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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
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
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.
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.
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uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power