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PayPal Freezes Hurricane Relief Account
logan5 writes "SomethingAwful's forum denizens, on the call of site admin Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, raised over $20,000 dollars to be donated to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. This was done via a PayPal donation link, and PayPal has now frozen the account on a twofold basis: one, that there have been reports of "suspicious behavior" from the "buyers," and two, that no shipping records have been provided for the donations." Since so many users are asking for it, SomethingAwful has provided a link for those wishing to still make donations to the Red Cross in the meantime.
You hate dealing with them the more you have to deal with them. Sadly this is not the first case of paypal outrageousness. They will happily do what they want and often may take money, they do not follow any real guidelines and you are often left out in the cold without them helping you. Sadly there is not a whole lot one can do when you run into bad luck. Unfortunately it can be hard to transfer money with others, and so you are left forced to deal with paypal. For a whole bunch of bad stories just visit one of the many sites like http://www.paypalsucks.com/ .
No good deed shall go unpunished. I really don't like Paypal, for this and many other reasons. What ever happened to e-Gold?
Now you have a PR nightmare on your hands.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
While I haven't contributed to the fund in question, paypal's amazing ability to decide when and where to steal money for their own reasons is amazing. I really hope some attorney general takes them to task for this one.
this is fucking bullshit!
Paypal: Where the fuck is my $50 going now? What the fuck is this shit!?
Oh, and the article leaves out that we donated this $22,000 in about seven hours, and lowtax was giving people free shit for doing it out of his own pocket, which was the reason he wasn't just linking the red cross. SA is down from the hurricane (http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/) so there was no option to use their own credit card system.
I am never using paypal again.
they locked my personal account AND My relief account. Got $4,000 in two days to give to a few members on the site who had their houses flooded out. I've been working with Paypal. I took off notice about a percentage going to the redcross - and they want all my tax info. I'd post the site but I dont want to see the site get ./'ed
1) allow people to open accounts
2) collect donations for disaster relief
3) SIEZE MONEY
4) Profit!
Remember people, PayPal is not a bank!
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Just when I thought PayPal might be worth doing business with, this. They must have a world class PR department over there -- "Hey guys. Everyone thinks we're evil." "Oh, I know, let's freeze the donations for the Katrina victims. Everyone will think we're great after that."
/. editors. `Aweful', you could say.
Absolutely amazing. I hope Google uses this as an opportunity to launch GMoney or whatever they're calling it.
BTW, good spelling
My other car is first.
Fuck You Paypal. If there is ever a reason never to use your service again, this is it. May Google open up an online payment system and wipe you off the face of the planet.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I sense a little anger here...
I loathe your wretched, vile, disgusting, bloated waste of a company with every last fibre of my body. You're a grotesque, swollen parasite whose existence hinges solely on the lack of competition.
Yes, definitely a little anger showing through.
Seriously, don't use PayPal for important stuff. I haven't read their terms lately (it's like, what, 30 pages long), but I wouldn't be surprised if they can shut him down because of his "offensive" web site, or because he used copyrighted screen shots on his page, or because he mocked and disparaged PayPal, or left the dash out of his zip+4 code, or pretty much anything else that they feel like.
I wonder if this is related to the PayPal emails I've been receiving recently regarding suspicious activity on my account. From what I understand, Paypal does not have various safeguards that can help keep fraud to a minimum, unlike banks which are required by law to have these protections applied to all their transactions. Unfortunately, there really isn't an easier method of money transfers on the web than PayPal.
Someone enterprising enough could probably come up with a good online payment system that isn't fraught with fraud. I could possibly not have to re-enable my account every other day when PayPal's automated fraud detection system finds something amiss with my account. I'd switch in a heartbeat.
Hopefully those poor people in New Orleans can get the money and supplies they need to rebuild. It's a sick tragedy what's going on down there. I've been through hurricanes before, but I've never seen anything as bad as this in a non-Third World country.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Here's a Coral Cache link: Something Awful Paypal fiasco
I think this might be a good idea since Something Awful was hosted in New Orleans and their main servers are obviously not online at the moment, so that temporary site is probably going to be blown away soon.
True story.
I had issues with them a few times now, from transactions on eBay and other transactions as well, one of which was never resolved and that money is gone forever. Thankfully the amount was insignificant, but it was more the point of the matter I guess, in that Paypal was useless in helping me resolve things, and basically DID NOT CARE and their "Buyer Protection" crap, is 100% useless.
I understand they want to work on preventing fraud, yet they need to be more careful about things, and take a better look at the situation, before just automatically locking a user's account such as this, and then having those funds useless.
You CAN call them up, and after being tossed around a few times, FINALLY get an agent that can assist you, but that usually is not until you act really pissed off (most of the time you don't have to act, you get pissed off at them hanging up on you, giving you the run-around, and such...) and then you finally get helped.
I wonder if all of us Slashdot citizens would unite and write hate mail to Paypal, if that would help in getting them to finally change their ways, and FIX the customer service NIGHTMARE that they run...
Good luck SomethingAwful! We are all behind you!
Lowtax can give the money to the red-cross in 180 days!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
While I can understand some system in place to reactively deal with potential scams, ESPECIALLY given such a huge disaster as the whole gulf coast... I agree that the way PayPal has implimented their automatic system is rather, well, awful.
SomethingAwful has a lot of (crazy) enemies - it's not surprising that they would get a lot of gadflies out there submitting complaints, even at the cost of relief money going to flood victims. And I agree - if there was any sign of a scam going on, someone should have called to verify the events, or had a better way of cutting the account than leaving everyone's money in limbo.
In the meantime, SomethingAwful really should join another site's charity link, and work to resolve this in a way that gets those funds ultimately to that place.
One example: Amazon's Hurricane relief page off of Google
Ryan Fenton
I urge anyone with links to the media to let them know about this, submit it to your local paper, and even to the nationals. Let your local radio know, write an email to paypal threatening to close your paypal account and never use them again, the more bad press the quicker it will get resolved and they'll be under scrutiny for a while.
Like here.
When a grassroots political operative needed a transplant and the opposition party got Paypal to shut down the donations.
This is far from the first fundraiser SA has run. They raised another 20k or so for body armor for soldiers in Iraq, and recently a bunch of SA goons raised over 6k in a few weeks and bought toys for sick children, which they delivered in person.
I understand your suspicion but come on, this is is SA, home of one of the most populated forums on the internet. We goons care.
"He does look a bit Oompa like, even if his Loompa is a bit off-kilter."
They'd love this story. Big company stealing from the poor hurricane victims. It's comedically evil, except it's real.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Lowtax was doing it thru paypal so he could send people some free swag out of his own pocket.
Get a free Ipod!
that is a very paypal-esque philosophy....
It was done by computer. But what's weird is that with $22,000 at stake they couldn't even be bothered to double-check. I mean, I'd understand automated shutdowns of $50 accounts, but, they already made $520 off of these donations. Why not spend $10 of that to doublecheck before shutting it down!?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You guys sound like good nerds, but I'm sorry, I still don't get it. Pay Pal fees are horrendous.
Look at it from the outside (my perspective.) The website is soliciting donations for the Red Cross. 7% of all those donations go down the drain -- all so that the webmaster can verify that the donation was actually made and give people "free merchendise"?
It's definitely not standard practice, and I'm sure not the way the Red Cross would want it done.
Again, imagine it from the outside: "WalMart Red Cross donation button! Donate to the Red Cross here! 93% of your donation will go DIRECTLY TO THE RED CROSS! Donations over $10 will recieve free Wal Mart goodies!"
I have nothing against people running their own clever, innovative charitable projects via Pay Pal, but this complicated and lossy system of passing the buck is foolish.
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
For some reason, I remember gmoney as a term that this rapper wannabe/future drug dealer in my high school would always say (this would be in the mid-late nineties).
After a Google search, I found that there all ready is a GMoney, albeit in the UK.
Here's the link:
http://www.gmoney.co.uk/
Apparently, it represents the gay division of Sussex IFA group Global Financial Ltd.
And that's today's fun fact.
The main reason he wanted to do it through paypal was to get shipping addresses, to send them free stuff for donating. Similiar principle to buying CD's via CDBaby, with the money going to the red cross.
The difference is, SA's servers are offline in NO, so he couldn't do it with his own credit card facilities, but had to use paypal. Who promptly stole all the money, not just the 3.25% processing fee.
I'm no fan of SA btw, or it's fans, but I can at least give props to the attempt to drum up donations with free stuff - and add this story to my list of why I will never use paypal.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
And, he needed to get people's shipping addresses to send them free stuff. I'm sure there was some desire for glory involved as well, but having 'the community' take credit is a motivation for members to assist. I think they would have raised more money this way, then by some other method.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Read the frickin article, you knee-jerk, cynical jackass.
If someone donated through SA rather than directly to the red cross (which it doesn't take a genius to do) it's because they decided they'd rather do it that way, and in some cases maybe they wouldn't have donated at all otherwise. They might not have rational reasons, but having another way to give money to a good cause doesn't hurt, and the amount that had gone in was a testament to that fact.
Are people still donating through SA's red cross link now? Probably. As many people as were donating through their paypal link before, so as to get free stuff and have their amount go towards SA's total? Probably not. Draw your own conclusions.
In the past (for disasters) people have linked to directly organizations like the red cross. "Lowtax" (Richard Kyanka, the person who runs the site) wanted to send anyone who donated free merchandise as a thank you, which is why he chose to do it like this.
Seriously, it costs pay pal money to actually talk to people and read letters. Everything is automatic. They don't tell you anything because they simply don't care.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You forgot to call him "Blowtax".
Something Awful is Somewhere Awful After the plug was pulled on the popular somethingawful.com, Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka of SomeThingAwful.com, hoping to focus the community's efforts on raising money for the Red Cross, in exchange for SomethingAwful.com merchandise, found his fundraising drive cancelled, by PayPal.com, when they shut down his account and stole the $20,000 dollars the members had raised for Hurricane Katrina. Everybody needs to see the complete insensitivity that PayPal has. They have no shame. They have taken money that was going to the Red Cross, used their policies against a fine internet community, and has stolen Hurricane Katrina fund money. This cannot go unpunished.
The only way is to get some attention outside the geek circles... as soon as the general public starts hearing about ebay (remember, paypal is owned by ebay now) wrapping up Katrina donations in red tape, SA will see some customer service.
I think it time we give PayPal's parent company an idea of what we think of their subsidiary. I'm willing to bet that if anybody with enough seniority gets ahold of this and recognizes it for the ticking PR time-bomb it is things could be set right.
EBay's toll free investor line:
1-866-696-3229
or
1-866-696-eBay
Have fun.
If they were responsible at all they would have contacted Lowtax first.
Get a free Ipod!
..but to see this from PayPal is blatent highway robery. Granted, there is misuse of their system, constantly as far as I can tell. But without being held to accout on acts such as these, they're no better than the ones who commit fraud in the first place.
Yes, raising fund for forces stationed in Iraq and for sick children are horrible deeds indeed.
Oh, and just for kicks, here's some basic information about the site: The forums, which contain nothing of interest, ask you to register before you can browse. Registration costs $10. To add search capabilities, which are standard on pretty much every single other forum, you have to pay extra. Want to browse old posts? Pay extra! Want to change your avatar or custom title? Pay extra!First, you can browse most of the forums before registering.
Second, the forums are the among the best, largest, and most literate, communities on the web. Hence, the registration cost is has two reasons
1) People tend to be less jackasses if they know it will cost them at least $10.
2) It actually costs money running forums with tens of thousands of users that require seven dedicated servers.
As for the extra features cost, once again, two reasons:
1) It still costs money to run the servers
2) With the sheer number of users on the forums (at least three thousand online at any given time), the servers just can't handle if everyone would search/browse archived posts all the time. Thus, either they limit it to those who find it worth extra money, or disable it for everyone
Whenever an account gets too big, they freeze it and pocket the money. They don't have to explain their reasons. They don't have to let you prove your innocence. They don't have to give anything back if you can prove it. And you agree not to sue them over it (probably not enforceable). It's all in their terms of service, and demonstrated in the thousands of horror stories you can find on the internet. I know people who have been hurt by them. I never have and never will trust PayPal with more money than I could afford to lose.
Is this the same RED CROSS that wanted to not give all the money it collected for 9-11 to 9-11 causes? That had to be forced to do it?
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
I'm getting 7% from what Pay Pal charges me for transactions with verified shipping to confirmed addresses for amounts between $10 and $20. Maybe he gets a better deal, I can't read the link.
In the end, it's of course everyone's right to waste money as they see fit. If people want to pay seven cents on the charity dollar to say "Something Awful Rules" then that's fine. It doesn't make it any less foolish in my mind, though.
I'll bow out of the flame war now.
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
Of course no one seems to have thought about WHY paypal canceled the account. I mean, they're an "evil corporation" cause SA says so thus they must have done it for kicks.
If this was a real donation scam account and paypal left it open I'm sure half of the posters would be screaming at paypal for NOT closing down the account.
Maybe you should consider how many donation scams must have been setup by now. Also, you may wish to consider how unusual this method of donation is and that more likely than not it is used to scam people. Most websites simple have a giant link to Red Cross and tell people to donate, because it's easier and they don't lose 3% in fees. You know, the concept of all the money going to relief efforts and not corporate pockets. Of course it seems SA decided it needed credit or some such for the effort of its members. Also, Paypal really has no idea who SA is or how trustworthy they are so they can only look at the current actions which look mighty close to a scam site.
I dont usually advocate this, but don't you think someone should SUE THE EVERLIVING SHIT out of paypal for pulling this crap.
Hundreds of people clicked "give money to hurrican e victims via lowtax" I dont care if I click "give money to potato farmers for space baby" paypal shouldn't have the ability of lock accounts. They have no right to touch that money.
Im sorry if I just blew a bunch of positive karma, this needed to be said, and with A VERY LOUD VOICE!
Then by all means post some verifiable facts and teach us all.
Get a free Ipod!
...all to save humans that were too god damn stupid to not leave when the nation told them to.
You god-damned idiot. Most of the people who stayed behind didn't own a car, and were too poor to get out of town before Katrina hit. Check your facts before you shit out your mouth next time.
I don't often mod negatively, but I wish I had some points now, along with a -1 "Racist, Clueless, and Uninformed" option. As I do not, I'm just going to point out that you are clearly wrong. I'm not sure if you are trolling or just utterly clueless, but either way, please consider putting a bit of thought behind what you decide to post next time. The crap you've posted is so trivially proved wrong with the most basic effort at fact checking. Try it sometime.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Hmmm, so this site called Something Awful which is new suddenly gets a bunch of money. I think it works something like this;
1. Spend years developing a following for a humor site.
2. Wait like a spider for a national disaster (I think effects the actual SA servers)
3. Create a relief fund and your loyal patrons donate money.
4. ???????
5. Paypal profit.
Ok, so a sudden $20k boost in a account should really really send up flags. However SA is not a porn site created last week. Where is their brains?????
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
There was also the tiny matter of all the SA servers being located in New Orleans. He would have used his own payment system if it had been operational.
Didn't PayPal get a Class Action lawsuit on the basis of something similar recently?
Yes but you forget this is America we specialize ( i know) in profits. Humanity what the hell are you thinking humanity doesn't bring in the cash. Maybe if you would have gioven PayPal a cut you wouldn't be in this mess now.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
I actually donated through Amazon's link before I noticed that Something Awful was taking donations. A few hours later, I checked my GMail account and saw that my donation had been denied. Turned out I used an old CC# by mistake. No big deal, and now I could donate through SA and get some free merchandise, too! But the SA page was showing that the account was closed. And now I'd like to donate, but I'd like to do it through SA. I want to do it this way because I'd like to inspire competition among net communities to see who can donate the most money. It's a great way to constructively use people's egotistical motivations, in my opinion. Wouldn't it be awesome if SA, Slashdot, Genmay, Fark, and all the other popular internet communities all tried to outdo each other in contributions? I guarantee this kind of competition would inspire tremendous giving.
PayPal provides a service of transfering funds. PayPal is responsible for the money stored in their accounts. If someone starts accepting money for any purpose and PayPal deems it a suspicious activity it is in the interest of the account holders that PayPal investigate the situation. In this case an account growing at the rate of $3500 per hour is suspicious. If the owner of the account decides to run with the money PayPal is the only one left responsible. All the payers have every right to sue PayPal for not investigating unusual activity. Don't even get me started on PayPal charging fees for services rendered. They've already provided a fee-free method for donating to relief. Full disclosure: I have been a SomethingAwful fan for quite some time and believe that they were going to do the right thing. That still doesn't make PayPal a bad guy for being cautious.
So? Over here in the UK, we *still* have Paypal alternatives, such as NOCHEX and PPPay. Are you seriously telling me there are no slightly smaller, less-evil alternatives to Paypal in the US?
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Wait, you're making fun of the SA users hygiene and social skills, yet you're an Anonymous Coward on the slashdot message boards. I'm sorry, but you lose.
I've heard so many stories, like most of us, about the things that people at Paypal do that it doesn't even surprise me anymore. But what can a community do to stop this ridiculous behaviour?
Pretty much nothing. And one big reason for that is ebay. I don't know the figures but I imagine most of Paypal's revenues come from ebay transactions. People use it, even when they don't want too, to pay for ebay products. So unless a competitor for ebay comes up(and they don't buy it out), I'm sure we'll read more of these stories in the future.
On a sidenote, why is this frozen account not mentioned on the SomethignAwful mainpage?
I can't say I love paypal.. but with the low volume I do, I can't justify paying monthly fees to process credit card payments.
Besides paypal what other services out there will process payments without requiring a monthly fee?
JD
The owner of Something Awful is a longtime customer of PayPal. This isn't some fly-by-night operation that just popped up. Five minutes of investigation on PayPal's part would have revealed that it's quite legit.
And why would you be glad that PayPal is hording the money generously donated towards hurricane victims?
First, read the fucking article. Where did you get 7% from?
Next, realize that the percentage that goes down the drain is likely made up for by the people who wouldn't otherwise have donated but were convinced by the lure of free merchandise.
The reality is that people obviously care and want to donate. Now I doubt that corporate america believes in screwing over the victims but I think this shows how corporate stupidity can risk legitimate causes simply because when groups of people get to together they do stupid things like enact theft prevention that DOES NOT WORK. I'm sure this wasn't their intention but it goes to show what morons who run a crappy website can do. I hope that they release a public apology for this one but too bad it won't matter. The fact is that its possible people are going to starve because of their actions or they are at least going to be homeless a little longer because some dick couldn't do his job and monitor things correctly.
I'm pretty sure that if SomethingAwful was owned and ran by VA Software (which had a revenue of around $7.6 million in the third quarter of 2005), they wouldn't have an incentive to charge $10. However, as it turns out, it is owned and ran by one individual - Richard Kyanka, and he isn't quite as wealthy as a huge IT company. Like, whoa!
If you have bothered to take a look at the forums, there is no piracy going on. MP3s were barred alongside torrents from the forums roughly a year ago, as it was just becomming a legal nightmare.
EARN SOME HISTORY, FAG
That's how public television gets it's donation money, at least around here. "Donate in the silver plan and get this handsome Black Adder tote bag!" We used to donate to get cool merch from british TV shows that only came to the US through public television. It's not an uncommon system for raising money.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
Hmm that's what I thought. How don't I have compassion though, I'm confused by that one. I live in New hampshire, I don't personally know anyone affected by the hurricane, but I've already donated blood and money.
Get a free Ipod!
Seriously, just let me know if I'm way off here...
"He does look a bit Oompa like, even if his Loompa is a bit off-kilter."
The Senator is right. What I can't understand is why a buyer cannot get their money back immediately if a seller's account is frozen. It would be so simple.
As it is right now, PayPal can do whatever the fuck they want with all that money, and the people who wanted it to go to the Red Cross are left in the lurch.
I've closed my PayPal account, and I told them exactly why. I hope Google starts a payment service of their own, preferably one with support for easy micropayments. We could really use a micropayment system backed by a heavyweight like Google.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Naah.. the whole 180 thing is a lie to get you to wait 'til they've managed to misappropriate your money somewhere.
They don't need to misappropriate the money to profit from the 180 day time period. Just by having a large sum of money for a given period of time allows you to make short term investments and such.
Imagine you are an e-bank. You have 100k in your vaults that people have given you as say escrow for ebay transactions. You have 5k incomming each day, and 5k outgoing each day. If you impose an additional 10 day waiting period on the transactions you are doing, you suddenly have 50k more liquid cash. While you are obligated to repay all of it, just by delaying things, you have generated more capital.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
to come from this would be, if and when the androids at paypal finally admits their idiocy and unlocks the donation account, that Paypal dishes out some big $$bucks$$ towards the Katrina relief fund, to fix this PR mess.
And I mean big big bucks if those Paypal PR morons have any sense whatsoever.
Sig Under Construction
All the payments he gets via paypal are taxable income. That income, minus paypal fees, is then donated.
Therefore, the amount donated is less than the amount of extra (taxable) income recieved, so he pays more taxes.
Have this on their website: http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/cps/g eneral/PayPalKatrinaReliefEffort-outside
By the way, the Red Cross was a poor choice of charity to give money to. They are just as bad as PayPal.
well if you took a look at the location of new orleans and the area around it, you have to have a car to get out of the city... and well most of the low income in the area is black.. so going by statistics, there would be more black than white that are stranded.. it has nothing to do with people being perfered for evac... it just has to do with number crunching...
After trying to submit a comment on their privacy policy, I quickly became convinced that their customer service department was either reply-bots or incompetents.
It took at least 4 iterations until I finally got what could have been an immediate no-brainer "We forwarded your comment to our lawyers"...
Or maybe the CS staff has guidelines like "only people stubborn enough to reply 4 or more times to off-topic garbage can get forwarded to the legal department"...
After that it only took me a quick Google search for all the disgruntled customer sites to convince me to avoid them if at all possible...
PayPal sure gets slammed a lot around here, but they are a business really inbetween a rock and a hard place. PayPal has hordes of people trying to scam them with stolen CC numbers, and I am also glad they err on the side of caution even if from time to time what they do is inconvienient.
It doesn't help that when it comes to moeny, people get a lot more worked up at the drop of a hat.
Hopefully they sort out this issue soon and free up the money to go to where it's supposed to.
If you think PayPal is bad however, just try and look at the alternatives. Have you look at Western Union for sending money? Now THAT is a scam and a half.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your a fucking idiot. The people left behind didn't have money to rent a hotel, cars to drive themselves away, or the good health to just walk. Remember, New Orleans is one of the poorest towns in the poorest state in the United States of America. There are a LOT of fucking poor people, and there was NO evac plan, other than "drive yourselves out of the area." No busses, no choppers, nothing but "you're on your own."
Think it's so easy to evac on a tip of a hat? Ok. Put yourself in their shoes, the poor and elderly left behind -- first, get rid of your car keys and wallet. These people don't have cars to drive or spare cash to rent a motel, they're POOR. Second, twist your ankle. A good chunk of the people left behind were elderly and ill, so having a bum leg will be a pretty good stand in. Now, grab your entire family, as much of your property that you want to keep -- should be funny seeing you walking with a bum leg and your PC case strapped to your bag. Remember, it's a hurricane, anything you leave behind is gone. Now go walk for 48 hours straight, see how far you get.
Ok, done? Good. Now take a look around. Ask yourself "Did I just walk far enough to get the hell out of the way of a hurricane?" I'd wager you couldn't even make 50 miles. And remember, this was only a Category 1 hurricane until it hit the warm "global-warming doesn't exist!!!" gulf waters, where it balooned, rapidly.
As for the looting -- oh good, they stole a bunch of ruined TVs. You racist moron. You know why there's so many "black looters" down there? Because the media calls "white looting" "finding food". Oh, and the 60% black population might have something to do with it, too. Ya think?
They went 5 days without any federal relief, all so Bush could set up Photo Ops. Think it's easy to go 5 days without food or water? After day two you have to think to yourself "Ok, so the 7/11 has bottled water and bread, and it's already torn to shit because of the wind, fuck this, I'm going to grab some."
It's so fucking easy to sit back behind your computer monitor in some comfortable computer room on a cushy computer chair and blame the victims of this disaster and subsiquent leadership clusterfuck. But in reality these people were in desperate need of help from their city, state, and federal government and that help didn't arrive until it was 7 days too late.
PayPal screwed me over big time too. These guys love taking your money, but as soon as there's heat, they clam up, take their cut, and pretend nothing has happened. Don't praise these clowns because you've not run into any problems. The true colors of any company comes when problems arise.
All PayPal does is give you the runaround via automated replies, and closing your support requests. You can re-open them either and they don't give a crap.
PayPal and eBay are like HEAVEN for crooks for run around and commit scams. And the few times PayPal tries to be proactive? They end up freezing up money of legimitate transactions.
Man... what a bunch of CLOWNS! Ebay and PayPal, Burn in hell.
eTrade SUCKS
You can also go to Amazon and donate from there.
Oh, I see. People who have lost _everything_ asking for help is extortion. What fucking species are you? Regardless, there is no gun pointed at your head. Dont help, no ones making you.
Dude, they dont have to try. A major US city being pratically submerged into the fucking ocean is pretty sensational all by itself.
You are TRULY beyound clueless... This whole thing has been a royal cluster fuck from day one, and pretty much every politician involved, from the mayor to the governor all the way to the president has screwed up some aspect of their job to one degree or another. A power grab? Right... politicians are just standing in line to claim that they were involved in what is probably the worst excuse for a disaster plan ever concieve by man. Idiot.
I didnt know that criminals represented a minority seeking equal rights... Or are you actually implying that honest people faced with desperation are inclined to steal TVs? No one is trying to help them, that is what the army was sent in for. But if you actually consider taking food and water in such a situation looting I hope one day you find yourself without either in the middle of nowhere... Just you and a black or latino guy who has lots of both. May he treat you as kindly as you would treat him.
Ok, that one Ill give you.
Ok, now Im gonna rant. Those that did not have flood insurance (the VAST majority) ARE dealing with it. They lost all their stuff and they're dealing with it. Many lost their jobs too. Some even lost family. They ARE dealing with it. Most are not even asking for help. The people of southern Louisiana (of which I am one) are very proud. For every 1 person you might see on TV crying for help there are at least 50,000 who are quietly trying to put their lives back together. But whether they are quiet about it or not, most could really use a bit of help. You dont want to help, fine, I couldn't care less. But to actually be so fucking self-absorbed that you are compeled to publically complain that the mere act of help being asked for and offered in your general vacinity sickens you is fucking repugnent.
You are the moral equivalent of the looters you complain about. So selfish that your own personal status blinds you to what is going on around you.
On a different note, like humans chimpazees are social creatures. They naturally gather in troops in order to defend and care for each other. Do you know what chimps do to members of the troop that dont behave socially? They usually beat them to death with large stones. Be glad you are not a chimp.
- sigs are stupid
A Katrina relief effort by Little Green Football readers that had over $9000 in Paypal donations got frozen by Paypal:e s-our-account-as.html
o r-realizes-error.html
http://www.punditeria.com/2005/09/paypalcom-freez
Then unfrozen, thanks to efforts of someone higher up at Paypal:
http://www.punditeria.com/2005/09/paypal-supervis
This is enough to finally convince me to boycott paypal. My question is: What are the alternatives? There has got to be at least one??
--- "End Of Line" - MCP
Protecting your business interests because of suspicious activity? You bastards!
Oh by the way, I'm killing babies and clubbing seals, but don't worry - it's in the name of hurricane relief which makes it okay!
or else!
Touché.
- sigs are stupid
How does one write off the expenses of an LLC on his personal income taxes?
[legal goons]
Have already done this - and have been posting the following message on every forum and messageboard I am a member of: Subject: Paypal robs Red Cross of $20000 ______________ http://www.somethingawful.com/ Comedy site Something Awful recently organised a Paypal donation drive for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina (they could not use their normal credit-card processing as their servers are located in New Orleans). Because there were over 3000 dollars an hour flooding in, Paypal suspected fraud and have suspended the account, which then stood at over twenty thousand dollars. Paypal do not usually release funds on suspended accounts. They look set to keep the lot (on top of the 2.35% fees they charge anyway). Please contact Paypal at this link http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/websc...contact-gene ral
to ask them to forward the funds to the Red Cross immediately, and reinstate the account so people can continue donating.
Thanks for your help
P.S. feel free to copy to other forums or forward by email
Why is this such a big deal? Just because there's a natural disaster does not mean everyone can drop the guards on their businesses and for example assume no-one will be abusing paypal (just look at the looters). Why does he even need to set-up a paypal donation account when there are countless charities already set-up and waiting to take your donation? Why did he not just link to the Red Cross in the first place, they would get money faster and more people would trust them rather than an unknown web-master. Oh boo fucking whoo paypal are being careful, lets boycott them!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
So tell me, how far can you walk in two days ? And if you're carrying food and water with you - after all, you're a smart person so you know that the infrastructure is likely to be overloaded with the amount of people fleeing the city, and so you can't be sure you can get food and water on the way ?
Can you walk far enough that you'll be safe from the hurricane ? You don't know, because you're no meteorologist. So what do you do ?
Hint: option number three gives the best chances of survival.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Mkay, it might just be me, but it sounds, from the screenshot on SA of the problem, like some wanker decided, "Hey, let's report the donation fund as being a scam, that'll be funny!" Of course, I'm sure that someone has pointed this out by now, and I haven't noticed it.
Capital contributions.
I stopped using PayPal over a year ago, when I was ripped off by an eBay seller for £50. Well, I went to the Dispute system, but I've still not got a reply.
Hey, did I pay $10 to post this? No.
It's worth the $10 alone to avoid the Linux fanboyism and idiotic catchphrases that became tired in 1995.
Oh, and see the search button at the bottom? Like, whoa!
Have you ever tried using it? More than one search keyword and the system shits its pants.
And the servers can't handle the "sheer number of users" because radium can't code for shit and cobbled the software together from an old warezed version of vB and various examples from MySQL For Dummies.
Last time I checked, the Awful Forums rarely have performance issues. Previewing and Posting is almost instant. Compare that to Slashdot, where doing either results in a delay that is typically 10-20 seconds long. If you're going to compare code quality, try comparing to something else besides Slashcode (Nothing to see here, HURRRR).
What are your accusations of vBulletin being "warezed"? If Team Barry lacked any regard for the vB system on which the forums are based, the first thing they would do is get rid of the "Powered by vBulletin [really old version]" footer at the bottom of the page. It was actually one of the agreements between them and the vBulletin developers when they modified it.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
The attorney general that should get involved is Gonzales. Bush already said he had no patience for fraud - Gonzales should just look at the situation and either charge eBay/PayPal or they should charge SA.
One is committing fraud, I think SomethingAweful is pretty safe I think.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Just to be nitpicky, goon-run site Alluvion.org still hosts torrents for people who wish to provide them to fellow users. Thanks to it, we are able to share such things as that 500 MB video of Bill Hicks flipping out on stage. "Ah'm a drunk cunt!"
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
jesus fucking christ. many of the people who weren't able to evacuate were the elderly, disabled, over 10,000 people in hospitals alone. i guess you're saying the patients should have just got up out of their hospital beds and walked away?
new orleans also has one of the lowest % of automobile ownership in the nation, and one of the highest poverty rates. it's not like everyone who chose to stay behind could afford to just get in a car/bus/etc and leave the area. many had no money, no family, no place to go.
you're a miserable asshole for blaming the victims.
I'm too poor, I don't have a car, but I can afford a cell phone.
Cost of my car: £300/month + tax, insurance and fuel.
Cost of my mobile phone: £25/month
Replying to an obvious troll: priceless^W a waste of time
It's official. Most of you are morons.
the last thing you want to do on the internet is piss off the SomethingAwful crowd.
I mean, just look at the name. You don't even have to KNOW that they're goons to know it's bad when you piss them off.
Read SA's front page. The *only* reason Lowtax used PayPal was so that he could get donaters' shipping addresses to ship free merchandise to them as a thanks for their donations.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
Under UK law, they do actually count as a bank, and because of this have to follow all the same procedures as any other UK bank. They are also answerable to the British government should they try anything dodgy.
Of the 4 sites I visit which have accepted PayPal donations in the past, all 4 have had their accounts frozen. And I really don't visit _that_ wierd sites.
In this case the "buyers" are the victims of the hurricane.
PayPal concluded they are moving en masse as if trying to escape from something (debts maybe?). They are under the army's supervision. They move in large organized groups (mobs?), they leave their workplaces and take as much property as they can (definitely, running with stolen goods), some of them died (gang wars?), drowned (certainly by Mafia), some lost all their property (possibly in gang wars again), some are now located in hospitals (certainly after brawls), not to mention cases of arson and robbery reported by the Police. Definitely suspicious behaviour, and certainly explaining it with bad weather won't help.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
that site that shall not be named has gone down anyways.
leprkan...
Wrong.
You don't need anything extra to start gathering money for charity - be it a paypal account, your personal account, your pocket etc. And if, and only if you DON'T give the money to the charity, then they can sue your ass and punish you. Pre-emptive strike is NOT an allowed strategy. Assuming you won't donate the money you gathered and freezing them is just that: Robbing the victims, those who the money were designated for, from the donations. A thug taking the donation box from a kid, saying "It's not safe with you".
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
FOR THE LAST TIME I don't have stairs in my house quit fukkin asking me
So, some random internet website jockey sets up an account and begins to accept tens of thousands of dollars. Presumably, this money is going to be donated to the Red Cross on behalf of the users of a website and for the victims of a horrible disaster. However, some users begin filing charge-backs and... oh, maybe it's not completly legit...
Remember, Paypal doesn't have trained monkeys, sitting behind keyboards, waiting for the next sucker to come along and open an account. Like many other companies who deal with money, they have computer systems that scan transactions and hunt down fraud proactively.
Let's pretend we're the computer and imagine what we see:
Now, does the system just happily let the money go through? Possibly to Lowtax's bank account where, if the chargebacks are true, Paypal is out the money? And what is this hurricane thing? I doubt Paypal programmed in a check for natural disaster donation possibilities (although it might not be a bad idea, it is something that doesn't -- hopefully -- happen frequent enough to justify an entire process to analyze).
Also, Lowtax is running this donation thing from the same website that he runs his regular business. Hmmm.. Maybe the IRS will be interested in hearing of his handling over $20,000 in "donations"... especially since, I don't think, he doesn't run a not-for-profit. Oh well.
MAYBE, just maybe, it's all true. There's some evil exec at paypal who saw the transactions and lit up a big fat cigar with a $100 bill. Then he closed the account and withdrew the money to his petty cash drawer. Because, you know, they're evil like that.
But, in reality, the money is still there. Lowtax, and lowtax alone, needs to contact paypal via phone. Or maybe he can just continue to rant about it on the Internet and hope it all goes magically away.
Next time, folks, donate to a real charity. Something Awful, good intentions aside, isn't a charity. Something about the best laid plans of mice... men have got nothing to do with it... none at all.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
I am glad to hear that the strong winds hasn't knocked off your tinfoil hat.
1-866-648-5843
I was only offered this number when I made it clear I was closing my account.
I have seen lot of nasty shit from paypal but this is the last straw. Just closed my account, I urge anyone else to do the same.
O Google (or any other relatively non-scummy company) where art thou?
CDbaby is hosting thousands of indie musicians (including me) who are donating 100% of their sales to the Red Cross.
This is not going thru Paypal and it is 100% legit. We get no money from these sales, just the satisfaction of helping out:
http://www.cdbaby.com/mnmlm/n/m/l electronic music
http://www.cdbaby.com/redcrossAll Music
A aid effort centered at a hospital just outside of New Orleans set up by a couple of local and nearby members of a political blog site (no, I'm not going to risk /.ing them by posting a link) ran into this problem after setting up a PayPal link.
As people frequenting the blog started to make contributions, PayPal's automated anti-scam detector cut them off. After a number of frantic calls to the first level support operation they were basically told to piss off, and were finally referenced to a "Executive Escalations" department, but they couldn't get through to anyone with any authority. The members raised some hell on the blog and got other members to blast on PayPal. There were some suggestions that they would raise bloddy hell on the blogosphere if PayPal didn't correct the situation, and, finally, they got hold of somone in authority, who verified their "bone fides" and removed the block on the account, promising that a note had been added to it to prevent a repetition.
It's clear that PayPal is nowhere near being a useful mechanism for such acute, ad hoc situations, although the ability to quickly move funds to where it is needed is certainly attractive. I have idea what system combines the conflicting needs of authenticity and speedy flexibility
...rarely and when I do they have my money for as long as it takes me to read the email notice and transfer it to my checking account. Here's a problem with Paypal that anyone should recognize: do you see an FDIC notice on their site? They're not a bank. You pay a company to hold on to your money. And by their terms of agreement, if you read them, they can hold your money for any reason. They set no restriction for themselves - if they need to pay their electric bill, they can freeze your account and borrow/take the money.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I just submitted this little gem to both CNN and Wired news tip lines. That will undoubtably light a fire somewhere.
I suggest everyone else do likewise. Hanging out here and complaining about it won't accomplish anything...but when Paypal's offices get a call from CNN, watch how fast that account gets unfrozen...
Or suspicious behavior... If this wasn't the first time something like this happened. This kinda thing happened to Redvsblue.com, 4chan.org, and somethingawful.com on their first try. All involving large sums of cash. Not only that, to individuals -> www.paypalsucks.com Some even go as far as to say PayPal actually DEFRUADS people of their money! (Read the book Pay Pal Wars) Understanding that PayPal makes it's money on the "float" (aka, money that is temporarly stored), it's not to hard to believe they would defraud people. So, no, this should have been expected. No, Kyanka wasn't cheating you of money. No, 3 suspicious activity reports shouldn't have been enough. This is suspicious enough as it is. PayPal closes a $20,000 account without double checking? Something smells rotten here. And it would smell less rank if this wasn't PayPals first offense, or even didn't have a loooooooooooooooong line of lawsuits against them.
I've never had this problem. I've used it many times and left a tip.
this sig deleted by another sig
Greyhound tickets work better if the buses are working -- both busses and planes pulled out of NO several days before the hurricane. This is a lot of why there were so many tourists stranded -- they simply didn't have any way to leave. (Many hotels then kicked them out in the streets for "liability reasons".)
Interestingly, not everyone knew how severe the hurricane was supposed to be. News travels slowly when you don't have a TV or net.
People stayed for a variety of reasons, but mostly because they had no choice/car. Interestingly, if you walk, the freeways (at least on one side, I'm not sure about the other) are one of the worst places to be, because they are flooded early and often.
Lea
Hi, I too have been a victim of Paypal 2 weeks ago with our 'business'. They limited the account which allowed us to receive payments for merchandise but we could not withdraw the money. They clearly committed fraud by allowing this to happen. I spoke with my Paypal dedicated account manager and go no where in the first few conversations. One morning from my home, I called them again and I ripped right into them for lieing to me saying that payments could not be accepted, blasted them for having unconfirmed buyers, advertising "gaurantees" on our products, how they were committing fraud for allowing payments to come in and not go out, and driving my business into bankruptcy. I finally ended the call, "expect a call from the police.". I called the police and filed a fraud report. By the time I got to my office 2-3 hours later, they unlocked the account with no restrictions. I suggest to get a Moneris merchant account. They're absolutely awesome.
Keep in mind that during the tsunami aftermath, scammers popped up claiming to be established organizations (MercyCorps) and tried to scam people into contributing money via PayPal accounts. The FBI busted a guy, who told agents "he thought it would be OK to keep the money to fix his car and pay bills, if he gave some of it to charity".
So bet your ass that this time around, they're watching accounts for aid money for anything slightly dodgy and freezing them. SA has vast supplies of slightly dodgy, and I'd take any report of what went down from them and run through a heavy duty reality distortion field compensator.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Well, thank you for equating torrents to illegal distribution since I was unclear about that part.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I like Google very much, but i would not trust a Gbanking solution since Google is just to good at finding unusual ways to make money from it.
When i ask people, many dont even know where 'that searchengine' Google makes their money from.
Thats their power.
Information is money, and a lot of people dont know its value.
I would never give give google an overview on what i buy where for a given price.
Can you give me information wich is worth more? (NOT counting information people never hand over, like pin-codes)
Hivemind harvest in progress..
I had a paypal account once.
I used it to transfer money from the buyer to myself for an eBay transaction. I sent the $300 item to the seller in perfect working condition. He received it and said it was broken and wanted to return it. Being as I sold the item because I was broke as fuck, I couldn't do that because I had already used the money in an emergency, so instead, I filed a FedEx claim. In the middle of this, PayPal and eBay were notified of the FedEx claim and the guy decided to charge back his credit card. PayPal ignored the fact that I was in the middle of a claim and decided to not fight the chargeback.
So, in the end, the guy got his money, the item and I got left with a $300 paypal account that is still frozen to this day.
During the tsunami. Freezing the account until someone can check out that it's okay, is better than some other bastard walking away with money scammed from blood before they can catch him.
Some people might complain that this is delaying aid money, but if immediate aid was the issue, WTF aren't they giving directly to the Red Cross or other agencies rather than collecting freebee points on SA?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
There was a class action lawsuit against paypal because of these practices and PayPal settled. They haven't changed their practices though.
There are a few smaller ones but no one will take them on ebay. Try to pay with an alternative! Occasionally i see western union epayment options.
:)
I've had problems with paypal because my wife and i have seperate paypal and ebay accounts. My account can't be "verified" because we have one bank account. You can't have two accounts tied to one bank account with paypal. Then assholes on ebay require verfied paypal accounts which means i can't buy from them. Trying to convince my wife to buy a sun sparc box isn't going to happen
The issue is that people want one system for convenience sake. I suspect thats why debit mastercards and the like are popular instead of real credit cards now. Many people think its odd i have a real credit card especially in my age group. I'm a college student. (26)
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Here is a story about how paypal got to the way it is today. Basicly it's about the founders of paypal dealing with the .gov and lawyers so much and being put down by them that they finally just gave up.
Paypal / Donation / Server Update 9/04/2005 - 10:07 AM - Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka
I finally got ahold of a Paypal customer support person this morning (when I called last night, their automated "screw off" system told me they were closed for the night). I explained everything to her and she asked me to fax in a bunch of junk like my driver's license, statement from my bank account, statement from my credit card account, and various other things. I guess I should be lucky they didn't ask for DNA and sperm samples as well.
I told them the only reason, and I repeat ONLY REASON I was using their service was to raise relief funds, and the representative made a comment along the lines of "well you can see how it's counter-productive to get this resolved when you're writing 'Paypal sucks' on your website." Gee lady, maybe the whole issue could've been resolved beforehand if your company actually gave a crap about their customers and made even the tiniest bit of effort to resolve things without immediately hitting the "off" switch like that one jerk from "Ghostbusters?" The representative herself was nice, and I don't have a problem with the people working there; I do, however, have a problem with their automated systems making arbitrary decisions without providing customers ANY time to rectify the situation without risking downtime / account closure. You don't run a business treating all your customers like criminals and making them prove they aren't.
I'll be faxing in that information right now, so the money you donated to the Paypal fund WILL get to the Red Cross, but it all depends on the speed of the world-famous Paypal Complaint Appeals Department or whatever the hell they're called.
On 9/4/05, Rokas Kirvelis norgin@gmail.com wrote:Instead of writing a fucking essay about PayPal how about you FUCKING CONTACT CUSTOMER SUPPORT like it told you to do? I wouldn't be fucking surprised if you photoshopped those pics (because text is so hard to photoshop) and took the money. You're not even doing anything to get the money back.
Yeah, okay. Thanks again for the support, Internet.
Still no ETA on when the servers and SA will be up again. No idea when we'll be able to get the servers and move them to another hosting facility either. Running a small business is awesome because, not only are you in charge of making sure a bunch of people get service and employees get paid, but you're constantly responsible for everything and you can't stop worrying about what will happen. At least your standard 9-to-5 job lets you leave work at your office when your shift is over; a small business is a boulder you carry around on your shoulders every hour of every day. Some days the boulder crushes you, and this past week has been a series of those days.
My apologies to everybody.Check the status bar (or view the source code of your HTML-formatted mail) to see where those links are gonna take you.
You've been had by identity thieves. You should contact Paypal's customer service department immediately.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
Hmm, when the busses and the planes leave, and you're living below sea level, and a hurricane is bearing down on you, I don't know about you, but I'm getting the hell out of dodge any way I can.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
New update on the paypal situation on somthingawful.com paypal still sucks though :)
You mean to tell me Red Cross doesn't send verification/confirmation emails to the people that donate online? He couldn't ask for those?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Yes- you do a pre-auth, then fill in the top and sign. They put it in. You check your receipts at the end of the month.
Now when you challenge it, they request the signed Visa slip from the merchant and from you and compare them. It's the merchant's responsibility to correctly enter the amount and charge it properly. If it just so happens that the merchant entered something other than the actual amount on the slip, the money gets revoked and returned to you.
The only person they hurt is themselves when they do a slip request. And if a waiter/waitress does it, they risk their jobs (the merchant wastes a lot of time on these)
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Simple- So PayPal closes this 'suspicious' account. PayPal then confiscates the money saying it was invalid. But people would get annoyed if this happens... very annoyed. So PayPal (in all it's light-shining glory) makes a convinient donation of $20,000... no wait- $20,000+5% to the victims.
Now the donation is credited to PayPal- looks good in the paper, etc etc.
See- yay PR!
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
While I do know that in many cases (and probably this one too) Paypal likes to be quite draconian, in this case I have to wonder if they didn't actually have a legitimate case against this particular account. After all, a friend of mine is also running a PayPal drive and has accepted far MORE money (Over $35,000) into it than the SA account and has had no problems whatsoever with paypal. Of course not only does he publish the records of the donation money going to charity at the maximum rate that he can extract the money from the paypal account ($3,000/day), he has also filed large amounts of paperwork with both the charities and with paypal to stay above board with all of this. The last time that he did a donation drive, paypal even reimbursed 100% of the transaction and CC fees to him.
Unfortunately, paypal makes this kind of a payment avenue and "tip jar" type donation system so easy for people to set up that most forget that there are a lot of complicated requirements when you start accepting and spending large amounts of money like this for the purposes of charitable donation. There are tax implications surrounding the money and requirements surrounding the donations for the donor, for the intermediary, for paypal, and for the charity. If you don't abide by them properly you're going to get shut down.
I'm sure they are sincere, but the way SA operates kind of makes you think that they could easily have brought this on themselves -- going nuts about the Paypal freeze probably isn't the best thing to do to get it resolved either, but it's typical SA style. I hope for the sake of all the donors and the charities involved that at least for once the SA people act maturely in this dispute or else all that money will be sitting there for weeks while the SA forums go crazy with the typical threats of retaliation and the normal fare while nothing happens.
Voted 5
Ironically, PayPal is the only system trusted by the vast majority of buyers on eBay and similar sites, so competitors haven't really taken off here.
Here's the text of the update, they're on reserve servers at the moment, and I don't think they'll survive a Slashdotting as well as several thousand Goons trying to find out what's going on.
9/04/2005 - 10:07 AM - Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka
I finally got ahold of a Paypal customer support person this morning (when I called last night, their automated "screw off" system told me they were closed for the night). I explained everything to her and she asked me to fax in a bunch of junk like my driver's license, statement from my bank account, statement from my credit card account, and various other things. I guess I should be lucky they didn't ask for DNA and sperm samples as well.
I told them the only reason, and I repeat ONLY REASON I was using their service was to raise relief funds, and the representative made a comment along the lines of "well you can see how it's counter-productive to get this resolved when you're writing 'Paypal sucks' on your website." Gee lady, maybe the whole issue could've been resolved beforehand if your company actually gave a crap about their customers and made even the tiniest bit of effort to resolve things without immediately hitting the "off" switch like that one jerk from "Ghostbusters?" The representative herself was nice, and I don't have a problem with the people working there; I do, however, have a problem with their automated systems making arbitrary decisions without providing customers ANY time to rectify the situation without risking downtime / account closure. You don't run a business treating all your customers like criminals and making them prove they aren't.
I'll be faxing in that information right now, so the money you donated to the Paypal fund WILL get to the Red Cross, but it all depends on the speed of the world-famous Paypal Complaint Appeals Department or whatever the hell they're called.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
For most US tier 1 Cell network (Cingular Blue/Orange, Tmobile, Verizon, Sprint, Nextel/Boost), you can text in "2HELP" (24357) with "Help" or "Give". Follow the text prompt and you can donate 5 dollars each time. All of the proceeds will go directly to redcross, and the donation amount will show up on your phone bill.
Putting 666 in their phone number must be part of their pact with Satan.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Here's how it looks to the automated system that limited Lowtax's account: New or hardly used PayPal account starts receiving $3500 an hour. PayPal limits the account automatically so the money can't go anywhere, but allows it to continue receiving funds. The account holder is asked to provide some information to identify themselves and release the funds. Someone pays twice, or overpays. While they're doing this, they list the category of the purchase as 'Goods - other', which implies a tangible, shippable item, rather than 'Service'. Being the idiots they are, they file a chargeback or buyer complaint, rather than ask Lowtax to refund part or all of their payment. Now theres unresolved buyer complaints or chargebacks on an account that's already set off alarms for receiving an unusually large amount of money in a short time. Now it's restricted, and can't send or receive money. What PayPal wants from Lowtax is information to prove that he's legit, including statements from any credit cards or bank accounts he's used on his PayPal account, showing that he has access to that information and didn't just type in stolen account numbers, and a drivers license, showing that he's the account holder listed on the account. Once this is provided, everythings great, and the money can start moving freely again. Here's a (not so) hypothetical situation for you: Someone opens a PayPal account, and advertises it as a relief fund. It receives tons of money, but, PayPal doesn't limit it, check out the account holder, or do anything to stop the flow of that money, because that's a 'PR nightmare' and 'will just piss people off'. Next, this person takes all of this money and runs off with it. Now you've got a bunch of people who are whining and bitching at PayPal because they let someone steal all their money. 'PayPal should check people out before letting them accept that kind of money!' They go and file chargebacks, which leaves PayPal out that money. There's no way to tell the bad guys from the good guys until checks like these are done. Instead of being a bunch of sensationlist whiners about it, try cooperating with the company that you're entrusting $20,000 to. In short, grab a clue, please.
Suggestions for next steps:
This ongoing and repeated abuse must stop now!
That's bullshit. I used to be a waiter, and all of our electronic tips were tallied and given to us in cash at the end of the night. True, wages are only 2.15 minimum per hour, but I never made less than 8/hour, and usually 10/hour or more. Moreover, I was the only waiter in the place to my knowledge who actually declared more than a fraction of his earnings. Most waiters not only get tips, but a self-declared tax break as well.
Right, because the various law enforcement agencies of the US work so fast that there's absolutely no chance that someone would be able to rake in a few hundred thousand dollars and run with it. Nope, no chance at all.
And then when someone bilks you out of a few hundred dollars, you'll blame PayPal for not checking them out before letting them take your money.
If it was determined to be a scam, you'd get as much of your money back as PayPal can provide you. If the account holder has managed to run off with any of it BEFORE they were shut down, you'll probably not get all of your money, but the paypal account will go negative, and be sent to collections, and if any money is retrieved, you'd get that too. PayPal isn't there to pay you back for your stupidity, so they're not going to pay for your mistakes out of their pockets.
As for 'not selling anything', When you make a payment to someone through PayPal, it asks you what the category of the purchase is. I'm willing to bet most people selected 'Goods - Other', which implies a tangible, shippable item. Generally if you're purchasing goods from someone, you'll want it shipped, right?
Yes, yes, yes! I'd mod your post up further if I could.
The concept of a "tip" isn't a bad thing at all, but it should have been kept completely informal. A "tip" should simply be a small gift from the customer to the employee - *not* anything even remotely tied into the financial structure of the establishment.
IMHO, if a restaurant can't afford to pay their workers at least the same "minimum wage" every other business has to pay, *regardless of tipping*, then they should probably raise prices on their food to make it possible. If they can't compete after doing that, too bad for them. Going out to eat is much about the "atmosphere" and the "service" as it is the food itself. It makes little sense to me to pay as little as possible to your workers, when their attitude and happiness being at the place directly reflects your ability to project your establishment as "superior" to the rest and worthy of return patronage.
Obviously, nobody in their right mind is going to really state it in those words if they really believed it, but many people say pretty much the same thing, just in prettier words. Of course, it's not a valid argument, because of the logical failure that being poor is a choice. Saying it that way brings that logical fallicy to contrast, exposing the argument that poor people "like the way they are" by crassly stating the basic point of such an argument.
It seems satire is lost on some people.
I have $20 million locked up in a bank in New Orleans. The only way I can get this out is to provide a security deposit to the bank to validate that I have sufficient funds.
If you give me $20,000... I shall give you 10% of the money I get from my bank deposit box.
Please send the money to my paypal account...
rekcusaru@gmail.com
So what, it's ok to encourage people to donate money to anyone now? You've got to be kidding. If they can redirect people to Red Cross for now, why didn't they just do that from thestart - there is absolutely no need to handle the money themselves. Have people already forgotten about the SPAMs soliciting donations for the Asian Tsunami disaster? IMO PayPal aredoing the right thing, and there should be more done to prevent this type of 'helpfulness'.
PS this is not to detract from SomethingAwful's efforts, nor suggest that they had anything but the best intentions, but the benefactors of charity really need to be better protected from those lacking morals.
I'm not certain of how eggpay differs from paypal but I'm under the impression an eggpay account is just like a normal bank account but with the slight difference that payment is accetped from an email address. That information + contact details are all that's exchanged.
0 .html
http://new.egg.com/visitor/0,,3_45806--View_771,0
I don't see the connection here. How is this a bad thing?
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
All the alternatives in the world won't get the $30k out of the account and into the hands of the people who need it.
Regardless of alternatives, paypal shouldn't fuck around with this and they did. Unfortunately, there's no real consequences for them.
If you want to turn off your TV and computer, close your eyes, plug your ears, and hum the national anthem that's fine. I would understand. But instead you decided to play devils advocate to the outpouring of concern for the biggest national disaster in American history. I'd like to point out, like everyone else here, that you are a waste of flesh. If you won't kill yourself please consider cutting off your balls. please.
In addition to these people having no means to leave town, also consider that many of them live on government checks, which are mailed out on the first of the month. So at the time of the hurricane most of them have literally no money. There was no evacuation plan to get these people out of the city before the hurricane.
People were told to go to the superdome and convention center on the radio. When they got there nothing was set up for them. No food, no water, plumbing knocked out, and no evacuation. When your government tells you that they have a shelter set up for you, and you don't have anywhere else to go, why wouldn't you believe them? Stupid? No. Uneducated. Yeah. Maybe they'll learn not to trust authority, the ones that already have are those in the streets.
Your comment about politicians trying to gain from this disaster is laughable. The government attempt at aid was the biggest clusterfuck ever. If anything many of them should be very worried about losing their jobs and earning the distane of the people.
red red red red red red red red red red red red red ridiculous.
Fuck the cooks! Also, remember that the government taxes waiters based on "assumed" tips, so if you don't get your tips, you still have to pay taxes on them. It's really kind of fucked up.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Contact paypal, and tell them to either refund your money, or send it to lowtax. If they don't respond, have your CC company do a chargeback.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The former minister of Defense in Cameroon needs my help to get his fortune out of the country. Can I used paypal for that?
Don't think you can negotiate with these guys.
Let me recount an experience-
A while ago, I came across the wrong side of some people in the online world - seemed when I blogged about the Paris Hilton incident, the people who released the content weren't happy.
My servers were DDoS'd, my paypal account started getting attempts to be broken into, that type of thing.
I took the time and rang paypal, and got a real person. I told them, to please note on my account, that people were attempting to access my account, and other nefarious things.
I was assured that the hackers (as such) couldn't do anything, and I need not worry.
Two days later, my Paypal account was frozen.
From what I can piece together, my online adversaries put a donate link, to my account, on some random smut-site, and then reported me.
I rang PayPal, expecting them to politely unfreeze it, as I had advised them of the situations that were going on..
I was flatly, and blankly, told my aacount was closed for TOS violations. They wouldnt not tell me what the violations were, and would not enter into discussion.
$300+US into their piggy bank.
Interestingly, they keep emailing me and telling me if I don't resolve the issues on my account, they'll have to close it. Pity I can't login.
Paypal == assholes.
It might be Google.bucks, or it might be an unnamed earlier part in the public Master Plan a step or two before Google.Gov. A pity they can't roll THAT out at this point; they at least have some understanding of infrastructute....
I, for one, would welcome just about any new overlords, given the quality level of the current one. Frogs to Jove: King Stork has not been an improvement over King Log.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Yeah, SA keeps other organizations from donating thousands of dollars to charities all the time. Right? Think here. Please.
Lowtax said he selected "Donation" on Paypal's site. If this is a donation drive, what do you expect him to ship?
Maybe you should get back to work on Jason's Weekend II: Yiff Orgy.
So what are good PayPal alternatives for buying and selling stuff?
Preferrably working across the 49th parallel
Here in Houston, before the first buses began arriving, the Red Cross knew it didn't have enough supplies on hand to accomodate the number of people who would be arriving yet when large companies turned out to offer assistance in the form of manpower, bottled water & drinks and even food they were turned away. We saw this repeated many many times on our local news even once the tired, hungry people began arriving yet the Red Cross people kept smiling and saying "Send Money."
The people who were able to get out who are staying in hotels here are running out of money but nobody thought of what to do about that. In my immediate community local churches are helping with vouchers and offering the occasional hot meals. I went to a major chain hotel near my home 2 days ago to see if anyone there needed anything and was told by the manager that many of the guests had rooms because the churches were helping to pay for them but had run out of money so had no food. I brought several sacks of non-perishable groceries and when I came back 6 hours later with a major food drop, they were all gone save for 3 bananas and a couple of cookies.
Many individuals like myself are working with the owners of local restaurants who are donating their leftovers each night to some of the hotels. And the Salvation Army has stepped up to the plate with clothing and other donations since many of these people left with very few clothes and personal items of necessity. Where's the Red Cross?
The Red Cross doesn't endorse members of the community taking in or hosting refugees since they cannot "check out the households" they would be going to. Bloody hell, these people barely have the clothes on their back, many have no money and no food and the Red Cross is turning away every potential source of help available to them except themselves. Most people here are showing compassion and saying bugger the Red Cross and taking families into their homes since it could be weeks or months before they're allowed to return home and the Red Cross doesn't seem to have any grip on reality in terms of where these people will live or what they will eat in the interim, nor have they apparently planned for such a contingency.
If you're going to send money, send it to http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/USNSAHome.htm. Sure, the Red Cross is 'there' but at what cost and what miniscule amount of your dollar is actually going to any relief effort rather than to feed that top-heavy organization?
Thus spake the SysGoddess
And I suggest everyone else does as well. Just leave them a link to let them know why. I imaging the /. effect on paypal would be noticeable.
This doesn't apply to "every" vendor that accepts major credit cards and I'm not versed in PayPal's protection practices; But what "normally" happens is the cancel/new charge scenario...by example:
I take my wife out to dinner and use my Visa card (PayPal or other banking institution) that has a $200 limit or remaining balance (funds available at PayPal, funds available via your bank's credit/debit checking account, your credit balance perhaps, etc).
Dinner costs $100 (i haven't been out in awhile, i don't know if this is a realistic number). This charge is put against the account, so they can bring your receipt to be signed. If no tip is applied, the deal is done. No more transactions are applied.
However, if a tip IS applied, the first transaction is then actually cancelled so that the new amount with the tip can be charged instead. Yet, because the first charge hasn't had a chance to be processed by the Visa-issuing bank within the business day, it's still out there showing as a "pending" transaction.
The cancellation also becomes a pending transaction, but is NEVER reflected against the available balance as the new charge ($115 with a tip of 15%) now brings the account over the available limit resulting in a denial.
Another common practice is for vendors (or their processing center that handles credit card transactions for them) to charge the same transaction TWICE and put a "hold" on the second transaction pending the first clears (AT&T Wireless does this for example). This still reflects activity against the account as a pending transaction which is automatically dropped once the first charge clears. As explained to me by a bank employee, this allows the vendor to have a pending charge against your account should the first transaction fail and first in line if a deposit/payment is made to the account in the immediate future.
For the debit/credit Visa cardholder in the above dinner example against a checking account this would result in a negative "available balance" (albeit temporary and not your "actual balance") and your bank will often invoke an NSF charge for going over balance (Key Bank does this)! Normal credit cardholders can experience a denied transaction if any of these transactions brought them over their available balance and they tried to use it afterwards, but before the next business day can happen to "clear".
If I really am talking out of my ass...explain it to me with respect so I'll at least pull my ears out to listen.
A lot of restaurants and many hotels preauthorize the maximum likely amount instead of the current total.
For instance, the excellent and incredible Safehouse Milwaukee authorizes 20% over your dinner bill. Then they actually charge whatever you pay for tip. Since the bill for dinner and drinks for a dozen people was substantial but we had paid the tip in cash, we noticed the increased amount of the preauthorization.
I've heard for a long time that servers prefer cash - which I think is true for tax and management purposes. But I've heard the reverse from some servers - due to theft from other servers and bussing staff. At least with a card they always get SOME of the tip.
I try to tip with cash and make sure to hand the payment + tip directly to the server.
Personally I think credit receipts with tip ought to print the maximum preauthorized amount (bill + 20-25%), the payment processors should refuse tip amounts higher than the preauth and to leave a higher tip you should either ask for a receipt with tip included or one with a higher preauth amount - and you should have to do it before they swipe your card. (or have them reswipe your card)
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
This sounds like Save Toby. Where a man threatened to kill Toby, the cute little bunny rabbit, unless he recieved $50,000. Pay Pal thought it was horrible and thus froze it. If this is another repeat I commend Pay Pal.
Would have been easy for PayPal to fix- Just send an email saying "Suspicious activity has been detected on this account, please call your account representative Bill Smith at 555-555-5555. Deposits into your account will still be accepted, but no funds can be withdrawn until this matter is resolved. If no action is taken, funds will be returned to the sender." Instead, PayPal's response was - "Your account has been closed, good luck trying to contact someone"
No he couldn't have. People would have begun cutting and pasting false emails to collect free stuff. It sounds shitty, but it would happen. Sometimes a person trying to help out can't afford to go out of pocket to facilitate it. But if they utilize their social pull, they can garner a greater amount of support than they could have provided as an individual.
Paypal has been freezing accounts for years. Sometimes people get their money back, sometimes they don't. If you are a real business and process more than $1K a month, you should just set up a real merchant account anyway. It cost less and you have more control. On the note of donations, unless you can verify a companies identity and intentions, you shouldn't donate online or off. - Compare merchant account providers and save.
If you are a UK taxpayer, you can set up a CAF account, and when you put money into it (lump sums or monthly) CAF reclaims the relevant income tax from the government to add about 27%. You can then give money on-line to any registered charity in the UK.
(Slightly simplified explanation: Charitable donations here are considered to come out of gross income and the charities get the extra money you would have paid in tax on the amount given.)