Slashdot Mirror
PayPal Settles Class Action Lawsuit
ephidryn writes "I just received a notice from paypal which indicates that I may be involved in a class action lawsuit against paypal. Apparently two PayPal users, Roberta Toher and Jeffrey Resnick, filed two seperate lawsuits that were later combined into one class action suit. ZDNet has a story that notes: "PayPal said it would pay a total of $9.25 million to settle the federal class-action suit..."
I'm so ready to receive my check for $0.35US" kai5263499 adds "The settlement states that anyone who opened an account between Oct 1, 1999 and Jan 1, 2004 is elegible to participate in the settlement. According to their Plan of Allocation you can fill out a short form or a long form to sign up."
One of the things they ask you when you fill out the short form is if you want the $50 put in your paypal account. Which means paypal will still get interest off the majority of those that do have their $50 sent to their paypal account.
-Wes
$3.4 million (about 1/3) of which would go to paying its customers' legal fees
So who's the winner here?
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
Man, Pay Pal is good stuff. I hope this doesn't get them flushed down the old corporate crapper. I know several people who were protected against fraud because they used PayPal. Can I get a witness up in here for Pay Pal?
Really, the article states that paypal didn't hold up to some regulations which require them to have some kind of service in case a deal goes wrong. I buy something from you, and it appears to be broken. Now I should be able to resolve this through paypal. This might be good for the customer, but from paypal's view this is nuts. They are just an intermediary that handles the monetary transactions.
As an analogy, suppose you pay something using an ATM, you can't honestly expect the bank to resolve your problems with the product you just bought.
Come on, CLICK HERE. I know you want to do it.
Please login to access my lawn
With the amount of the settlement per-person, this feels like a mail-in-rebate. I.E., the amount is so small vs. the hassle (filling out a form) that most people will likely forgo the cost of a cup of coffee so they don't have to fill out anything.
Which means, in the end, that this verdict will mean very very little to paypal. They should give their lawyers a bonus.
Paypal saved my ass when some dude from the Philipines ordered a notebook PC and a modded Playstation using my account -- while my network is ironclad at home, it turns out that the one at work... not so much. Never doing anything like that at work ever again. I could have been out $2000+ because of fraud, but they fought the good fight.
On the other hand, back in 2002 they beamed $172 into nowhere and never returned the money, so some of this lawsuit does kinda ring true. The crap I had to go through was more than I should have, and I still didn't get my money back. Here's to filling out another form and hoping to see that cash.
I am Leviathant and I approve this message.
In my opinion, it's great that they plan to shell out 9 million dollars in order to "just forget it and move on", but it comes nowhere close to the damages and losses acquired by the thousands of people who have had serious issues with them. They still have the right to freeze your account, they still have the right to keep your money at their own discretion, and they still have the right to take it out of your ass if someone else screws you with a bad card. As far as I can tell, the only thing they're agreeing to change is how they handle disputes. Meh. Something's gotta be done about online-payment companies. A simple payoff accomplishes nothing.
I've known many, many people who were royally fucked by PayPal, so I have to disagree. You're talking about a company that acts like a bank, but is not regulated like a bank. You're talking about a company that can arbitrarily freeze assets with no accountability. In my mind, PayPal is a big fraud, and I would never give them a dime. If you want to buy something, and you want protection, use your credit card: that's *real* buyer's fraud protection. It's mandated by federal law.
The lawsuit applies to incidents that occured between Oct 1, 1999 and Jan 1, 2004. That means that, if in 2005 PayPal seizes all your money, you can still sue them.
Actually, they do have to follow a good number of finance/commerce laws, but to get to your point: perhaps they make these claims because they haven't been defined as a Bank yet.
You may want them to be, since they do so many transactions that affect monies and commerce in the states and worldwide. But until you can set up a mortgage, loan, or interest bearing savings account with them, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for them to be cited for bank law violations: you can't put a (legal) square peg in a round hole. They avoid offering these services precisely for the reason that seems to upset you.
The appropriate legal solution here would be to reform banking laws in the new age of internet finance to have relevant legal banking code apply to them.
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power