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Judge Says Paypal's Arbitration Rules Unfair
MooRogue points to this article in today's San Francisco Chronicle, which reports U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel's ruling that Paypal "attempts to isolate itself from challenges," noting "Judge Fogel also refused to dismiss the class-action lawsuit going against Paypal." I guess I've been lucky with PayPal so far, but I know a few people who haven't.
I've used PP a few times, and it's gone pretty well for me. I've never 'deposited' money in them, mostly because I realise that *** They Are Not A Bank ***, just a western-union house. If only western-union didn't charge as much money for money-transfers, they could take over the paypal market. ($18US for a $40US transfer. Hello? Can you say unreasonable markup?)
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
route all your paypal transactions through online gaming. have people deposit money into gambling accounts and then withdraw into paypal.
paypal legally can't charge fees on money accepted from gambling sites... so they don't.
i save a lot of money this way.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I've been using paypal constantly with ebay - both selling and buying - I even take donations via paypal on my website. I havent had a problem with them at all. I read through some of the old slashdot's on this and it seemed that people who had LOTS of money (ie: more than 1 grand) in there PP account somehow got fucked over but the people like myself who have $100 or less in there at any given time are left alone just fine. Maybe this is something the conspiracy people should look into - like maybe paypal fucks with the people who put alot of money in there at once because they know they can get away with it because the majority of people who run small amounts won't complain and will stick up for PP.
Ave Molech Setting
Actually, I'm thinking about PayPal. Either way, it's a moot point now. It already came and went. EBay/PayPal won. It was ruled that they're not technically a "bank", and so they don't need to be regulated.
Essentially, when you put money into EBay/PayPal, you're taking a gamble that you're gonna get it back. No FDIC insurance there. Hell, not even any regulations that say that they have to keep xx% of cash on hand. If there were a run on PayPal/EBay (ie: a lot of people withdrawing cash), I seriously doubt they'd be able to handle it. In fact, that's a good idea...
Somebody needs to organize a day when as many as people withdraw cash from PayPal. When they bottom out, that'll get the Fed's attention.
The unfortunate thing is that Ebay and Paypal were (and still are, I s'pose) linked so closely. I just sold about 30 items on Ebay and almost all of the inquiry e-mails I received contained the line "Do you accept PayPal? That's the only way I can bid." I ended up caving and getting an account just to up the chance that I would get a decent price on everything. Lo and behold, half of the auction winners ended up paying that way. So far, I've had no problems but plan on closing it immediately after I've finished collecting and shipping.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that Ebay acquired Paypal. Do they have any known plans to let it die slowly and shove their credit card program to the forefront? Have similar problems emerged from the Ebay cc service?
After the thread regarding junk faxes/telemarketing calls a few weeks ago, I am happy to say I won my first case. The company I was going to sue over a prerecorded call agreed to pay $300 plus a promise to never call again.
However a few things are incorrect in your statement. Filing fees can vary greatly. In my county, for a claim of less than $100, there is a $79 fee. For anything between $100 and $5000, it is $96 (I know, strange but true). In several states, you are allowed to have a lawyer represent you, so it isn't just person vs person, although the judge may provide you with a lot more leeway. I now have one suit pending and am prepared to file another if they do not meet my demands within another week. Judgement is the easy part, collecting can be impossible.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
Firms accused of chicanery could get IRS tax break: Companies that cooked books may be able write off fines
plus, companies that must pay fines may be able to deduct those fines from their taxes as "ordinary and necessary" expenses. For example, in the early 1990s, Alaska lawmakers were incensed to learn that Exxon Corp. would be able to deduct almost all of its $1 billion settlement with the state and federal governments over the Exxon Valdez oil spill. A study by the state legislature calculated that tax deductions and the settlement's multiyear payment structure lowered Exxon's actual out-of-pocket cost to $463 million.
Congress has denied tax deductions for only a narrow range of payments -- including fines and similar penalties paid to governments, some antitrust damages, bribes, kickbacks and treble damages in antitrust cases. On the other hand, almost all payments in private lawsuits are deductible, including punitive damages.
cpeterso
Ok, so paypal sucks. Are there any good alternatives though?
It's the shame they deserved. There are hundreds of submitted stories at any given time and they don't take them seriously.
/. headlines a few days later from different submission. They simply don't spend time verifying the news, thus lost the first hand on them.
/. editors keep treating submissions like dirts, fewer and fewer people would care to submit.
/. being down to a Register redirector.
It's not the first time they rejected my submission in just few minutes only found it reapeated in
Call me a whinner, but I'm sure a lot of us has the similar experience. If
You can mod me down now, but please think about it. I personally hate to see
The one single point that jumped out of this article for me, was the allegation that Paypal would be collecting interest on the frozen accounts. That is a big no-no, and should move
this discussion away from the civil/class action
stuff, and straight into federal-pound-me-in-the-ass charges for the people at the highest levels of the company.
They are simply not allowed to do this, and one of the most important things that enables them to claim that they are "not a bank", which they point out repeatedly in their agreements, is that
they fully insulate the deposit money from their corporate assets. Collecting interest on the deposit money is exactly the opposite of this.
Did you think they put that detail in the licence agreement because it sounds good? No! They put it there because it is the very thing that allows them to operate outside of banking laws.
If they don't do this, then there might be some serious consequences -- instead of having a judge merely suggest that their arbitration policies might be unfair (which was simply a wave of the gavel intended to remove a barrier for the procedure of a specific lawsuit), they could find themselves on the wrong end of a judicial ruling to the effect of, despite their claim to the contrary, PayPal is a bank, has function as a bank, and has violated federal, state, and local banking laws. Tack on a few mail fraud violations, and you might get to see pictures of another suit in handcuffs.
Looking forward to it.
Does it occur to anyone that this was basically exactly the argument that Napster was running, in that they weren't responsible for the use of their system? I seem to recall at the time that /. thought it was the best argument ever, or does the strength of the argument depend only on if /.ers are getting free stolen music from the arguer? I mean at least Paypal has a largely legitimate business going, unlike Napster which was founded upon the supposed "abuse" of the system.
Oh, and before you mod me as Flamebait, I want to point out that this is a genuine opinion, and not just something intended to tick people off. I'm just saying that you have to either accept or reject (IMHO reject) that line of argument, you can't accept if just for those you like and reject it for others.
"PalPal democratizes taking credit cards"
First off, I just have to say how I laughed at that title. That's like saying Lenin democratized Russia. Replacing one oppressive regime with another doesn't change anything. PayPal just makes sure everybody is oppressed evenly.
"Best of all, the fees were only $0.30 plus 2.9% per transaction, with no monthly minimum, terminal fees, etc. like with a standard credit card processor. This page [paypal.com] at PalPal shows the comparison."
That's all well and good, but my problem (well, one of them at least) is that they charge per-dollar to begin with. For most normal bank transactions, you are charged per-transaction, not per-dollar, and it's only with credit cards do we see this baseless pricing racket put in place. I mean, it't not like transferring $100.00 requires ten times the amount of bits to move through the wire than $10.00.
On top of that, it takes them several days to transfer money to my checking account, but they can take it from my account "instantly?" Why does it work that way? Maybe so PayPal can skim a little interest off the transaction on top of the transaction fees? Charging me twice, are they?
I live in Louisiana. My bank is in Texas. When I sell things on eBay, often times when a person mails me their check and I mail the check to my bank, it takes less time to get my money than it would have taken through PayPal.
"To me, this means that accepting credit card payments is not just a privilege of those who can "qualify" at a bank, but available to anyone with just a painless web signup. And the fees are less too."
The problem aren't the middle-men who set up the transaction services, the problem goes much higher than that, rooted in the oligopoly that the credit card industry has become. Look at the recent legal troubles Visa and MastarCard are finding themselves in.
"If PayPal can ever get its customer service act together, it will really give banks a challenge."
It will be a cold day in hell before most banks can challenge my bank as far as I'm concerned. And PayPal has a long way to catch up with normal banks.
Just as an example, most banks don't make you sit through click-through ads before you can access your account. If that's not outright contempt for their customers, I don't know what is.
I have so much more respect for Citibank and c2it at this point that it's not even funny. Seriously. Large uber-corp offering a better service at a better price than some dot-bomb start up. Go figure.
I come from a small country in Eastern Europe (Estonia) but I have lived in the US for the last three years. One thing that surprised me most when I moved here was the backwardness of the US banking system (this is not meant as a flamebait, just the sad truth). In my home country there's a very advanced electronic banking system. Some examples:
1) Whenever you open an account in any bank, you always get free Internet access to it and full control over your account (since 1997).
2) You can transfer money from any account of any bank to any other account of any other bank, the account number system, routing and other issues are standardized by the central bank (since 1995).
3) In most banks, all Internet-based transactions are free (since 1994).
4) Proper security. None of this 4-6 digit PIN nonsense, you get either at least two passwords (one made up by you, the other comes on a password sheet that contains tens of different passwords and changes from session to session), or a smart card (since 1996).
I guess there are lots of other features by now but these are the ones that were implemented 5+ years ago and still aren't implemented in the US.
I find it truly weird that I have complete control over an account and I can handle all sorts of transactions in my home country that is thousands of miles away but I still have to walk over to my local bank that is just 3 miles away every now and then.
Just one example of how useful the system was: When we went out to lunch with friends, we never had to go through this bill-counting ritual (got change for 20?) when paying for it, one guy paid for lunch, and the others just transferred money immediately and directly to his bank account.
If only the US banks got their act together and implemented a normal bank-to-bank transaction system, we wouldn't have this discussion here.
When men used to be men