About two years ago my daughter broke my PS3 BluRay laser. She was shoving change in the disc slot. Otherwise, the PS3 worked. You could stream Netflix or home theater content. You could play games installed to the hard drive, access PSN, etc.
I listed it very clearly on eBay that what it could and couldn't do. Someone bought it from me, and then immediately disputed the purchase through PayPal. They said that I didn't make it clear it was out of warranty. If it was in warranty, I would have had it fixed/replaced. They apparently though they could buy a cheap broken PS3 on eBay and get a free replacement via Sony.
I showed my listing, that I shipped the PS3 and that the buyer received it. PayPal sided with me as the seller. So I don't accept the notion that PayPal always sides with the buyer, or that they don't have a dispute process since I've used it myself.
If a customer files a charge back, then the credit card company doesn't get the money. Why should they give you money when they didn't receive it?
When there is a charge back with a credit card company, there is a dispute process with that credit card company. If you the PayPal transaction was tied to a credit card, then PayPal accepts the final decision of that credit card company. You have the opportunity to fight the charge back. If you decide not to, that is your decision.
PayPal never insinuates they are an insurance policy against charge backs. And there can be a valid reason for a charge back. You could set up an account and ship bad products, or not ship at all. Should PayPal be on the hook to eat all the money simply because you think they should eat all charge backs?
I think you don't understand payment processing at all.
Any money I've got through an eBay sale, or through my website I've been able to pull over to my bank account immediately. There is no blanket policy of holding funds for 21 days.
I've had my credit card stolen and phony charges were applied. I was charged a $75 fee through the credit card to reverse the charges.
I don't use eBay much (even though I'm an employee) but I think so long as you ship to a verified address, or purchase through a verified merchant, you get the full buyer protection. With non-verified accounts, you get limited protection.
My PayPal account defaults to paying with my PayPal credit card. It took all of 5 seconds to set-up. I just purchased the latest Humble Bundle mentioned in this article with my PayPal credit card.
My mother's bank account got wiped through a phishing attack as well. PayPal worked with her bank to get all her funds restored on credit cards and her bank account with 3 days, and started the legal process to go after the phishers.
You don't have to use PayPal for an eBay transaction. They are going to encourage using PayPal because it is their service.
PayPal is heavily regulated. I have to go through rigorous compliance training, even though I don't work in customer service or touch transactions. Non-profits are heavily regulated, and PayPal is required by law to make sure non-profits have all the right paperwork on file, or freeze their accounts. That is your government regulation at play right there.
You're upset PayPal is acting in accordance with government regulations while calling for more.
Buyers and sellers are both customers. You're insisting they only care about one, but never care about their customers. Logically, that doesn't make sense.
I've also heard the claim, that they always side with merchants and never side with buyers. However, both statements can't both be true.
And as someone else already posted, you seem confused about the chargeback policy and process. Sounds like your bank/credit card provider ruled against you, so you've decided that PayPal must suck because of it.
Some of that stems from stories of PayPal supposedly freezing accounts with no notice whatsoever for charities, and often in Slashdot threads for FOSS projects.
In every case I investigated, PayPal did send notice, and we are required by law to obtain proof of non-profit status. If a non-profit doesn't provide that proof within a certain time frame, we are bound by law to freeze the account until they provide it.
For example X.org made a huge stink over that very issue, swearing to the world that PayPal never contacted them and offered them no way to get access to their account again. All the typical Linux/FOSS/technical sites made a stink about it. When it came out a few days later that PayPal had contacted X.org and they dropped the ball, no one reported on that.
The problem is that we hear complaints from angry people separated from their money, but we don't hear the other side, or any particular details. We don't hear the final outcome of these situations. So it is very hard to find if these claims have validity.
800 numbers, email addresses and contact forms are all easily found on the site. As a customer, I've never had trouble contacting the site. I also continue to email PayPal's phishing department with any phishing attempt I see come into my personal email. I get responses back from them usually within minutes.
We may get more email than any single company in the world. I know that we have the single largest Kana email installation in the world, and that is used by all the Fortune 500 companies. We receive a ridiculous amount of spam and phishing attacks. Despite that, our email turn around is actually quite good. We typically respond to all customer email within a day.
We measure our phone handle time against banks, and again we typically do well by those standards. Take that as you will.
Personally, I hate calling into any call center and dealing with an IVR. I'd rather speak to a human immediately. I get the frustration that anyone has to feel calling into a call center and taking some time jumping though menus to speak to a human, just to argue that you want money back. But I wouldn't say it is impossible to get a hold of PayPal.
I've had to deal with dispute resolution with PayPal only once. My mother was the victim of a phishing attack and I tried to help her out. We contacted PayPal, and they got all her money back in 3 days and then went after the phishers.
I currently work in the customer service division at PayPal and I can tell you with absolute certainty that we do dispute resolution on non-eBay transactions.
Now, there could be several mitigating factors, such as if you waited too long to dispute the transaction, or if you weren't willing to do your part to provide evidence. But that would be standard practices for any company. What you're really saying is that a vendor screwed you over, and somehow you think that is PayPal's fault.
I have no way to dispute your statement. If it happened, that is pretty shitty.
While I'm a Software Engineer, our side of the company supports Customer Service. So I deal with that side of the business exclusively. I know we handle chargebacks every single day. I'm curious if you followed the chargeback process documented on the site.
As stated by someone else in this thread, PayPal fees are pretty much exactly the same as you'd pay from other services. And often they are less than fees you'd pay on a merchant account if you're a small business.
If you're simply upset that fees exist in general, I don't know what to tell you, as I'm not aware of a transaction service that charges precisely no fees.
Out of curiosity, why do you hate PayPal? 9 times out of 10, I find that most people who are upset at PayPal are upset over a misconception. The last time I asked on Slashdot, people insisted we've never had a dispute resolution proce
Full disclosure, I work for eBay/PayPal. I wouldn't work for a company I felt was evil.
There were only 30,000 copies of that game sold in the entire world. Articles should be referring to games that the audience can relate to. It never said Eye of the Beholder was the first game of its kind, rather that it is a fine example of the genre.
But since you brought up Ultima games, you could mention Ultima Underworld.
It takes longer to browse in the start menu in Vista and 7, which trains people to put icons on their desktop, or learn how to use Alt+F2. Sadly both Gnome and KDE decided to follow suit with equal regressions. But it looks nicer!
The odd thing is that Microsoft (along with KDE and Gnome developers) were adamant that people would prefer this and use it more. Now Microsoft is admitting that fewer people are.
The original point is that Microsoft doesn't always support their technologies. They can abandon them at any time.
If you kept your accounting records in Microsoft Money, then you were screwed the moment they dropped support. If you bought all your music in the PlaysForSure (ironically named) format, then you were screwed.
Someone countered with "Silverlight is neat and I used it" which doesn't really refuse the notion that big companies can leave you hanging at any time.
You suggest Google can't possibly compete in a new market and cite email, but ignore the fact that we don't have accurate numbers on actual real email users. When I point out the fallacy of that statement, you resort to ad hominem attacks. If there is a fanboy here, it isn't me.
That's the weird thing. The EU saw this as Microsoft abusing OS and browser market share to force people into their web offerings, forcing them to offer choice of default search engines. But every Fortune 500 company I've worked for still forces all their employees to use IE and defaults to Microsoft offerings through group policy. All those enterprise desktops add up.
In the US, the DoJ has accused Google of abusing market share by having their web sites linking to their own web sites. Yahoo and Microsoft however have done nothing wrong, though they do the exact same things. Different people look at the same situation through different biases to come to the conclusions they want.
Slashdot Mirror
About two years ago my daughter broke my PS3 BluRay laser. She was shoving change in the disc slot. Otherwise, the PS3 worked. You could stream Netflix or home theater content. You could play games installed to the hard drive, access PSN, etc.
I listed it very clearly on eBay that what it could and couldn't do. Someone bought it from me, and then immediately disputed the purchase through PayPal. They said that I didn't make it clear it was out of warranty. If it was in warranty, I would have had it fixed/replaced. They apparently though they could buy a cheap broken PS3 on eBay and get a free replacement via Sony.
I showed my listing, that I shipped the PS3 and that the buyer received it. PayPal sided with me as the seller. So I don't accept the notion that PayPal always sides with the buyer, or that they don't have a dispute process since I've used it myself.
If a customer files a charge back, then the credit card company doesn't get the money. Why should they give you money when they didn't receive it?
When there is a charge back with a credit card company, there is a dispute process with that credit card company. If you the PayPal transaction was tied to a credit card, then PayPal accepts the final decision of that credit card company. You have the opportunity to fight the charge back. If you decide not to, that is your decision.
PayPal never insinuates they are an insurance policy against charge backs. And there can be a valid reason for a charge back. You could set up an account and ship bad products, or not ship at all. Should PayPal be on the hook to eat all the money simply because you think they should eat all charge backs?
I think you don't understand payment processing at all.
Any money I've got through an eBay sale, or through my website I've been able to pull over to my bank account immediately. There is no blanket policy of holding funds for 21 days.
I've had my credit card stolen and phony charges were applied. I was charged a $75 fee through the credit card to reverse the charges.
I don't use eBay much (even though I'm an employee) but I think so long as you ship to a verified address, or purchase through a verified merchant, you get the full buyer protection. With non-verified accounts, you get limited protection.
My PayPal account defaults to paying with my PayPal credit card. It took all of 5 seconds to set-up. I just purchased the latest Humble Bundle mentioned in this article with my PayPal credit card.
My mother's bank account got wiped through a phishing attack as well. PayPal worked with her bank to get all her funds restored on credit cards and her bank account with 3 days, and started the legal process to go after the phishers.
You don't have to use PayPal for an eBay transaction. They are going to encourage using PayPal because it is their service.
Your two paragraphs are opposed to each other.
PayPal is heavily regulated. I have to go through rigorous compliance training, even though I don't work in customer service or touch transactions. Non-profits are heavily regulated, and PayPal is required by law to make sure non-profits have all the right paperwork on file, or freeze their accounts. That is your government regulation at play right there.
You're upset PayPal is acting in accordance with government regulations while calling for more.
Buyers and sellers are both customers. You're insisting they only care about one, but never care about their customers. Logically, that doesn't make sense.
I've also heard the claim, that they always side with merchants and never side with buyers. However, both statements can't both be true.
And as someone else already posted, you seem confused about the chargeback policy and process. Sounds like your bank/credit card provider ruled against you, so you've decided that PayPal must suck because of it.
Some of that stems from stories of PayPal supposedly freezing accounts with no notice whatsoever for charities, and often in Slashdot threads for FOSS projects.
In every case I investigated, PayPal did send notice, and we are required by law to obtain proof of non-profit status. If a non-profit doesn't provide that proof within a certain time frame, we are bound by law to freeze the account until they provide it.
For example X.org made a huge stink over that very issue, swearing to the world that PayPal never contacted them and offered them no way to get access to their account again. All the typical Linux/FOSS/technical sites made a stink about it. When it came out a few days later that PayPal had contacted X.org and they dropped the ball, no one reported on that.
The problem is that we hear complaints from angry people separated from their money, but we don't hear the other side, or any particular details. We don't hear the final outcome of these situations. So it is very hard to find if these claims have validity.
800 numbers, email addresses and contact forms are all easily found on the site. As a customer, I've never had trouble contacting the site. I also continue to email PayPal's phishing department with any phishing attempt I see come into my personal email. I get responses back from them usually within minutes.
We may get more email than any single company in the world. I know that we have the single largest Kana email installation in the world, and that is used by all the Fortune 500 companies. We receive a ridiculous amount of spam and phishing attacks. Despite that, our email turn around is actually quite good. We typically respond to all customer email within a day.
We measure our phone handle time against banks, and again we typically do well by those standards. Take that as you will.
Personally, I hate calling into any call center and dealing with an IVR. I'd rather speak to a human immediately. I get the frustration that anyone has to feel calling into a call center and taking some time jumping though menus to speak to a human, just to argue that you want money back. But I wouldn't say it is impossible to get a hold of PayPal.
I think the day this bundle started, there was only a single game. All the other bundles have had 5 games.
I've had to deal with dispute resolution with PayPal only once. My mother was the victim of a phishing attack and I tried to help her out. We contacted PayPal, and they got all her money back in 3 days and then went after the phishers.
I currently work in the customer service division at PayPal and I can tell you with absolute certainty that we do dispute resolution on non-eBay transactions.
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xpt/cps/general/PPDisputeResolution-outside
Now, there could be several mitigating factors, such as if you waited too long to dispute the transaction, or if you weren't willing to do your part to provide evidence. But that would be standard practices for any company. What you're really saying is that a vendor screwed you over, and somehow you think that is PayPal's fault.
I have no way to dispute your statement. If it happened, that is pretty shitty.
While I'm a Software Engineer, our side of the company supports Customer Service. So I deal with that side of the business exclusively. I know we handle chargebacks every single day. I'm curious if you followed the chargeback process documented on the site.
https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=security/chargeback_guide
Large is a pretty subjective term.
As stated by someone else in this thread, PayPal fees are pretty much exactly the same as you'd pay from other services. And often they are less than fees you'd pay on a merchant account if you're a small business.
If you're simply upset that fees exist in general, I don't know what to tell you, as I'm not aware of a transaction service that charges precisely no fees.
I've bought each previous bundle, and while I still support the concept, this is the weakest bundle (assuming you own the previous ones).
Out of curiosity, why do you hate PayPal? 9 times out of 10, I find that most people who are upset at PayPal are upset over a misconception. The last time I asked on Slashdot, people insisted we've never had a dispute resolution proce
Full disclosure, I work for eBay/PayPal. I wouldn't work for a company I felt was evil.
There were only 30,000 copies of that game sold in the entire world. Articles should be referring to games that the audience can relate to. It never said Eye of the Beholder was the first game of its kind, rather that it is a fine example of the genre.
But since you brought up Ultima games, you could mention Ultima Underworld.
That's the thing. They want use to use Search, but the menu itself is slower.
KDE 3 on many distros had a classic menu with search integrated. It was the best of both worlds.
It takes longer to browse in the start menu in Vista and 7, which trains people to put icons on their desktop, or learn how to use Alt+F2. Sadly both Gnome and KDE decided to follow suit with equal regressions. But it looks nicer!
The odd thing is that Microsoft (along with KDE and Gnome developers) were adamant that people would prefer this and use it more. Now Microsoft is admitting that fewer people are.
Bug fixes and security patches can come out days apart, but it is six weeks between release numbers for Chrome.
People said with laptops that no one would ever use a desktop again.
People said with netbooks that no one would ever use a desktop again.
People said with smartphones that no one would ever use a desktop again.
Now with tablets people are saying that no one will ever use a desktop again.
Most of these devices supplement PCs, not replace PCs.
If it is documented that they routinely defrauded people for money, why are they not in jail?
This roller coaster has not been created. It is has been proposed. This is a slight difference there.
It isn't illegal to have a monopoly. It is illegal to block competition. Either the tactics themselves are wrong, or they aren't.
The original point is that Microsoft doesn't always support their technologies. They can abandon them at any time.
If you kept your accounting records in Microsoft Money, then you were screwed the moment they dropped support. If you bought all your music in the PlaysForSure (ironically named) format, then you were screwed.
Someone countered with "Silverlight is neat and I used it" which doesn't really refuse the notion that big companies can leave you hanging at any time.
You suggest Google can't possibly compete in a new market and cite email, but ignore the fact that we don't have accurate numbers on actual real email users. When I point out the fallacy of that statement, you resort to ad hominem attacks. If there is a fanboy here, it isn't me.
That's the weird thing. The EU saw this as Microsoft abusing OS and browser market share to force people into their web offerings, forcing them to offer choice of default search engines. But every Fortune 500 company I've worked for still forces all their employees to use IE and defaults to Microsoft offerings through group policy. All those enterprise desktops add up.
In the US, the DoJ has accused Google of abusing market share by having their web sites linking to their own web sites. Yahoo and Microsoft however have done nothing wrong, though they do the exact same things. Different people look at the same situation through different biases to come to the conclusions they want.