Paypal Reverses Payments Made To Indians
bhagwad writes "Beginning January 28, Paypal has been reversing the payments made to any Indian provider of services. In addition, Indian users have been unable to withdraw their money to their bank accounts. As a result, a large number of Indian Paypal accounts have negative balances running into the thousands of dollars. The worst part is that users weren't informed beforehand — the funds were just whisked away. Indian providers have gone ballistic, with over 2,000 posts on a thread on the reversal of payments and over 700 posts on this thread about the delay in transfers. Paypal hasn't given any explanation to this behavior other than they're looking into it. Although Paypal claims in the above blog post that payments made for 'Services' are not being reversed, this is not true. All payments not made for 'Goods' with a shipping address have been reversed — in fact, the Paypal e-mail tells the Indian sellers to encourage their clients to lie and claim that they're paying for goods with a shipping address instead."
Why anyone trusts PayPal with their money.
Banking reform in the US should include subjecting PayPal to all the rules and regulations that apply to banks. I find it strange how they've managed to avoid being classed as a bank all these years in the first place. Current regulations leave a lot to be desired, but making PayPal adhere to them would be a good first step.
Who will be manning the call centers to handle the complaints?
Should say loosing hundreds and thousands, yes I am an idiot for not reviewing the post first.
What about Google Checkout ?
This is due to some change in the regulations by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regarding offshore money transfers. I read somewhere that RBI is demanding some documents form PayPal to make them eligible to transfer money to and from Indian Banks. Apparently PayPal hasn't been able to furnish those documents.
loosing?
He's getting his fleet of hundreds of thousands underway by loosing the sails.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
I think PayPal is run by cowboys.
Currently hooked on AMP
Please do the needful!
Got Code?
Why PayPal needs to be regulated as a bank, and why I refuse to use it.
Where would you hide a tree? In a forest of course. Every time there is a new technology is found, the terrorists and criminals use it first and the law enforcement is way behind and always plays catch up. The Mumbai attackers were using prepaid satellite phones and VOIP routed through New Jersy to get constant feed back while they were on their rampage inside the Taj hotel. Wait for a day or two, and you will see that angle will be mentioned. Whether sincerely or as a diversionary tactic by Paypal or by RBI I don't know. But it is a well known fact the terrorists use havala trading systems very effectively and Paypal would not be a big step for them.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
http://www.paypalsucks.com/
I got burned by these bozos once. Make sure you read the terms and conditions carefully. They refund only under very tight circumstances. If there was an alternative, i'd use them instead. ... I got bitten for several hundred dollars once...
I had no problems on about 50 transactions
Seriously, PayPal sucks...
Seller terms
The seller must legally be able to do business in the US, and have a US bank account (since Google is US-based).
The buyer does not have to be in the US.
Ebay owns paypal.. so I don't see this stopping anytime soon.
How do you figure this? In the US the only entitiy that "creates" money is the US Govenment (through the US Mint).
It's called Fractional-reserve lending. You deposit $100 into your bank and they led out $900.
If they're paying you 2% interest and charging 4.5% interest in their loans, their profit is (roughly) 4.5% * 9 - 2%. So, they're making 38% or so on your deposit.
This is why banking is so profitable despite the seemingly low rates. It's also what creates the problems of 'runs on banks', but with the FDIC in place, the banks may lend as recklessly as possible, and if they fail (a handful a week are, currently) the losses are socialized among the taxpayers. Private profits, socialized losses. You'd think bankers were running the government.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
No you are completely and utterly wrong. There is a very authoritative document from the Fed that explains how banks expand the money supply, but a simple starting point for you would be the wiki page on Fractional Reserve Banking.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
It wasn't created. This is what caused the Great Depression, if you were asleep through that class.
Too late for lose/loose. It seems to be viral, perhaps intentionally to drive boomers nuts. Also on the 'endangered' list: affect/effect; their/there/they're; dissent/descent; and the biggie-- your/you're.
The cracks first started years ago when traffic crossings started omitting the apostrophe in "DONT WALK" signs decades ago. I knew things were pointing downhill even then.
Never saw a mixup of sales and sails, tho.
You don't understand how the regulation was sold. The regulation was needed because banks lend (you call it creating and destroying money, others call it lending). This allows a bank to fail. Paypal *can't* fail from that. They hold money, but don't lend or borrow against it. So I understand your point. But, from how the regulation was sold to the people, you are 100% wrong. It was never sold as "banks create and destroy money, so they need regulation." It was sold as "banks have your money, and to make sure that they give you your money when you ask for it, they need to be regulated." From the manner in which banking regulation is sold to the America public, Paypal is a bank and should be regulated like one.
I understand that your argument is that the sale of that regulation was a lie, and the banking industry isn't about holding money (but borrowing and lending against it), but I think you are wrong.
Not to mention, you are begging the question. You assume that they don't lend against the money they hold. Even if I agreed with your logic (and I don't) you have assumed a premise that has never been addressed. When you prove Paypal doesn't lend money (and I consider buying stock or bonds to be lending money, for this exercise, as one could default on that debt and have the same result), then we can address the logic I don't agree with.
Learn to love Alaska
Somebody used "begging the question" correctly.
"Actually what caused the great depression is that the market started getting rocky, so everyone pulled their money out at the same time... something which the banks were unable to do"
BECAUSE OF.....
" * You deposit $100 at the bank.
* The bank sets $10 aside as a reserve
* The bank loans $90 to bob, with interest
Now, while you still have your $100 (its in the bank), there is someone else running around with $90"
The banks couldn't give people their money back because they already fucked up loaning it out to other people. This is basic history, not even fucking economics.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You're only allowing for one iteration! I put $100 in bank A, the bank loans out $80 to you. What do you do with it? Burn it? Probably not. Probably you spend it. Wherever you spend it, it ends up in a bank account. Now bank B (or maybe bank A) has $80, and so at 20% reserve, they can loan out $64 more. That $64 end up in bank A, B, or C, and they can lend out 80% of that, too. sum (i = 1 .. infinity) ($100 x 80%^i) = $400. The "wrong" number of $900 is what happens to the sum if the reserve rate is 10% not 20%. $400 or $900, the banks are still creating many times more fictional money than they actually have. Now, some money does get lost, some money gets spent buying things that goes to employees that goes to cash that maybe doesn't all end up in a bank. But it's pretty damn close. In fact, in the link you said doesn't support the $900 number, they cite a bank operating on a ratio of about 11.5%. Meaning that just every $100 in an account that was cash, there is $850 that is fictional.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Paypal have been dodgy for years now, but if they have to go on a robbing spree I guess Indians are as good a target as anyone else.
Anyone that doesn't know about paypal's sleazy practices should treat this as a wake up call, close their account, and cancel any credit cards paypal know about.
People cannot be trialed for the same crime EVENT multiple times. But they can be trialed for unlimited separate events of the same type of crime.
Example: OJ Simpson was trialed and acquitted for the alleged murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. He cannot be re-trialed for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, but he can be trialed for any other murders he is suspected of having committed.
If that wasn't the case, Alice could, after being acquitted of murdering Bob, not only kill Charlie and Eve, but go on a nationwide killing spree without breaking the law. That would be disturbing to say the least.
But I don't know if that is just an Urban Myth, since verdicts are commonly overturned by higher courts and that could mean a re-trial after the suspect was acquitted or convicted.
On the other hand, corporations cannot commit crimes, their employees and owners do. Corporations can be sued in civil courts, though.
Also, civil lawsuits are a completely different matter and with the usual IANAL warning, I certainly think you cannot sue for the same even multiple times, but through several levels.
A corporation still can be sued many times over for similar events, which I am very thankful for, otherwise we would have one person suing carmaker X for faulty brakes and everyone else crashing their cars with no recourse.
As a result, a large number of Indian Paypal accounts have a negative balances running into the thousands of dollars.
Does anyone else see that as a good opportunity to cease their relationship with PayPay (for those stupid enough to have kept using them anytime in the past, oh, decade)?
Remember - Not a bank, by their own maneuverings. You can't actually owe PayPal money, because they don't sell anything or provide any (direct for-cost) services. Sure, you can owe their other customers money, but PayPal itself?
Negative balance? Yeah, time to close that account. Thanks, PayPal, but you can keep "my" negative money. Funny thing, about forced arbitration clauses - You can stack the system as much in your favor as you want, but to get government sponsored armed thugs to go shake down your clients, you need to step in to a real court of law and risk setting some seriously unfavorable precedents.
Aren't they the same? I mean, for all intensive purposes...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The beauty is that you don't really have to trust PayPal. I usually transfer money out of my PayPal account within minutes of it arriving there, and I have made sure never to authorize PayPal to withdraw from any bank account I have.
Just make sure you have a backup plan so that if / when PayPal suspends your account for some stupid reason you have somewhere else for customers to go.
My sister sold some concert tickets on ebay paid for in full on PayPal. The guy came to her house & picked up the tickets and my sister withdrew the much needed money from PayPal.
About 4 weeks later my sister started receiving many e-mails from PayPal which, as she had no further business with PayPal, she assumed was spam and just ignored them. About 2 weeks ago she received a letter informing her PayPal has listed her with a credit reporting agency (yes, that means no credit cards, phone plans, mortgages for 5+ years) because she failed to pay them back $500 --- the guy had collected the tickets from my sister and saw the concert but then the bastard called PayPal to say he never received the tickets! PayPal simply put my sisters account into negative and started collections proceedings. When my sister finally figured out what had happened she explained the situation to PayPal & they just said too bad she didn't have proof that she gave him the tickets.
So yes, if you withdraw your money it makes it harder for PayPal to take it away from you, but that doesn't mean they can't screw you financially just for using their services
We gave to the indians and then took it back. We are the indian giver.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Note that gunpal is the official payment processor of http://www.auctionarms.com/ [auctionarms.com] It's not some little fly-by-night company.
As a person who has never heard of "auctionarms.com" until this very moment, I don't understand how this precludes them from being a "fly-by-night" company. And even if working with this somewhat obscure website (at least I have never heard of it) gives it a patina of legitimacy, that still means nothing. Ebay is a VERY large and popular company, meaning (by your logic) Paypal is not a fly-by-night company, but Paypal still sucks and operates in the most ethically dubious of manners.
Sorry for being a bit confrontational. I've always viewed Paypal, and any other company that operates in the same niche as highly dubious. And just having the endorsement of the NRA doesn't cut it. I have nothing against the NRA, but they do, often, attract the lunatic fringe. The association itself, doesn't lend too much credibility.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Your profit calculation is just plain ridiculous.
The only way they loan out $900 is if you are counting all the iterations: ie. $100 gets deposited, so they loan out $90, that $90 ends up back in the bank as a deposit at some point, so they loan another $81 out, and so on and so on.
But you ignored that they have to pay out that deposit interest on all those deposit iterations not just the initial $100.
And you also can't count it as profit against that $100 deposited, since $1000 ends up being deposited. It makes no difference that the money was created by the banking systems money multiplier and not by plain old printing. The bank still has $1000 of liabilities on the sheet.
At every point in time the money is either in cash or in a bank.
It doesn't matter that I spent most of what I earned last year. Since the money just ends up in the bank under a different name (the grocery store, the farmer who supplied the grocery store, the chemical company who supplied the farmer, etc, etc).
Microsoft buying securities is irrelevant, that just means the money was transferred to whomever sold the securities to them. And they either put it in the bank, or held it in cash, or bought some other asset with it - in which case we just follow the chain another link since they bought the asset from someone who now has the money in a bank or in cash.
There simply isn't enough cash for it not to end up mostly back in the hands of a bank. And the banks get their hands on the money that is "in transaction" too most of the time.
The "paper profits" of asset holdings aren't in a bank account, that is true - but that isn't what is being discussed - the money creation of a $100 cash deposit is.
I buy a car with the money. The car dealer puts the money in the bank. Sure not all of it he pays some wages - by putting it in the bank account of the worker. He sends a check off to a supplier - who deposits the check in his bank account.
No one is saying that the person who borrows the money puts it in the bank. They are saying that that money makes its way through the system over thousands of transactions and at some steps a little of it is left in the bank (and all of it transitions through the bank in most cases). After enough transactions it is all in the bank (other than the what is horded as cash, as in physical currency).
I use a separate account at ING Direct. They let you set up as many bank accounts as you want under one umbrella, so you can just use a special account for PayPal with minimum funds in it. I call this my "sandbox" after the idea of sandboxing software in a chroot jail etc. to mitigate its damage potential. No matter what PayPal does, they cannot take more funds than you have in that account, as that is the authorized account. The only thing left they might do I suppose is thrash your credit. I'm not a big seller so I'm unlikely to run into the types of problems others have in this regard. I'm mainly concerned they will abscond with my cash.
Currently hooked on AMP
It sounds like a possible double-whammy, FCBA, and FCRA (failure to give required proper notice before negative information is reported) violation on PayPal's part looming.
An e-mail message is not a proper/valid notice of a debt, and fraudulently constructing and attempting to collect on a non-debt, would also be a violation of FDCPA (Reporting false information on a consumer's credit report or threatening to do so in the process of collection).
PayPal is not a court, and their independent decision to award a counterparty their money back is not binding on you, and doesn't create obligations on your part, unless you signed an agreement to that effect (and maybe not even then -- since a creditor cannot legally have any individual sign over FCRA/FCBA dispute rights, as long as you are a consumer, and not a business) .
The sister should then probably do something like going to each credit reporting agency and dispute PayPal's report to that credit reporting agency, state that the amount reported is not owed, and demand the erroneous information be validated / removed.
And make sure to send PayPal certified mail disputing the amount of the debt within 60 days of the 1st statement you received that was in error.
The CRA then has a period of time, to investigate the reporting. If PayPal then 'constructs' fraudulent information to 'validate' the debt, then there is a FCRA violation.
Send PayPal a demand they strike the erroneous debt, certified mail demand letter.
Then if they persist, sue Paypal in small claims court, for statutory damages on both counts.
PayPal can potentially be in the hole >$1,000 in statutory fees, plus reasonable attorney costs, if they have indeed violated one of those laws...
You really should find some sort of proof that you exchanged the tickets, however.
Or file suit against in small claims the person you sold the tickets to, for slander, and get a lawyer to subpoena someone (or some people) who were there to stand as witness that the person at least attended the concert.
And also, perform discovery, (assuming you can figure out ticket numbers), to determine if those tickets were actually used.
But then, maybe all the hassle in attempting this isn't worth the $500...
It's called Fractional-reserve lending
No, it's called Fractional reserve banking. You even got it right in your link, but strangely not in the text.
You deposit $100 into your bank and they led out $900.
That's not how it works. The "fractional reserve" applies to the deposit, not the loan. You deposit $100, they keey $10, and lend out $90. When banks "make" money, they do not actually "print" money, so they're pretty much stuck with lending out less than what they take as deposits.
The way that banks "make" money is by enabling people to still use their deposits for payments. Those $100 that you deposited are not lost to you, you can still wire them to a merchant to make a purchase (so then they become the merchant's deposit). So, where there were only $100 in circulation to begin with, there are now $190.
And the way multiply lending money works is that those $90 that the borrower got will eventually come back to the bank as a deposit (because the borrower buys something from it, and the seller deposits that money). Out of those $90, the bank will be able to lend out $81 more. Adding everything up together, you get 100+90+81+72.9+... = $1000
If they're paying you 2% interest and charging 4.5% interest in their loans, their profit is (roughly) 4.5% * 9 - 2%. So, they're making 38% or so on your deposit.
Even though banks make insane margins, it's not quite as bad. Indeed, the $1000 created from the $100 were not made out of a single deposit, but from multiple deposit transaction, on each of which the bank paid interest. In order to calculate profit, concentrate on a single deposit/loan pair: for the $100 you deposit, the banks gives you $2, the $10 that they keep as a reserve is basically dead weight, and from the $90 they lend out, they get $4 ($90 * 4.5%). So, rather than making $38 on the deal, they only make $2.
Think about it. If your calculation was correct, the bank would still making profit if they paid you 40% interest... which is obviously not true.
This is why banking is so profitable despite the seemingly low rates.
What makes a bank so profitable is the huge amounts they move, not the high percentage that they make on each transaction.
Moreover, from a bank owner's perspective, the money made is compared to his own investment (relatively small), rather than to the total amount (huge) that moves through the system. It's this way that he gets extremely high returns.
they do, often, attract the lunatic fringe
and a highly armed lunatic fringe at that. Sounds like a dangerous customer base to screw around with.