53 ms·

I still don't understand how anyone does business with Paypal. Their abuses and shitty business practices like this just continue, and will only continue to get

by awalton 10y ago

I still don't understand how anyone does business with Paypal. Their abuses and shitty business practices like this just continue, and will only continue to get more abhorrent. This is yet another tissue paper apology issued after the fact it's already cost someone business, and only offered after it made more bad press for Paypal. There are alternatives now. You don't have to keep doing business with these colossal assholes.

JoshTriplett 10y ago
Many people who won't give you their credit card number will pay you via PayPal, because PayPal is perceived to have more consumer protection. (They maintain that perception by having a massive bias towards consumers at the expense of merchants.) Some people who don't have credit cards use PayPal.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  I do it, because I feel paypal is safer than totallynotgonnagiveyourcardtochina.randomsite.com That may not actually be safer, but it feels like it. Though, I would be OK using most of the alternative payment services in this case.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Paypal follows the sane system of having the payer tell them who and how much to pay, instead of CC's process where the seller tells them "it's cool, the buyer totally wanted me to have $X" and the payment processor simply complies. /rant (Yes, 3-D secure exists, but as a user it's impossible to verify that the site is actually using it before handing over the CC info)
  - makomk 10y ago
    Well, Paypal gives the impression to buyers that they're the ones telling Paypal how much to pay anyway. If I recall correctly the amount displayed on the Paypal payment page is for information only and the API leaves it up to the seller how much to actually charge, and in some cases this may change (for example, because the site can't calculate shipping fees until Paypal gives them the buyer's address).
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    Agreed; this and actual cryptographic signatures should be a requirement to process any payment. I'd like that for a bill pay system, too. Right now, I have to choose between systems with direct bank account access that can debit any amount, or systems that require manual entry of amounts. I'd like to see a standard where the source of a bill sends an invoice to my bank, and I then direct the bank to pay it (either via direct authorization, or by setting parameters like "automatically pay if less than $X").
    - icebraining 10y ago
      What pains me is that the committee that created the new SEPA Direct Debit standard had the choice (the two processes were used in different EU countries) and they chose the dumb one! We actually had a sane direct debit system here in Portugal, in which the invoice would come with a code that you could input into your bank's site or ATM, therefore authorizing future debits from that company. It was safe, it could be easily revoked, and we lost it to implement SEPA's crappy version.
  - ryan-c 10y ago
    3-D secure trains people to be phished.
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      And it shifts liability to the customer: given a "3-D Secure" authorization, the credit card company presumes an authorized transaction and makes it much harder to claim fraud.
- pcr0 10y ago
  I'm a college student, and I don't have a credit card. I do all my online spending via PayPal, which I top up from my bank account.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- squeaky-clean 10y ago
  > They maintain that perception by having a massive bias towards consumers at the expense of merchants. So you mean they maintain that "perception" by actually doing it. Their business practices are shitty, and they treat merchants terribly, but it's true that as a consumer, it's really easy (maybe too easy) refund and cancel payments with it.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    I said "perceived" not because PayPal doesn't protect consumers, but because credit cards do just as well.
chdir 10y ago
Hate them. They've burned charitable events, humanitarian fundraisers. It'll take a while for their momentum to die down, but I pray they disappear eventually.
ultramancool 10y ago
> I still don't understand how anyone does business with Paypal. I run a business which takes PayPal and there's one reason we take PayPal: Everyone has it and everyone expects it. I'm speaking solely from annecdata here, but in my experience at least, if you don't have PayPal, you're probably giving up a huge potential amount of revenue even if you take CCs via another means. PayPal makes buyers feel very much in control, if you're doing recurring payments, there's a cancel button, it's easy to challenge a seller and win and they take so many different methods including CCs, bank accounts, "instant bank transfer" (where they'll do bank transfer but fall back to CC, allowing your transaction to go through instantly which many people love). As a buyer, PayPal is very good. If you don't compromise and meet your buyers, selling is a lot harder. Unless someone can make buyers move, there's not much recourse a seller can take.
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  ^ Same, and that's the exact reason. I don't trust them at all though, as soon as I get payment for any work performed it's out preferably via debit card or EFT if it's over the limit. PayPal balance is never over $20 if I can help it. Necessary evil.
- philipov 10y ago
  As a buyer, I consider credit cards the greater of the two evils. Because I don't use credit, I can't get credit large enough for the purchases I wish to make above my debit limit, and so I continue to not use credit. So I use Paypal because they offer bank transfers with a limit higher than my debit card, and don't require me to buy into the ridiculous credit game we've got going on. From my point of view, regardless of my disdain for Paypal as an organization, if you don't accept them and I'm buying something worth more than a thousand dollars, I have no way to give you my money. It's remarkably difficult to pay for large transactions with cash without using Paypal.
  - mordocai 10y ago
    Direct bank transfers and a debit card with a high/no limit are other options. I have both. Of course, that doesn't mean you have either easily available to you.
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
Prior to like Amazon Payments showing up, PayPal was one of the few things I'd be willing to use to deal business with small web stores that I don't trust. And I still don't see Amazon Payments really commonly.
EarthIsHome 10y ago
What are some common alternatives?
- redka 10y ago
  Stripe, supposedly. Unfortunately they are much more strict when it comes to the bussineses they serve so not everyone has the luxury to use them
  - dopeboy 10y ago
    Tangential question - do Stripe and others choose to exclude certain businesses because the rate of chargebacks + fraud goes up or is it just a general "we don't want to be associated with drugs/porn/guns" sort of thing?
    - redka 10y ago
      Difficult to say. I'm operating a small business[1] in the forex/stocks field with zero chargebacks and a pristine rep. It wasn't even obviously prohibited since you can't do actual trades there. Stripe shut down my account anyway after about two months and only said that they are forced to reject us because of some agreements with the banks. [1] https://formationseeker.com https://formationseeker.com
Anechoic 10y ago
There are alternatives now. As a seller I use PayPal because they offer two features I haven't been able to find anywhere else: 1) easy drop-in code to add a button to take payments on your site (I'm not a developer) and 2) instant access to cash. Amazon payments offers #1 but I haven't seen anyone else that offers the combo of #1 and #2. Until someone else does, or PayPal decides to screw us (which is a possibility I acknowledge and for which I have a contingency plan), we're still going to use them.
tonyedgecombe 10y ago
As a consumer I like PayPal because I am deciding to send someone money rather than them pulling it from a credit card I give them. This means I'll do business with suppliers I don't know without worrying about what they might do with my credit card details.
- vitd 10y ago
  Are ever concerned about them taking your money and not sending you the item? If they're in a foreign country, or have skipped town, what's your recourse?
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    That's always a risk however I pay but I can get my money back by filing a dispute with PayPal and not have to worry about where my credit card number has ended up.

by awalton 10y ago

JoshTriplett 10y ago

Many people who won't give you their credit card number will pay you via PayPal, because PayPal is perceived to have more consumer protection. (They maintain that perception by having a massive bias towards consumers at the expense of merchants.) Some people who don't have credit cards use PayPal.

CaptSpify 10y ago
I do it, because I feel paypal is safer than totallynotgonnagiveyourcardtochina.randomsite.com That may not actually be safer, but it feels like it. Though, I would be OK using most of the alternative payment services in this case.
icebraining 10y ago
Paypal follows the sane system of having the payer tell them who and how much to pay, instead of CC's process where the seller tells them "it's cool, the buyer totally wanted me to have $X" and the payment processor simply complies. /rant (Yes, 3-D secure exists, but as a user it's impossible to verify that the site is actually using it before handing over the CC info)
- makomk 10y ago
  Well, Paypal gives the impression to buyers that they're the ones telling Paypal how much to pay anyway. If I recall correctly the amount displayed on the Paypal payment page is for information only and the API leaves it up to the seller how much to actually charge, and in some cases this may change (for example, because the site can't calculate shipping fees until Paypal gives them the buyer's address).
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  Agreed; this and actual cryptographic signatures should be a requirement to process any payment. I'd like that for a bill pay system, too. Right now, I have to choose between systems with direct bank account access that can debit any amount, or systems that require manual entry of amounts. I'd like to see a standard where the source of a bill sends an invoice to my bank, and I then direct the bank to pay it (either via direct authorization, or by setting parameters like "automatically pay if less than $X").
  - icebraining 10y ago
    What pains me is that the committee that created the new SEPA Direct Debit standard had the choice (the two processes were used in different EU countries) and they chose the dumb one! We actually had a sane direct debit system here in Portugal, in which the invoice would come with a code that you could input into your bank's site or ATM, therefore authorizing future debits from that company. It was safe, it could be easily revoked, and we lost it to implement SEPA's crappy version.
- ryan-c 10y ago
  3-D secure trains people to be phished.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    And it shifts liability to the customer: given a "3-D Secure" authorization, the credit card company presumes an authorized transaction and makes it much harder to claim fraud.
pcr0 10y ago
I'm a college student, and I don't have a credit card. I do all my online spending via PayPal, which I top up from my bank account.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
squeaky-clean 10y ago
> They maintain that perception by having a massive bias towards consumers at the expense of merchants. So you mean they maintain that "perception" by actually doing it. Their business practices are shitty, and they treat merchants terribly, but it's true that as a consumer, it's really easy (maybe too easy) refund and cancel payments with it.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  I said "perceived" not because PayPal doesn't protect consumers, but because credit cards do just as well.

chdir 10y ago

Hate them. They've burned charitable events, humanitarian fundraisers. It'll take a while for their momentum to die down, but I pray they disappear eventually.

ultramancool 10y ago

> I still don't understand how anyone does business with Paypal. I run a business which takes PayPal and there's one reason we take PayPal: Everyone has it and everyone expects it. I'm speaking solely from annecdata here, but in my experience at least, if you don't have PayPal, you're probably giving up a huge potential amount of revenue even if you take CCs via another means. PayPal makes buyers feel very much in control, if you're doing recurring payments, there's a cancel button, it's easy to challenge a seller and win and they take so many different methods including CCs, bank accounts, "instant bank transfer" (where they'll do bank transfer but fall back to CC, allowing your transaction to go through instantly which many people love). As a buyer, PayPal is very good. If you don't compromise and meet your buyers, selling is a lot harder. Unless someone can make buyers move, there's not much recourse a seller can take.

FussyZeus 10y ago
^ Same, and that's the exact reason. I don't trust them at all though, as soon as I get payment for any work performed it's out preferably via debit card or EFT if it's over the limit. PayPal balance is never over $20 if I can help it. Necessary evil.
philipov 10y ago
As a buyer, I consider credit cards the greater of the two evils. Because I don't use credit, I can't get credit large enough for the purchases I wish to make above my debit limit, and so I continue to not use credit. So I use Paypal because they offer bank transfers with a limit higher than my debit card, and don't require me to buy into the ridiculous credit game we've got going on. From my point of view, regardless of my disdain for Paypal as an organization, if you don't accept them and I'm buying something worth more than a thousand dollars, I have no way to give you my money. It's remarkably difficult to pay for large transactions with cash without using Paypal.
- mordocai 10y ago
  Direct bank transfers and a debit card with a high/no limit are other options. I have both. Of course, that doesn't mean you have either easily available to you.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago

Prior to like Amazon Payments showing up, PayPal was one of the few things I'd be willing to use to deal business with small web stores that I don't trust. And I still don't see Amazon Payments really commonly.

EarthIsHome 10y ago

What are some common alternatives?

redka 10y ago
Stripe, supposedly. Unfortunately they are much more strict when it comes to the bussineses they serve so not everyone has the luxury to use them
- dopeboy 10y ago
  Tangential question - do Stripe and others choose to exclude certain businesses because the rate of chargebacks + fraud goes up or is it just a general "we don't want to be associated with drugs/porn/guns" sort of thing?
  - redka 10y ago
    Difficult to say. I'm operating a small business[1] in the forex/stocks field with zero chargebacks and a pristine rep. It wasn't even obviously prohibited since you can't do actual trades there. Stripe shut down my account anyway after about two months and only said that they are forced to reject us because of some agreements with the banks. [1] https://formationseeker.com https://formationseeker.com

Anechoic 10y ago

There are alternatives now. As a seller I use PayPal because they offer two features I haven't been able to find anywhere else: 1) easy drop-in code to add a button to take payments on your site (I'm not a developer) and 2) instant access to cash. Amazon payments offers #1 but I haven't seen anyone else that offers the combo of #1 and #2. Until someone else does, or PayPal decides to screw us (which is a possibility I acknowledge and for which I have a contingency plan), we're still going to use them.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago

As a consumer I like PayPal because I am deciding to send someone money rather than them pulling it from a credit card I give them. This means I'll do business with suppliers I don't know without worrying about what they might do with my credit card details.

vitd 10y ago
Are ever concerned about them taking your money and not sending you the item? If they're in a foreign country, or have skipped town, what's your recourse?
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  That's always a risk however I pay but I can get my money back by filing a dispute with PayPal and not have to worry about where my credit card number has ended up.