Slashdot Mirror
Paypal Won't Release Funds To Slain Soldier's Family
robustyoungsoul writes "Popular sports blog Deadspin established the Adam Knox Fund for the purpose of raising money in honor of the fallen soldier who was killed in Iraq. They took the donations through a PayPal account.
Turns out now, however, PayPal will not release the money due to the way the account was set up on their end."
A more accurate summary should have indicated the money is frozen by policy for 180 days. So, paypal is not saying they won't release the money, they won't release it until April 13.
It probably sucks for the people who raised this money, but it also sucks for paypal that too many people set up these kinds of things with intent to defraud.
Hopefully with the noise raised and ruckus caused by sites such as slashdot, the resolution will become before April 13.
FTA:
Hopefully Adam's family and platoon isn't so depleted to not be able to function until April 13. Hopefully if this is so, paypal will figure out a way to disburse earlier.
Meantime, deepest regrets and best wishes to Adam's family for their loss.
The reason why Paypal does this is because creating a charity account without being able to provide documents proving your charity status is suspect. It's a red flag. Another red flag is having a new account suddenly receive a massive amount of funds from many individuals.
To make things clear, the types of accounts that is:
A) New accounts
B) Unable to provide documents
C) Receiving many funds from many separate individuals
If you can't guess already.... accounts created by phishing scams!
The fact that this person is not a phishing scam is a travesty on the part that they were suspended, but the FACT REMAINS that they have no possible means to prove their innocence.
Yes I said prove their innocence. This is a company, not a trial. Likewise, they haven't been found guilty either. The reason for the 180 suspension is obvious:
If the people who sent them money start to increasingly cancel their money payments, then, bingo, the account is a scam. If they don't after a given time, say... 180 days, then hey the account is legitimate.
Paypal sucks, but not in this particular case.
PayPal did the same thing when Dan Savage of the Savage Love sex column took up a collection for charity. PayPal refused to release the funds to him and would only donate them directly to United Way, a charity with a very questionable reputation. Don't take charity through PayPal, people. They're sketchy enough when you're buying and selling like they want you to.
Did you actually read the article? Oh wait, this is slashdot. Of course you didn't. Even the guy's personal blog admits that they will, indeed, get the money, and that they didn't set up their account correctly for this sort of online dontation gathering. I'm really not seeing how this is Paypal's fault. They have to have some safeguards in place to prevent fraud. And this has nothing to do with Paypal not 'wanting soldiers to get their money'; that implies someone actively made a decision to withhold the money on the basis of where the money was going. Sure, maybe they're being a bit inflexible, but that might get worked out in the coming weeks. That has nothing to do with Paypal actively withholding money from soldiers.
The deadspin folks claim that paypal wrongly flagged the account as a charity account, and that they (deadspin) did not ask for the acount to be flagged as a charity account. If that is true, paypal has no right to be witholding the money, and they are also obliged to correct their classification error.
What I got out of the article is that the guy never claimed to be a non-profit. Paypal classified his account as a non-profit account. So what I got is Paypal screwed up by giving it the wrong classification and is now using their internal SOP's to hold onto the money for an extra 6 months.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
They were definitely helpful when some miscreant recently got hold of my Paypal login details somehow and transfered several thousand dollars around the world. I had a paypal account handler on the phone within a minute of ringing their (UK) number, she raised disputes on all the items, they were confirmed within 48 hours as problem transactions and they had all been cancelled within 72 hours.
:) Because the vast majority of transactions made were done through the direct debit system, Paypal could not stop them at that time, so we were waiting for them to fail. During this period tho, Paypal preempted themselves and applied a balance readjustment to take into account currency exchange rate changes, giving me over fifty dollars. The direct debits failed, no money actually left my bank account so no funds were needed to be returned, but Paypal point blank refused to admit that the fifty dollars wasnt mine, so by their admission I gained money!
My account was usable again a week later, but that was mainly my fault for cancelling the direct debits and cards linked to the paypal account the morning I discovered the activity, so I had to reset up the paypal - bank account conduits.
Funny thing is, I actually made money from all this
All in all, I have had excellent customer support from Paypal and all the other anecdotal websites around dont match my experiences.