PayPal Preparing To Address Frozen Funds Policy
First time accepted submitter skywire writes "After years of forcing innocent customers to navigate a Kafkaesque process to unfreeze their funds, PayPal has announced that they are preparing major changes to alleviate the pain. From the article: 'The company routinely freezes funds for 21 days if it thinks there's a fraud risk, and its terms give it the right to extend the freeze for up to 180 days. To get access to their money, users are often asked to provide the kind of documentation that a product seller would have, like several months' worth of sales records. But if you're running a fundraiser or selling tickets to an upcoming conference, you don't have that paperwork. Even for those with extensive paper trails, the appeals process can take months to resolve. The Web is filled with enraged blog posts, websites like paypalsucks.com, and a Tumblr called "Conferences Burned by PayPal."'"
After over ten years of destroying businesses and hurting people while hiding behind a blank gray wall of "policy", Paypal are kidding themselves if they think that they can ever recover the goodwill that they've burned.
Now, when they screw you over, at least you get a reach-around.
Maybe they're feeling the heat of competition from square and feel the need to do something to stop the exodus.
Our little business finds square a lot easier to deal with.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
It's pretty mind-boggling that nobody has come along and eaten Paypal's lunch yet. For all the internet-era services (most?) that based their business model on merely having the most active accounts and got burned, there are a couple for which that strategy seems to be a winner. Facebook is another one. There's no reason to use either of these services other than the fact that everyone else does - and in fact, there are lots of reasons not to (i.e. the services themselves are ass, and are run in a way that's at times abusive to their userbase).
And yet, despite the fact that there's nothing preventing competitors from springing up (unlike, say, Ticketmaster - which actively uses payola to monopolize the market) - and despite the fact that some with very deep pockets (Google) have tried - Paypal & Facebook still dominate.
Maybe it's luck? At some point someone will set up a competing service that just happens to ensnare the particular, unmarked, and unrelated 5% group of "tastemakers" who are sufficient to catalyze a shift away to a new service?
since Paypal is caving in to pressure from the AA's to not do business with companies/people/websites the AA's don't like, it looks like Paypal is trying to get back the business of the other people they have screwed over.
My guess is nothing is probably going to change, but a Press Release saying so looks good.
Be seeing you...
They're (Paypal) probably noticing the flood of payment alternatives. Stripe et al. come to mind...
You already burned us once, PayPal.
You will not be given another opportunity.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Until recently, I was on the board of directors for a local homeless shelter here in town. RIght now, we're in the middle of planning a major fundraiser. When it was suggested that we get a paypal account so that people could purchase tickets on-line, I went ballistic - I've heard way too many horror stories over the years. I'm not sure others on the fundraising committee quite believed everything I said, but my reaction was so strong it spooked them, and they backed off the idea completly. Paypal's changes will have to be effective, and in place for a very long, long time before they even have a *chance* of having people like me deal with them. That's a very large part of the market they've never had, and quite possibly never will.
PayPal once froze my account. I didn't realize how much they take those comments seriously and several years ago I sent some money to my wife with PayPal and put "For Sexual Favors" in the memo box, just kidding around, the way people would do on checks back in the day. Well, apparently PayPal thought I was actually paying for sex with PayPal and froze the funds. After I called them and explained the situation though, they quickly released the funds.
Yep, don't care. They lost me 2 years ago and short of their entire executive team kissing my bare ass on national TV, there's no way in hell I'm ever going back. Doing business with them was exactly like being raped.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
Paypal does not get much news coverage in Germany, it is just not as useful since the bank transfer system is pretty fine. But a while ago they managed to get onto the news when they tried to force a company to stop selling Cuban cigars. The company decided to stop offering paypal transfers instead of stopping to sell the cigars.
But really, how is that their bussiness? And why is that stupid Cuba embargo still in place? Some people said that this embargo has always been about turning Cuba into a colony.
Indeed; PayPal is not a bank yet I'm betting most of its customers think they are. They don't have to follow the same set of rules and so they get to make their own. Customers only learn of this after they've been burned, unfortunately. That's why I don't use PayPal.
They are in Europe and have been since 2007. Not that it stops them acting like dicks, of course, they are just (in principle) well-regulated dicks over here.
The only nice thing about PayPal being a non-bank is that someone in the US can pay someone in the UK relatively easily. I moved out of the US, and for me to send myself money from my US accounts requires I show up in my bank, in person, to order the international transfer. They don't even honor their own terms of sending based on a fax. Banks are afraid of being the next HSBC.
Learn to love Alaska
I am involved with organizing a sporting event. This last year was our seventh running of the event. In previous years, the sanctioning body would collect the entry fee and send the events their portion. Because of some issues with the sanctioning body (not really set-up for credit card payment and slow payment to events), the system was switched to where events collected the entry fee.
We decided to go with PayPal for most of the normal reasons folks go with PayPal. I had the PayPal-based payment system up on the event web site in a couple of hours. The first month of getting entry fee payments went fine and we could transfer the funds into the event's bank accounts (to cover pre-event costs like venue deposits and insurance).
The trouble started at the end of the early entry period for the event (when entry fees increased). To avoid the increase in entry fees, almost everyone entered in the event who had not already done so, paid their entry fee on the same day. This triggered PayPal's fraud system and the event's PayPal account was locked. Although we had successfully run the event for the six prior years (with outside media coverage to prove it) and our paperwork was in order, PayPal decided that they would not give us access to the funds until after the event had run, "just in case the event was cancelled and the entry fees needed to be refunded".
PayPal's actions were almost a self-fulfilling prophesy. Without access to the funds to cover pre-event costs, the event was almost cancelled. Luckily, between the entry fees collected before the PayPal account was locked, the entry fees that we collected directly after the account was locked and understanding vendors, we were able to cover the pre-event costs and the event was held.
After successfully running the event, we contacted PayPal to get the account unlocked. At first, they wanted to make us wait six weeks. However, we pressed the point that we had bills that had to be paid and needed access to the funds ASAP. After an hour on the phone, they unlocked the funds and gave us access to the funds.
Compared to some people that I have spoken with, we got off easy.
I don't care what PayPal's new policy is. We are not putting our event at risk again by accepting payment via PayPal.
PayPal tried this on me. I found the solution was to be extremely nasty and aggressive towards them. I gave them a lot of bad PR over the issue. They backed down and apologized. Wonder of wonders. PayPal is a very arrogant company but they really hate bad PR.
Indeed. With CC merchant accounts they don't automatically freeze an account full of funds based on automated heuristics. It's possible they do it rarely, but working closely with thousands of businesses, and having my own merchant accounts, I've never heard of it happening. I've had my Paypal account frozen before and I know at least a dozen other people who have.
The chargeback process is still slanted toward the buyer, but the buyer has to fill out and mail or fax paperwork, not just click a button on a web page. That reduces BS chargebacks. More importantly, that chargeback affects only the one transaction; they don't freeze thousands of dollars of unrelated funds. CC processors only freeze the account after MANY complaints from buyers. Partly, that's because they do the anti-fraud work upfront, when you apply to open the account. That takes a couple of weeks.
I believe that the average Joe can now accept credit payments using 2CO https://www.2checkout.com/
We'll never make it.......oh! we made it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWf3iJjqYCM&list=FL7kKrE4eTs17mQl7eyvJIOg
What better word would you use for cases where people follow rather than thinking for themselves, like a sheep circle or an ant mill?
For commercial seller Amazon seems to be the vastly superior service.
This is true for commercial sellers. But for sellers who don't pay $40 per month for a store, Amazon hits them with a $1 per item commission in addition to the final value fee. And items without a UPC/EAN or ISBN can't be sold at all.
Honestly, I've given up on Paypal. Back in 2009, I've had my account frozen due to using many credit cards. Since I didn't have a job, I (thought I) couldn't get an actual credit card, and used a service in my country that generates temporary credit card numbers, valid for a month and with a set credit limit*. Well, Paypal didn't like that I used more than (IIRC) 15 credit cards in X time, so they blocked my account. I've since learned that Paypal e-mail support is where messages go to die, and, through site revisions, has become almost impossible to find. So, to resolve my problem, I had to call an Irish number, where this lady basically told me "No credit card, no dice". So then silly me goes and gets an actual credit card and calls again. "Looks good. It should be OK, now" - someone else says. It isn't. The next call: "OK, reset the password from your main computer". a) My main computer was a laptop which died in the middle of this process, and I've told them this, and b) What's the point of being on the web if you're requiring people to do something from a set computer? I've reset the password and the account is still blocked, so I've given up. Luckily, I only lost a little money in this process, but I've been finding that living without PayPal is easier than I thought.
* For the curious, https://www.mbnet.pt/
Don't know what they're afraid of. 4 weeks earnings and no jail time, for making money hand over fist on criminal activity? Its a fucking license to do wrong.
There are people who still use PayPal? Merchants or sites that encourage it? I can't recall the last time I came within spitting distance of PayPal for anything.
Then again, it's been several years since I went near e-Bay either.....
Three Squirrels
Screwing legitimate users on regular basis is not a good way of doing business. eBay/PayPal.
I transferred a good bit of money to my wife in Paris in 2007. It had worked twice previously. On the third time, Paypal "froze" the funds, IE took them out of our joint account in the USA, but not putting them into our account in France. Several weeks went by, I was calling constantly. One particular guy taking my calls will live in my memory forever. I learned to just say "escalate" "escalate" "escalate", as we reached a point when my wife in France's internet account would be cut off for non-payment. We had to keep faxing documents all showing both our names on both the accounts. It was an absolute horror show. I don't understand why there is not a class action suit against them for the interest Paypal earned from all of the people like me who had all of their money in Paypal limbo. I'm way too busy to worry about this now, but if I had time to, I'd hate their guts.
Gently reply
Indeed. With CC merchant accounts they don't automatically freeze an account full of funds based on automated heuristics. It's possible they do it rarely, but working closely with thousands of businesses, and having my own merchant accounts, I've never heard of it happening. I've had my Paypal account frozen before and I know at least a dozen other people who have.
You are obviously a merchant, not buyer, but buyer accounts are frozen quite often by automated heuristics. An international traveler would be silly to rely on a single credit card for a trip without at least looking up the local toll-free number for when the "unusual" activity locks their card (the consumer equivalent of freezing an account).
The chargeback process is still slanted toward the buyer, but the buyer has to fill out and mail or fax paperwork, not just click a button on a web page.
It's how it should be. I had an argument with a seller on eBay once. He said he sent it. I never got it. I did a chargeback. He complained that I didn't buy insurance.
Legally, the transaction is not completed until the item is delivered. The item was never delivered. I was due my money back. My options are to go to court and prove I never got it, or just do a chargeback. Chargeback done. Insurance protects me, delivery receipt protects him. I don't buy insurance. If you can't pack it right, you get a chargeback. If you don't ship it, you get a chargeback. And no, I don't pay your insurance for you (like mortgage insurance, where it's default insurance you pay that covers the bank, not you). If you don't want to buy insurance to cover yourself, then you deserve the chargeback. Most eBay sellers take that into account. $0.01 items with $15 delivery weren't uncommon for a while, but I heard eBay was cracking down on it, but I haven't been back in a while to see.
Learn to love Alaska
None of this would be a problem if PayPal had serious competition. There should have been half a dozen companies doing exactly what PayPal was doing which were started in the past five years.
Recently, the local bank where we keep our family's and our business accounts has started offering a QuickPay service which apparently hooks into Chase Bank and allows for sending and receiving money to and from email accounts. It's still in its infancy compared to PayPal, but I've been using it more and more because of how much I loathe PayPal. It works just as well and hopefully it will become more widely used. I'd switch away from PayPal in a minute if there were good alternatives (I'm in the US).
You are welcome on my lawn.
Now about time for someone to actually challenge eBay. eBid, uBid etc. never gain steam. We need an auction site that takes all sorts of payment methods, including enabling established sellers to accept non-recoursable payment methods like Western Union, Bitcoins etc. to increase liquidity.
New Economic Perspectives
If memory serves, Paypal can freeze the bank account that you provide them in case of a dispute as well as your Paypal deposits.
This capability might cause prudent people to link only a petty cash bank account to their Paypal account.
Well, when there is the weight of the government squeaking about, both Mastercard/Mastercharge and Visa/Bankamericard will do something "without even being asked": they cut off all transaction processing for wikileaks.
.
This was combined with a response from the financial industry world-wide which was the equivalent of a global financial blockade. How do you like them apples?
eBay only cracked down on high delivery charges when shipping and handling were exempt from their final value fees. Now that final value fees are charged on the total payment price including all attendant s&h charges, they don't enforce their excessive s&h policy anymore. It was only ever put into place to protect eBay's bottom line, not to protect buyers.
Given their security doesn't reassure me, I was done with them once they started requiring my SSN. I was nervous enough they had my bank info, but SSN? Given I've used them for non-essential purchases (games, hobby related items, etc), I said, no thanks. I tried to contact them to get a legit explanation about why they claim to need my SSN, especially since I'm ONLY a buyer, never a seller, so tax issues are not relevant.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
I don't recall having to use Paypal when I sold my last 5 things from around the house on Amazon.
Experienced sellers are leaving eBay in droves. We're tired of paying 12%-15% total to sell our items when we can do it on Amazon for less than 1/2 that commission and reach just as large an audience. eBay needs to seriously change the way it does business because Amazon is going to drive them into irrelevance if they don't clean up their act. It's really a shame because they used to be a market leader and innovator, nowadays the only way they innovate is how to charge you more money.
The problem with Paypal is that they are heavily linked into ebay, certainly in France and the UK where Paypal has to be accepted and is very hard to avoid using.
I've looked hard at ways to use ebay without Paypal but can see no way even for someone such as myself who would sacrifice 50% less sales in order to use a competitor to Paypal. Ebay in turn is very dominant for goods in the UK, a first port of call for any cheap goods from HongKong or used goods especially.
A blog I run for the wealth
Have you looked at eBay/PayPal fees lately? Amazon compares quite well.
For the categories that my employer sells in, both Amazon and eBay plus PayPal charge a final value fee of about 15 percent. (Current Selling on Amazon subscribers can view the fee schedule.) Amazon also has a price parity policy, meaning a seller who also sells on his own web site can't raise its prices on Amazon to cover these fees unless the seller raises the prices on its own web site in parallel.
My sources are Overview of Category UPC Requirements (available to Selling on Amazon subscribers only) and Help: Adding UPCs and How to Obtain a Product Code (which I think are public).
I just checked, and it appears Amazon's requirement for a GTIN (UPC, EAN, ISBN) in order to get an ASIN has loosened since the last time I checked. Manufacturers of private-label products in certain categories who sell those products on Amazon as a Pro Merchant are now eligible for the Amazon Brand Registry, which provides Global Catalog Identifier (GCID) for their products, linked to the manufacturer's part number. Media items (such as books, music, and DVD) and a few other categories are not eligible for GCIDs, nor are individuals who sell fewer than 40 items per month (Pro seller subscription required). In some categories, such as consumer electronics, product bundles need their own GTINs. Did your "many many many products" refer to categories eligible for GCIDs?
Paypal issues a debit card, funds that can be drawn on just like your bank account. A lot of folks who want to stay off the major grid or have bad credit and who have less than 5K earnings a year find that having a debit card is important. My youngest daughter is a college student and when she needs money, I transfer money from my Paypal account to hers and she can draw that money via her debit card the instant I make the transfer. I think that if anyone else offered a competitive service without all the bloodsucking, they would probably do well. The debit card for many, is often worth the risk of Paypal losing their fucking minds and locking your money up for 180 days.
Windows assumes you are an idiot...Linux demands proof.
After all these years and all these warnings I can't believe paypal still has any customers.
Paypal take other peoples money and keep it, that always was their business model. Deal with them only if you want to lose your money. Deal with them only if you want them to empty all linked accounts too.
When i stopped using paypal, i also had to stop using ebay.
It was hard, but thank god for craigslist!
Other than cars I don't really see the point of buying second hand stuff at all. If I want it I'll buy new or I won't buy it at all.
Everything I want in life is cheap enough.
Let's face it, if Paypal was subject to regular bank regulations, the kind that make it pretty hard for them to pull off stunts like this, they would be a much better service.
This is an example of an industry that just needs some good old fashioned regulation.
Paypal does not need 'regulation'. What paypal needs is criminal theft charges against everyone above middle management.
They have been known to empty connected bank accounts and credit cards too. They tried both with me but luckily failed.
They also did a nice line in forced currency conversions in order to increase pretend debts they made up into bigger pretend debts.
I pretty much agree with you that he used the wrong word but feel the need to point out rape isn't always a sexual crime.
From dictionary.com:
noun
1. the unlawful compelling of a person through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.
2. any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person.
3. statutory rape.
4. an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside.
5. Archaic. the act of seizing and carrying off by force.
verb (used with object)
6. to force to have sexual intercourse.
7. to plunder (a place); despoil.
8. to seize, take, or carry off by force.
What paypal do is plunder, abuse, and seize, but not violently.
They can shove it up their arse. Fuck Paypal. That is all.
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)