unspecified amount of damages. Have you been ripped off or locked out?"
Visit PayPalSucks.com for an entire community pissed off at PayPal.com's practices.
http://www.paypalwarning.com/
Visit the Wall of Shame for user submitted horror stories of Paypal's actions.
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
Need I say more?
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
Now, maybe this doesn't happen in every case. And maybe if you accept funds from unverified users you don't get protection. But I just want people to know that every fraudulent transaction doesn't result in Paypal seizing your account.
On the other hand, they are very difficult to get in touch with except by email (which we all know is easy to ignore). This is somehting that should definitely be improved upon.
Still, I like paypal. If you want complete control, I suggest you get a merchant account. Frozen paypal accounts are, I believe, rare. And I think they involve more than just a simple charge back in most cases.
NoPayPal is a site that made me avoid getting a Pay Pal account. I think Pay Pal is a great idea, however the business practices that is being portrayed is piss poor. Is there any competitors out there?
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
This happened to the leader of the Webplayer Co-op a couple years ago.
We had a hundred or so people send him money via PayPal to make the WebPlayer order. They suspected something was fishy and froze his account. You can read the thread from the Webplayer Co-op egroup here.
Eventually they straightened it out, the WebPlayers were shipped and we received them, but PayPal sure delayed the process.
Not a debit card or checking account. If they screw you over with an unwarranted credit card charge, your can call your credit card company and stop payment on it. If they pulled money out of your checking account (either directly or through a debit card), you're pretty much screwed (good luck trying to get your bank to do anything about it).
FWIW, using a credit card for most purchases is actually good advice, because it avoids all sorts of frauds and other problems (for example, a restaurant in a foreign country once charged my card twice; I guess they thought since I wasn't from around there I couldn't come back and complain. The CC company removed the fraudulent second charge after a simple phone call...if I had paid with a debit card it would've been a real pain to try to get my money back). This is provided, of course, that you are disciplined enough to pay your credit card bill on time to avoid going into debt and paying high interest rates.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
umm, thats a normal period for what it takes to transfer money from one bank to another... same thing would happen if you tried to send money from one bank account to another bank account
Just today I got a reply from paypal(less than a week turnaround - they're really ansewering email now). They've locked my account because one of the credit cards was stolen and I discovered this when I tried to use it with paypal when it was over the credit limit. They weren't out any money, and they already had another credit card on file.
I've used paypal since the begining (when it was a way to send money with your palm pilot) and always thought it was a great service, untill this incident. Luckily I've never stored money in my paypal account and I've never given them my checking account information(mama didn't raise no fool). With their form letter response today, It's looking like it's time to investigate the paypal alternatives that will be happy to have my business.
It's funny how hard it is to prevent overdrawing when someone got into my account and tried to take $12,000.
Back in November. I'm still trying to get it sorted out.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Well, if you read through the paypal TOS, you might see how it is a rights issue. Some examples:
.com statistic, you are out of luck with any money you have in your account.
-when you link a bank account with your paypal account, you are agreeing to let them take money out of your account at any time for any reason without warning. They have been know to empty peoples checking accounts to cover themselves if they suspect fraud.
-by agreeing to the TOS, you "waive" your right to pursue legal action against them. According to them, the only way to pursue issues with them is through an independant arbitrator. Obviously this doesnt hold up under scrutiny because a suit was just filed...
-paypal is not a bank- when you "deposit" money into your account, they become the legal custodians of that money. Thats how they can freeze peoples accounts on a whim.
-along with that last item, they are not FDIC insured, so when (not if) they become another
paypalwarning.com has a lot more info if you are interested.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
fortunately at the time i only had about $80 in the account. at times i had nearly $1000 in there. so i went to transfer this $80 to my bank and it said my account was frozen pending investigation. i emailed paypal many times to many email addresses and go no response. then about 3, yes three months later i got an email from them saying that my account was unfrozen because i was found not to have been apart of the investigation. BUT, besides the poor explanation THE ACCOUNT NOW HAD $0.00 IN IT! so its been 2 months, probably 10 emails, and nothing
-micjordan@hotmail.com
I liked them (and have used them fairly frequently for buying EBay items), however when I accidently sent someone the wrong amount and immediately realized my error, I could not reverse the transaction using *ANY* available option on PayPal. They *USED* to have the ability to correct transactions, but they seem to have quietly changed their rules.
I contacted the buyer and asked them to make an adjustment.
Not being able to correct a payment mistake shows that PayPal is running a peculiar type of business. Credit card companies allow you to void, or correct transactions, but PalPay has taken away the ability to do so. The question is why?
I just discovered it while reading a Salon article on PayPal's weak service. Apparently, it's run by Citibank, a REAL bank, so you'll less likely to get fucked over by them. (Keyword: less; banks still try to ram a dildo up your ass once in a while.)
Zodiac Survey
I am a satisfied customer of paypal too. I've had no problem with the various small transactions that I've had with them.
But after after visiting paypalsucks.com and the other websites and reading some of the stories a definite pattern emerges.
It is clear that paypal has a lot of problems, and I would be stupid to trust them with my money knowing what I now know. You would be too. The question is what are you willing to risk?? Also, they _are not_ a bank - so if anything does go wrong, you're out of luck. There is no FDIC - so if they were to file chapter 11 you would never see your money.
I will look for other services for direct pay. I'm sure that with paypals impending demise alternatives will arise to fill the gap.
Here's a couple;
https://secure.ikobo.com/
http://www.upspayment.com/
http://banking.yahoo.com/
Also, many _real_ banks are implementing online banking. You should see if any local banks in your area are online and see what services they offer. With a real bank you have FDIC insurance.
Read the Terms Of Service before you join up with anything.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
By sending the minimal payment you confirm that you receive statements at your billing address and that you can pay some money.
Every post that moderators have bumped up have been negative experiences. What about those of us who have had positive ones?
I have used PayPal for a year now. I have done probably over 1,000 transactions of people sending me money and me purchasing goods. I have not ONCE had a problem with their service.
I've paid for many things through PayPal and using my debit card. I have never been overcharged. I have never had funds taken out of my bank account that were not authorized. I've never had a problem. I've never had a person take my money and run.
Those who post here about their bad experiences are a vocal minority. People tend to speak up when they have a problem with a service, but say nothing when the service is good. PayPal would not be in business in the first place if they weren't doing something right.
Of course there are people who have had problems with PayPal, it happens at every company -- but I think it is unfair to PayPal to have only negative posts regarding their company moderated up for all to see when really there are many, many more happy customers than customers who are not satisfied with the service.
I'm a firm supporter of PayPal, I have done probably over $10,000 in transactions with them with absolutely no problems.
3 months ago I bought a printer on ebay and used Paypal to handle the transaction. To make a long story short, the printer never came and I filed a fraud complaint with paypal. After literally a month and a half of 'investigation' I finally receive notice that they managed to recover $17.50 out of the $222.00 I sent the guy!
I called VISA this morning trying to recover the rest of my money but they said that since its been over 60 days they can put the complaint in but I shouldn't except to recoup any of the money.
Just a word, DONT go through PayPal's horrible "FRAUD" insurance bullsh*t-- Once you think you have been ripped off IMMEDIATELy call your credit card company and have them deal with the situation..
This isn't the first time I've been screwed over, and I don't plan on using their service in the future.
I went to the eBay Smart Search page and entered "no paypal" and checked the buttons to also search descriptions. It matched 61367 items. Interesting. I'm sure the number will change every minute.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
dyndns.org has been accepting PayPal as our main source of income for quite some time now - we've had probably over $200,000 pass through PayPal without a single problem. In fact, yesterday they called to tell me that we've been assigned a dedicated account manager, with a secret VIP phone number and direct e-mail address and everything. So it seems that, at least to their larger customers, they're at least TRYING to improve the customer service.
All of these lawsuits and threats from states are sure making us nervous, though, and due to various other things we were probably dropping PayPal soon - that timeline's just been moved up now. But I agree with what someone said or at least alluded to earlier; even if 10,000 people have had problems like this, that's only a tiny fraction of PayPal's actual userbase, and that's pretty impressive to me.