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Paypal Agrees to Consumer Protections
davidwr writes "Paypal settled a suit with Maryland and 27 states. Among other things, they'll conspicuously advertise a contact phone number and staff it 14 hours a day and be much more forthcoming about when they will debit your bank account. For those of you who think Paypal Sucks, well, starting soon it sucks just a little less."
The US is clamping down on thier branch of paypal, those who provide bank like services should be treated like banks.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Do people really think that when a corporation gets ordered by a court to behave in a different way, that the organisation will really change? At best, the screwing over and offensive behaviour will become more subtle, or "accepted" (by their customers) screwings from other finance houses will be done by PP but "enhanced". Shit like them taking x days to transfer money about, for example.
But they still suck, I am still not prepared to do business with them. If I need to use the 'bay, then I buy from sellers who take direct bank transfers. Friends can PP for me, but I'd rather not encourage the use of PP in anyway.
Car analogies break down.
Nope, they'll still suck if they continue to:
:(
- locking out accounts for 'attempted signing in from another country' - yeah, without even getting a correct password
- only use a password to secure accounts
- only provide a national rate number in the UK, although you can get them on 0800 358 7929 for free
- expect you to send absolutely everything by fax yet they won't talk to you except by email
- not allow you to speak to anyone in the dispute or resolution centre, leaving you arguing with sales staff who don't have a clue
- make it impossible to close your account if it is locked, even after providing all the information you can and no money left in there
I'm disgusting with Paypal and going through the process of deleting my account. It's not easy, but I'll keep trying. Paypal will always suck in the UK it seems...
Dug
In fact it sucks less by precisely the minimum decrement of suckage allowed under law, and only then when compelled by the court. Way to go, paypal.
This doesn't make them any more honest, it just stops one of their unfair practices. I'm sure they can think of others.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I'm more interested in when they will be sued for blocking accounts based on "terrorist" last names.
Human rights, anyone?
parasight.de
Does it mean that PayPal will stop blocking accounts (and the money in them) for peregrine reasons like, in my case, your name sounding similar to Al Qaeda's terrorists? And I'm not even in the same continent nor religion as them!
--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, php, mysql, ssh, $7.95
I sold some information (nothing exotic). It was only $125 and i delivered my end. -a clean deal. A few months go by and i log into my account and see -125 So i say, "WTF why do i have a chargeback & why was i not contacted seeing how you have all my personal info" (acurate info)
/end rant
They say i did not suppy tracking information when asked. I had 3 days to send this info before my account was jacked by some little twerp. (zabasearch gave me his home address) I did not check this email because it is only used for paypal, & with no business going on.. why check it?
So not only did i loose the data i sold,.. but i ended up paying somebody to take it for me.
So if you sell something as a "service" how are you to provide a tracking number? Any graphic or website payment can be charged back
-another loophole & it seems that paypal does not give a shat about the person who has been using the service from the beginning.
now i have to deal with the twerp & waste more time.
Kill your TV
Reduce, reuse, cycle
PayPal not sucking is as improbable as Slashdot not duping.
Thanks, thanks, I'll be here all week.
--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, php, mysql, ssh, $7.95
well, starting soon it sucks just a little less.
It'd suck even less if they'd allow donations for SCUMMVM again...
Summation 2
But the golf ball though a garden hose still applies.
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But to all those people using PayPal what do you really expect? Here you have a company that is acting very much like a bank. It allows you to hold a balance. It allows you to perform wire transfers. It allows you to debit and credit your accounts. The difference is, that it's not a bank. It's not mandated by the same rules that the government has imposed on banks. Hence, you're gonna get screwed. Why? There's not rules and regulations to stop them from breaking laws that in any other financial institution are... well... laws. If you're using PayPal you have no one but yourself to blame. Sure, everything may be hunky dory now, but you're really playing with fire until they get locked down with rules.
Almost...
In Soviet Russia, YOU take money from PayPal!
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
It is run and sponsored by the competition. The webmaster tries to deny that saying he's just advertising alternatives, but the alternatives advertised on paypalsucks.com are FAR WORSE and just fronts for laundering and identity theft.
StormPay
iKobo
YowCow
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Excuse me but, he has a point (if said censorship has actually taken place, of course).
Global warming is a cube.
I thought Malcom X was dead.
I thought a company still had a right to determine who their clients were as long as it wasn't based on race. If a company wants to ban a group because they promote hate, isn't that their right. Imagine is a Jewish guy owned Paypal and had to put up with people selling Holocaust lamp shades and wallets. Should he have to take that kind of crap?
Sure Malcom X was a racist. He hated white people. Look where he grew up and the time period. I'm not saying racism is good, but I can see how he got there.
Can I bum a sig?
Didn't PayPal (supposedly) increase their customer service efforts a year or so ago? There's an old story which needs to be dug up.
The mode of the customer service isn't the problem, it's the quality. Even if there are live operators, that won't make any difference if they keep locking accounts for no apparent reason, or for reasons the customer isn't at fault for, or if the operators can't take reasonable action without customer acrobatics. The attitude and practices at PayPal are what need to be changed.
Of course, instead of lawsuits, websites and complaints, the easiest solution is to stop using PayPal. By the time I had made three Paypal transactions my account had been locked twice and I gave up on it; why use (and pay for) something if it offers no convenience?
RTFM; please, I beg you.
That's fine and all, except it's false. In your so-called "land of the free", private institutions are NOT allowed to refuse to do business with anyone they please. There's a whole slew of anti-discrimination laws that deal with that. I would guess it is forbidden to discriminate against someone for their political beliefs.
Besides, I though your party found Jews bashing to be cool, nowadays.
Global warming is a cube.
First of all, PayPal does not act "like a bank" in all respects. Last I checked, it wasn't possible to get any type of business or even personal loan from them. That's a *huge* function of a "bank". They also don't seem to offer any types of "savings accounts" ... merely a variation of a "checking account with interest" that foregoes usage of paper checks.
I'm not so sure that people would like the results if they got what they clamor for when they beg govt. to regular PayPal as though they're just another FDIC insured financial institution. It's certainly arguable that current banks never developed any of the handy features that made PayPal popular, precisely *because* they're too tied up with the "red tape" of govt. regulations to attempt to tackle it.
I know where I live, some of our major banks still can't even process direct deposit of employee payroll checks without the business dialing in at 9600 BPS with a modem! They haven't even gotten that whole system onto the Internet yet!
I think PayPal certainly deserves a few lawsuits to "force their hand" when they start playing games with freezing people's accounts without warning or good reason. But that can and *is* happening. With some of that straightened out, I think they perform a generally useful service that my bank has still failed to provide after all these years - so I'm reasonably ok with them.
Would I trust them with a large sum of money kept in their account? No way! But that's sort of like pre-paying one of your monthly bills a year or two in advance, and then freaking out if they go bankrupt and you never get it back. Use your FDIC regulated bank for money *storage*, and keep PayPal for money *transfer* when it's a convenient alternative.
For what it's worth, I have been using PayPal since the beginning and I've never had a problem. My PayPal money market account has a higher rate that any "normal" bank, and is much more convenient for online stuff. I use it to accept online payment and recommend it to all my web design clients. I feel for the users who had their accounts locked, but there's a balance between security, ease-of-use, and low costs, and personally, I'll take a little inconvenience for a higher interest rate and lower transaction costs.
o (British) bank should let funds be removed from an account with just the a/c name, number and sort code
How do you think I setup all those direct debits on my girlfriends bank account then?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Up until 2 weeks ago, I would have said the same thing. I've used Paypal for about 4 years, bought/sold hundreds of items on eBay, paying exclusively through Paypal. I even had the debit card, which I used to take advantage of their cash-back for Visa purchases.
In July, I sold an item on eBay, got paid for it, life went on. Second week of September, I get an email from Paypal saying that they had reason to believe this item was paid for with fraudulent funds, and asked me to provide tracking info, etc., for the item sold. I did, gave them everything they asked for.
Two weeks later, I get another email from them, stating:
"We have conducted a review of a payment that you received. In this case, returning the funds to the sender was determined to be the appropriate action, and we have completed a reversal of the payment. Good selling practices, like trackable shipping, prompt shipment, and communication between buyer and seller help prevent disputes."
Huh? I provided them with a tracking number, delivery was confirmed, item was shipped the same day payment was received. I contacted the buyer (this person has purchased multiple items from me, I have no reason to not trust them), asked them if they knew anything more than I did. They have not received any refund from Paypal, and in fact didn't even know there was a problem.
So, who was my money "returned" to? Repeated emails to Paypal have been ignored, so I've closed my account, I'll never use Paypal again.
No point. For the $30 that they stole from me, it's not worth my time to spend an hour or more talking to some drone who can't help me anyway. Getting that money back wouldn't change the fact that they decided to stomp on a long-time customer with no explanation whatsoever. I understand fraud happens and disputes come up, but they asked me for specific pieces of information, information which I freely provided to them. The delivery of the merchandise was confirmed, the buyer says he is satisfied and did not initiate a dispute, nor did he receive this supposed refund that Paypal claims to have made. I fulfilled my obligations as the seller, and yet they took it upon themselves to decide that fraud had occurred, and took my money. I was given no explanation as to why that decision was made, or exactly what the problem might have been, they simply acted as judge, jury, and executioner, sorry Mr. Customer, but screw you. There's simply no way Paypal is going to keep me as a customer now.
I'm not disagreeing that PayPal is far different from a bank as it doesn't allow Loans, Savings Accounts, etc. The thing is, that it still does provide the basics. It charges interest. It withholds money. It can hold money just like a chequing account. They can also transfer to and from PayPal accounts.
The problem I'm saying is that it's very much a "wild west" situation with PayPal right now. Although one can risk them not taking advantage of you and your money one can't guarantee that it's not going to happen. Just like banks, Paypal is bound to be operating on a "profit before people" mode of business. Banks, luckily, are monitored by government agencies to make sure everything is on the "up and up". PayPal, however, is not.
... I haven't had any problems. Yet. I send invoices through PayPal, people pay me, I transfer the money out, and everybody's happy.
...)
(whistles nervously, knocks wood
No, you *can* refuse to do business with anyone you please. You just *can't* do it because they're part of a particular group, i.e. female, over 50, white, christian etc. Refusing to do business because they're being rude to your staff is fine be they black, white or tie-dye pink.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Huh, how did you close your Paypal account? Nobody else on Slashdot seems to be able to figure that out.
I read the internet for the articles.
Most banks let you do BACS transfers free of charge.
what a crock.
Someone does not have to be jewish, black, injun or purple to understand and hate oppression and those that support it.
The SAME right those people utilize to talk their 'crap' (whether it be black power, white power or "kill the white people" by tyrone green and his reggae band) is the right that PAYPAL utilizes to NOT DEAL WITH THEM.
If some skinhead with a swastika on his shirt walks into my shop cussing up "this that or the other", I'm going to send him right out again. I don't care if he's got money falling out of his pockets. It's MY RIGHT as a business person to limit who I want to deal with.
Someday, someone will have to explain to me how A and NOT A can be both true at the same time.
Global warming is a cube.
Do it.
Read radical news here
"Under terms of the settlement agreement, PayPal said it is not admitting any liability for the allegations in the dispute."
Basically, PayPal pays states' legal fees and the lawsuit goes away.
I think an issue here is *who* should be bashing the bigot. If corporations do this on our behalf then we (or our community) lose the capacity to fight bigotry. It's up to us, not faceless corporations, to challege these people. And it is through the process of open discussion that we come to understand what is right - lest we end up in some Orwellian void where PayPal et al do all the thinking for us.
You can refuse to serve a person based on their own individual activities, but can't refuse to serve them based on their race/age/gender/whatever.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
I liked the old Pope - the old Pope smoked dope. This new pope don't smoke no dope....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Perhaps, and a lot of companies love an arguement like that. It's not worth your time to fight over $30, but when 500 people find it not worth their time then that comes to:
$30
x 500
=
$15,000 (profit)
I'm fairly sure that phone companies use a similar tactic. Locally, Bell is one of the worst. My previous co-worker, with astounding dedication, would usually end up donating about two lunch-hours a day on the phone fixing his bill. He would go over it monthly, and discovered that (during about a 7 month period, I no longer work there) that he was being billed for calling his "companion phone" (two phones on the same plan are supposed to be able to call each other for free), or for minutes during his free time. Usually it came out between $3-8.
Now that takes a lot of work, and really it's not a large amount for most people. But as the problem was entirely consistent and recurring, I would assume that it happened to more people than just him. The company would be pocketing the profits, and not bothering with the expense in fixing any computer "issues" that caused it (assuming it was a bug, and not an intentional 'issue').
With the numbers that is:
$3/month
x 12 months
x (perhaps) 100,000 customers
=
$3,600,000
If you go with $7/month it's $8,400,000
So yeah, it might not be worth the $3 to most people, or even $30 to you... but it's really quite lucrative for the company and when you don't complain (and when I say complain, I also mean lodging BBB, FTC, etc, complaints) it's worth a whole lot of cash to them to keep on screwing the 'customer'
Like many of you we all had issues with Paypal. My story is a bit different in the fact that I was part of every bit of this lawsuit. When i was in college I sold things through ebay and I made a good bit of money doing it. One time I had a particularly large order ($3500) and like each of my orders I require that the mailto address AND phone number matched the paypal information. I would call the number, speak with that person and then begin the order. I would also get confirmation on shipping, tracking and insurance. So not only did they have to sign for it but I knew when and who! What more could paypal need right? I billed them for $3500 and shortly after recieved it via paypal. As usually I immediately move the money to my bank account. Two days later I get an email from paypal stating that this was a disputed order and that the money would be held until it was resolved. I immediately call my bank and put a block on my account for any agency called Paypal or with Paypal in the name to withdraw any money. I even specified the amount it would try to withdraw I email back paypal every possible bit of information they could need, address, phone number, tracking number, when it was signed for, the number to contact UPS about who signed for it etc. They responded "the credit card was illegally charged. You have 7 days to remit the funds". "So let me get this straight" I responded. Not only did the credit card address match the paypal address, that matched the billing address, that matched the mailto address, but the phone number is registered to the card holder AND the package was sighed for by the card holder? Insert canned reply and "remit payment or else". So I consulted a student legal at NCSU (love those guys), and they explained that since Paypal was not technically a bank I was not "technically liable for their fuckups". So I didn't pay. My account was locked of course and it had .14 cents in it!
Paypal continued to email me about owed money until I sent them a formal letter explaining in no uncertain terms that it would be a "cold day in hell before they got a penny from me". The emails stopped.
However, I'm a very careful person when it comes to money and my credit history. You guessed it, Paypal tried to put an unpaid debt of $4000 on my credit history. I contested it and included all of my information. It took 3 months but it was removed and paypal was fined (undisclosed amount).
Then I saw this class action lawsuit happening. I really wanted to make sure I had covered all my bases legally and so I joined. I was contacted directly by the lawyers involved and I was added to the "long form" group. There were 2, a quick settlement group and a "take your chances at getting any money back" group.
I heard we won and recieved a package in the mail that included a legal statement I do not owe them a single penny and a check for $395.
Paypal is STILL just as bad. It's NOT a bank, it is not subject to the laws of a bank, they can hold your money for ANY reason they want to and screw you out of it. It took me 3 YEARS to get this settlement. THREE YEARS. And you know what happened to paypal?
Record profits...
Good job legal system.
First of all, this is a royal pain in the ass, but there are ways to make it work:
Have a server that contains your files, with a validation code or password protected directory. Send the validation code by mail. Being that I've seen people listing $5.00 shipping for web-only or non-tangible items, it should be pretty to list a $2.00 postage fee or whatever it is to send the thing by registered make.
Again, it's a pain in the ass, but it's a good method of verification.
Secondly, make a small claims case. Unless paypal wants to send a lawyer to meet you in your jurisdiction, you'll probably win by default.
Why do I get the image of a single employee sitting in a room with a single phone line and phone, answering calls from irate people who have been getting a busy signal for the last 14 hours?
sig fault
Human Rights don't stop where business begins. Human Rights apply everywhere at anytime. The point is not about having the right to a paypal account, the point is that filtering out customers based on name associations is in violation of the Human Rights (and of the constitution of the country in which paypal resides, by the way), as it would be if you were to base it on religion, gender, nationality, or anything else written down in the manifest. And as for providing "proof", everyone is innocent until proven guilty. How nice of them to provide this "chance" of further undermining the validity of the Human Rights. C'mon, use some common sense.
parasight.de
I had to transfer funds into the Paypal account to bring the balance up to zero. When that cleared, I just removed all of the credit card and bank accounts that were linked. On the profile page, there is a link to "Close Account". It wouldn't let me close it until the balance was zero and there were no pending transactions.