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."

Comments

Yea, Paypal Sucks, but this is a bit dramatic.

[lecithin]

"Paypal Won't Release Funds To Slain Soldier's Family"

That isn't quite true, they are holding the funds until mid April, probably due to somebody screwing up. I'm not convinced that it was Paypal's mistake to begin with.

"Paypal Doesn't Want Slain Soldiers' Families To Receive Aid"

Come on now, yea, there may have been a mistake made, but it has nothing to do with the money going to a Slain Soldiers' Family.

Why the need for so much drama?

Re:Yea, Paypal Sucks, but this is a bit dramatic.

[Korin43]

No it's not that. Paypal sucking isn't news. It has to be "Paypal hates soldiers and America!" to get to the front page by now ;)

Dramatic overstatement isn't it?

[Vthornheart]

Lesson learned to all: if you're going to claim you're a nonprofit organization, BE A NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION.

This site was not nonprofit, and was having the funds sent to their own, private account.

Yes it's sad, but ask yourself the following: could you trust a nonprofit paypal donation if you knew that they only had to casually mention that they were nonprofit? That they didn't have to prove it?

There's nothing stopping the people who run that website, other than personal honor, from pocketing the cash and giving the finger to everyone who donated. And THAT is why PayPal has those policies. I'm surprised that they'd even hand over the cash after 180 days in fact.

It's sad, yes: but in the future, they should know to make an actual nonprofit organization with its own account. Doing such a thing isn't that hard: you just have to apply, and make a seperate checking account. My club at High School did it, and the people in that club were a bunch of idiots, especially in High School (myself included).

not the first time

[Nutty_Irishman]

Not the first time the company has hindered someone using paypal for a charitable cause. http://www.paypalsucks.com/forums/showthread.php?f id=3&tid=9630&old_block=0. Also is the wired article http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,68788-0.htm l. I particular find this line a bit unsettling:

Kyanka said he asked PayPal to donate the money directly from the account to the Red Cross. However, PayPal declined, saying it has an exclusive charity relationship with United Way of America. Umm... I can understand having exclusive relationships with, say, Pepsi or Coca Cola. However, it seems refusing to donate to one charity because you have an exclusive relationship with another charity almost implies that there is some financial benefit for you to donate money to one charity over another. Not to point fingers, but it's a bit of a gray area there...

Re:lily tomlin predicted this one...

[Zonk (troll)]

If PayPal wants to continue pretending to be a bank, they should be regulated like one.

Re: Yea, Paypal Sucks...and that's on a good day

[lionheart1327]

Buddy, if your definition of evil is PayPal then you need some serious help.

Re: Yea, Paypal Sucks...and that's on a good day

[iocat]

PAYING with PayPal is rarely the problem. It's GETTING YOUR MONEY BACK from PayPal where all the issues come up. All their policies are designed to do one thing: keep the cash in their accounts, earning interest for them, for as long as possible. As a payer, I've never had any issues.