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.

Comments

PayPal...

[ak_hepcat]

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?)

This wouldn't be an issue if the banks were better

[targo]

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.