10 ms·

PayPal adds “non-discouragement” clause to their User Agreement

107 points by striking 10y ago

justinzollars 10y ago
Just under the non-discouragement clause: We are changing the standard transaction fee for sellers selling goods or services online to buyers outside the U.S. from 3.9% to 4.4% plus the existing fixed fee based on the currency.
- lathiat 10y ago
  holy hell, that is getting ridiculous
phyzome 10y ago
«In representations to your customers or in public communications, you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method. At all of your points of sale (in whatever form), you agree not to try to dissuade or inhibit your customers from using PayPal; and, if you enable your customers to pay you with PayPal, you agree to treat PayPal’s payment mark at least at par with other payment methods offered.» If you have to add that to your User Agreement, what does that say about your service?
- chinathrow 10y ago
  I read that regarding all your PoS that Paypal is about to enter into direct competition with e.g. Apple Pay and others. Also, I read that they will raise costs soonish.
- elcapitan 10y ago
  "you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method" English is not my first language, does this mean that by calling PayPal a "payment method" i mischaracterize it? (is it a .. payment service .. whatever?) Or does it mean that I agree not to "mischaracterize" PayPal in general because I don't like it? (then why would I offer it)
  - ksmithbaylor 10y ago
    I was confused by this language too. I think it means that in the context of PayPal being a payment method, you agree not to mischaracterize it in any way.
  - thekevan 10y ago
    English is my first language and I find the wording confusing as well.
  - droithomme 10y ago
    Your english is good. It's very unclear what it means as the sentence can be parsed different ways. That suggests that either their lawyers are incompetent and shouldn't be let near a contract, or they are are competent and therefore are intentionally trying to fool their customers. It's probably incompetence though since this can work both ways. If PayPal tried to bring legal action with this clause, the first defense one would look at is to simply respond, "Where did I say it was a payment method? The clause says I can't mischaracterize it as a payment method, and I didn't." In any case as it reads most simply it says you can't call PayPal a payment method. I doubt that's what they really meant to say.
    - randallsquared 10y ago
      It can only be parsed different ways under incompatible assumptions about whether PayPal is a payment method. If it actually is a payment method (as their lawyers undoubtedly take as a given), then it limits mischaracterization to aspects of PayPal that do not involve its character as a payment method. Only if you already believe it is somehow "not a payment method" does the other reading make any sense.
      - __s 10y ago
        I also interpreted it as "PayPal is not a payment method" when reading. Legal statements shouldn't rely on out-of-contract context to parse
        10y ago
- patio11 10y ago
  This is de rigeur in payments; the brand guidelines for the big three credit card companies have similar things IIRC. They don't want you to say "Visa accepted here THOSE BASTARDS we prefer Amex" or otherwise interfere with their customer relationships while servicing your customer relationships. There has been litigation around this routinely, including (IIRC) a US holding that says that merchants are allowed to say X is cheaper for them than Y if that statement is accurate. Edit: that may have been reversed on appeal. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-26/american-express-wins-ruling-reversing-merchant-fee-decision https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-26/american-...
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Maybe it's only my anecdotal experience, but I've seen a lot more merchants lately flat out stop accepting expensive payment methods like Amex, and these were all merchants that I had previously been able to use Amex at before.
    - twblalock 10y ago
      Amex is in a bit of trouble for a few reasons: 1. Competing card companies offer much better cards than they used to, and include benefits that only Amex used to provide. For example, Visa Signature and Mastercard's competing product offer return coverage, extended warranties, free rental car insurance, etc. 2. One of the main draws of accepting Amex was that Amex's customer base was more affluent than that of other card companies, but that is no longer the case, partly because of #1. 3. Amex lost the Costco deal. That's a loss of a great deal of credit card fees, and 10% of Amex cards were the Costco card. The court case was also seen as a blow, but maybe not if it got reversed on appeal. In any case, there are plenty of other problems for Amex to worry about.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Oh for sure! I myself no longer feel like I'm getting as much value from my $450/year Platinum charge card with Amex and am looking to switch to the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, as it's a visa (taken everywhere), has a better rewards program, and provides far more services for that same $450/year annual fee.
- Buge 10y ago
  Part of it seems to be saying you can't charge people extra fees to use paypal. I know sellers sometimes try to do the same thing with credit cards, charge extra fees to credit card users.
  - hydrogen18 10y ago
    I usually just do the opposite. I mark everything up knowing that somewhere a cut will be taken. If you have to pay me cash, then I just make more on that transaction.
    - chipperyman573 10y ago
      If you're able to sell something at the same rate with an increased price, you should've been doing that before you heard about the credit cards' cut.
      - hydrogen18 10y ago
        You're forgetting the convenience factor that the payment service creates in the market. Let's say I sell trinkets for $10/each online. They are nice trinkets, but no one really needs my trinkets. No one is going to send me a money order in the mail for a single trinket for $10. Basically, there is no online market at all, unless I can make it easy to buy my product. But if I charge $11/each and accept Paypal (or credit cards in general), I now have a real market for my trinkets. People like my trinkets, so they will gladly click on a Paypal icon and send me the money that way. Now my trinkets are somewhat popular. A couple times a year someone stops by my workshop and asks to buy a trinket in person. I still charge them $11.
  - Paul-ish 10y ago
    Could I try to get around this by offering two "different" (sharpie a red dot on the bottom of the lamp) items, one you can purchase with paypal and another you cannot. Can Paypal require you to accept paypal on everything your business sells?
- fencepost 10y ago
  Well, if I can't "mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method" then how can I "treat PayPal's payment mark at least at par with other payment methods offered"? Their use of "other payment methods" would imply to me that they consider PayPal also to be a "payment method" though I suppose they might want to call it Bob instead. I can just see it now: "PayPal is not a legitimate payment method! If you doubt this, see their Terms & Conditions where they explicitly state that you may not 'mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method.'" Someone did a really crappy job of phrasing.
  - cnnsucks 10y ago
    >> Someone did a really crappy job of phrasing. Legal work is an area of life where one should not apply Hanlon's razor by default. Not one comma or period in that work went unscrutinized by highly compensated executive talent at PayPal and any ambiguity you find is deliberate. Assume malice.
    - arkades 10y ago
      This can't be understated. My wife is a mid-tier firm attorney in (a field). Any contract generally has a low-level associate take a pass at the material, which she then scrutinizes, polishes, etc. and then shares with her supervising attorney, who also scrutinizes and polishes. This is then shared with the client, who has their own staff to scrutinize, who are relevant executives, content experts, and often in-house attorneys of their own. Several iterations of this cycle are the bare minimum. Because this process involves low-tier associates being taught by upper level attorneys, the "basic" stuff that top experts take for granted gets scrutinized and explained, as well, so even the parts you think of as "stock components" are being carefully looked over and considered at length. There isn't a single word in those contracts that hasn't been reviewed by at least a half-dozen experts.
    - Silhouette 10y ago
      It's still an ambiguous construction in the middle of a standard form contract, which is bad news for whoever drafted the contract in many legal systems. And from my experience of lawyers, highly paid or otherwise, incompetence is just as plausible an explanation for their bad work as anyone else's.
jxi 10y ago
They also snuck in some fee hikes to their "policy update".
celticninja 10y ago
People will continue to prefer PayPal alternatives when the costs are so much higher to use paypal and I would assume this is generally difficult to enforce because it relies on a user telling paypal that a vendor asked them to use an alternative method. I would make paypal my last payment option offered to a buyer.
- hackermailman 10y ago
  There's sites where they openly ask buyers not to use PP for some items that are high fraud risk and allow PP for less risky items. This means retailers will just drop PP as an option completely. I generally use it for most of my online buying as it's become difficult lately to use prepaid cards for some reason, I used to be able to effortlessly convert cryptocurrency into a virtual visa and buy anything but alas. Paypal, for buyers, is an easy experience now there's no waiting for your account to be loaded from a bank.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    As a buyer, I would rather send in a check or not make the purchase before using Pay Pal.
- adamqureshi 10y ago
  Buyer insisted on PP. I needed the project / money and did not wanna cause a problem. I asked buyer many times to wire / ACH the money. I kinda "had" to accept PP. Im not a rockstar. Can't demand / insist my preferred method. But there is a happy ending. I still have the gig and now they pay with stripe. ;-)
Animats 10y ago
Why is eBay so protective of PayPal? PayPal has been a separate company from eBay since 2015.
- hyperbovine 10y ago
  eBay stockholders got PYPL shares 1:1 when they split. People who own lots of the former (eBay insiders & higher ups) have a large stake in the latter.
- iaw 10y ago
  Presuming absolutely no shared financial interests and pretending there are no remaining synergies. The people who run ebay have to be close with the people that run Paypal... The strategies that built paypal were in line with the ebay ethos.
- hazelnut 10y ago
  They still got binding contracts. For example they have to have PayPal as a payment option till 2020 and a decent amount must be processed through PayPal. It might change after 2020.
- DrScump 10y ago
  With eBay, you have a new fraud vector to worry about: eBay's "Buyer Protection" is a superset of the former Paypal-centric coverage such that if a buyer initiates a return against a seller, eBay can choose to make that buyer whole by charging the credit card you use for your eBay seller fees and memberships (if any), regardless of payment method used by the buyer.
adamqureshi 10y ago
PP froze my account. (concentrated buyer exposure) They asked me what im selling, i said i offer software services , they asked what is the product , what do i deliver, i said i deliver code , they asked for the service agreement, i said well you'd have to ask the buyer that. They asked me to send them the last 4 invoices , i did. long story short , It was PITA to refund my bread , getting paid with STRIPE is better now. WHAT a damn hassle! I got the buyer on the phone W/ PP.PP said to me only thing i can do i is refund the last 4 invoices and get paid outside PP. Buyer said there is NO issue at all we are very happy with seller services. PP said to buyer: "nothing you did or can do". PP said to " they'd hold my bread for 180 days" then said hold for 90 days OR i can refund the 4 invoices , each time i called i spoke to someone different, they said it was their system, not my fault or the buyer , buyer made no claims at all.. Luckily, the buyer was cool enough to help me. I had to call PP each time todo a refund. Lift HOLD, refund, with then on the phone, repeat. What a damn HASSLE! i set up stripe the next day and its all good to go now! good lucky with PP. they can hold your shit without informing you and you can't do jack shit. And i had people to pay! I am kinda pissed but happy i got paid all my invoices. Does this mean i can't write a blog post about what happ to me? maybe this type of shit is normal with PP.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  Write a blog post but use few paragraphs ;) the story is interesting but difficult to read.
  - adamqureshi 10y ago
    dyslexia. ;-)
    - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
      PayPal froze my account (for concentrated buyer exposure). They asked me what I'm selling, I said I offer software services. They asked what is the product, what do I deliver, I said I deliver code. They asked for the service agreement, I said "well, you'd have to ask the buyer for that". They asked me to send them the last 4 invoices, so I did. Long story short, it was PITA to refund my bread. Getting paid with STRIPE is better now. WHAT a damn hassle! I got the buyer on the phone with PayPal. PayPal said to me only thing I can do I is refund the last 4 invoices and get paid outside PayPapl. Buyer said there is NO issue at all we are very happy with seller services. They said to the buyer: "there's nothing you did or can do". PayPal told me "they'd hold my bread for 180 days", then for 90 days, OR I can refund the 4 invoices. Each time I called I spoke to someone different. They said it was their system's fault, not mine or the buyer, the buyer made no claims at all.. Luckily, the buyer was cool enough to help me. I had to call PayPal each time to do a refund. Lift HOLD, refund, with them on the phone, repeat. What a damn HASSLE! I set up Stripe the next day and it's all good to go now! Good luck with PayPal. They can hold your shit without informing you and you can't do jack shit. And I had people to pay! I am kinda pissed but happy I got all of my invoices paid. Does this mean I can't write a blog post about what happened to me? Maybe this type of shit is normal with PayPal. - - - If you'd like to write a blog post, feel free to reach out to me for editing help. Email in my profile.
jseliger 10y ago
I'm amazed people will still use Paypal. The horror stories about it are legion online; I had my own, many years ago, when I did some editing work for someone who then disputed the charge on their credit card. Paypal then retroactively decided that I had a negative balance on my account! At the time I was young and stupid and idealistic and principled enough to waste a lot of time suing Paypal and the collections agency in small claims court (suing anyone in small claims court can be a pretty bad idea, even if you are technically in the right: https://jakeseliger.com/2010/08/28/dont-rent-an-apartment-from-navid-abedian-in-tucson-arizona-or-how-i-learned-to-be-wary-of-lawsuits https://jakeseliger.com/2010/08/28/dont-rent-an-apartment-fr... , if your time and attention are worth anything). Still, I did definitely, definitively learn that you cannot trust and should not use Paypal.
- jpalomaki 10y ago
  As a customer I very much prefer PayPal. If site supports PayPal as payment method, this increases the propability of getting my money. CC is more cumbersome, because I don't want to give my primary credit card info for random merchants and creating new virtual card takes a few steps.
  - hyperbovine 10y ago
    Visa Checkout is, just 20 years too late, finally attempting to solve this problem. I'm way more copacetic about Visa have access to my account information since they already do :)
    - imglorp 10y ago
      The card companies are shockingly glacial in this market. You'd think the day after Ebay and PP came online, they'd be working on an online card solution. It would have encouraged people to spend billions more on their cards and they've crushed PP in the cradle.
      - hyperbovine 10y ago
bencollier49 10y ago
"At all your points of sale (in whatever form)" Does this not mean that any bricks'n'clicks business has to offer Paypal at their physical counter? And that they can't levy variable card processing fees, at least not where the fee for Paypal is higher?
- edoceo 10y ago
  Thank you for "bricks-n-clicks"
bcrescimanno 10y ago
Disclaimer: PP employee--below opinions are my own and do not represent PayPal. Things I have actually seen myself: * Charging a fee to use PayPal that is not charged otherwise. * Modal dialogs before PayPal describing PayPal as slower / riskier / less customized / etc. * Disallowing PayPal for certain items. I'm sure there are a lot of others. As patio11 mentioned in a comment below, this sort of boilerplate is common for Payments and I don't see it as unreasonable to ask for equal treatment to be given.
- minxomat 10y ago
  Charging extra for any payment method while offering other common ones is not a problem at all. You have to consider the trouble that a massive number of merchants have with paypal. The risk of dealing with something odd is financially relevant. The time spent on conflict resolution (between merchant and paypal that is) consumes time, which delays payments and has a cascading effect on other operations. This time costs money, which many add as a fee for people that want to use paypal. I don't know a single commercial seller that once offered or still offers paypal payments and doesn't have a horror story that resulted in serious financial and operational trouble for them. PP could introduce this if they had a good image. Right now it's considered by many to be the ... Oracle of payment processing.
- Atheros 10y ago
  It wouldn't be unreasonable for equal treatment to be given if the service you provided was equal. It is not. That's why merchants dissuade its use.
- chipperyman573 10y ago
  All of these things are done because PP has, at some point in the past, screwed over the merchant. Paypal is so bad that at this point, it's not even unreasonable to assume that even a part-time seller has never had a problem with them. The only reason any seller uses them is because the customers prefer it or they don't want to set up their own Stripe integration. It's blatantly clear that PP existed with nearly no competition for many years.
- stordoff 10y ago
ve55 10y ago
Paypal is offered a lot as an option for virtual goods, such as virtual items or services for games. There is always a lot of caution around it, because anyone that has used it in this area for longer than a day realizes that they can be scammed nearly arbitrary amounts if they decide to trust payments from Paypal. For this reason, it's generally required either that you do out of bound methods to help verify your identity (i.e. show us a picture of your ID and we will make sure it matches your Paypal name after you pay us), and/or that you have a lot of reputation within whatever community you're working from. If you do this verification wrong as a merchant, you will find yourself charged back with absolutely no recourse after you have only sold to a few customers. I've seen this happy many times, sometimes with $10 and sometimes with $1,000. Even if you do this verification correct, you can still find yourself charged back with no recourse, so it's advised not to do this with large payments or sketchy customers, especially in the area of virtual goods. This is also commonly done in areas wiht donations, such as Twitch donations of thouands of dollars being charged back after the sender has already recieved their desired reaction/fame/etc. Given what I have seen, I read this clause as a requirement that you are not allowed to fairy inform users about the risks of Paypal, and depending on how this requirement is enforced, it could mean the end of Paypal as a method in the virtual goods area, as new methods like Bitcoin slowly take over due to the lack of chargebacks.
inopinatus 10y ago
I run a two-sided network. Our providers sometimes ask if PayPal is possible. It's helpful they include draconian language like this in their contracts; giving me something to reference, other than the myriad horror stories, when saying No. They're their own worst enemy.
- cardiffspaceman 10y ago
  I read that draconian language myself back when the buzz first started about Paypal, too. I don't understand how convenience is so valuable that you'd put your whole account at risk.
throwawaydbfif 10y ago
I can't believe PayPal and the credit card cartels can get away with this shit. Card fees eat up an astounding amount of profit from low margin items, retailers should be able to encourage whatever payment method they want. If customers knew how much they were actually paying to these card companies indirectly (thousands of dollars a year) most people would switch to cash
- nayuki 10y ago
  True. At the same time, don't forget that banks charge business a small fee to deposit cash into their bank account. For example: https://www.tdcanadatrust.com/products-services/small-business/fees.jsp https://www.tdcanadatrust.com/products-services/small-busine...
  - csdreamer7 10y ago
    That's for Canada. In the US I have seen a lot of business checking accounts accept the few bunch of checks for free. ACH transfers are unlimited. They even fee cash and coin deposits. I have never had a bank charge a fee for cash (or coin) deposits.
  - tveita 10y ago
    In Canada the Interac debit card network has transaction fees on the order of a few cents. It's crazy how much money US payment processors manage to skim off.
    - throwawaydbfif 10y ago
      It's crazy that having a couple huge companies that silently collude to maintain their existing market share somehow isn't antitrust
DrScump 10y ago
Prior posting, 45+ comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591601

107 points by striking 10y ago

Just under the non-discouragement clause: We are changing the standard transaction fee for sellers selling goods or services online to buyers outside the U.S. from 3.9% to 4.4% plus the existing fixed fee based on the currency.

lathiat 10y ago
holy hell, that is getting ridiculous

phyzome 10y ago

«In representations to your customers or in public communications, you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method. At all of your points of sale (in whatever form), you agree not to try to dissuade or inhibit your customers from using PayPal; and, if you enable your customers to pay you with PayPal, you agree to treat PayPal’s payment mark at least at par with other payment methods offered.» If you have to add that to your User Agreement, what does that say about your service?

chinathrow 10y ago
I read that regarding all your PoS that Paypal is about to enter into direct competition with e.g. Apple Pay and others. Also, I read that they will raise costs soonish.
elcapitan 10y ago
"you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method" English is not my first language, does this mean that by calling PayPal a "payment method" i mischaracterize it? (is it a .. payment service .. whatever?) Or does it mean that I agree not to "mischaracterize" PayPal in general because I don't like it? (then why would I offer it)
- ksmithbaylor 10y ago
  I was confused by this language too. I think it means that in the context of PayPal being a payment method, you agree not to mischaracterize it in any way.
- thekevan 10y ago
  English is my first language and I find the wording confusing as well.
- droithomme 10y ago
  Your english is good. It's very unclear what it means as the sentence can be parsed different ways. That suggests that either their lawyers are incompetent and shouldn't be let near a contract, or they are are competent and therefore are intentionally trying to fool their customers. It's probably incompetence though since this can work both ways. If PayPal tried to bring legal action with this clause, the first defense one would look at is to simply respond, "Where did I say it was a payment method? The clause says I can't mischaracterize it as a payment method, and I didn't." In any case as it reads most simply it says you can't call PayPal a payment method. I doubt that's what they really meant to say.
  - randallsquared 10y ago
    It can only be parsed different ways under incompatible assumptions about whether PayPal is a payment method. If it actually is a payment method (as their lawyers undoubtedly take as a given), then it limits mischaracterization to aspects of PayPal that do not involve its character as a payment method. Only if you already believe it is somehow "not a payment method" does the other reading make any sense.
    - __s 10y ago
      I also interpreted it as "PayPal is not a payment method" when reading. Legal statements shouldn't rely on out-of-contract context to parse
      - 10y ago
patio11 10y ago
This is de rigeur in payments; the brand guidelines for the big three credit card companies have similar things IIRC. They don't want you to say "Visa accepted here THOSE BASTARDS we prefer Amex" or otherwise interfere with their customer relationships while servicing your customer relationships. There has been litigation around this routinely, including (IIRC) a US holding that says that merchants are allowed to say X is cheaper for them than Y if that statement is accurate. Edit: that may have been reversed on appeal. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-26/american-express-wins-ruling-reversing-merchant-fee-decision https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-26/american-...
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Maybe it's only my anecdotal experience, but I've seen a lot more merchants lately flat out stop accepting expensive payment methods like Amex, and these were all merchants that I had previously been able to use Amex at before.
  - twblalock 10y ago
    Amex is in a bit of trouble for a few reasons: 1. Competing card companies offer much better cards than they used to, and include benefits that only Amex used to provide. For example, Visa Signature and Mastercard's competing product offer return coverage, extended warranties, free rental car insurance, etc. 2. One of the main draws of accepting Amex was that Amex's customer base was more affluent than that of other card companies, but that is no longer the case, partly because of #1. 3. Amex lost the Costco deal. That's a loss of a great deal of credit card fees, and 10% of Amex cards were the Costco card. The court case was also seen as a blow, but maybe not if it got reversed on appeal. In any case, there are plenty of other problems for Amex to worry about.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Oh for sure! I myself no longer feel like I'm getting as much value from my $450/year Platinum charge card with Amex and am looking to switch to the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, as it's a visa (taken everywhere), has a better rewards program, and provides far more services for that same $450/year annual fee.
Buge 10y ago
Part of it seems to be saying you can't charge people extra fees to use paypal. I know sellers sometimes try to do the same thing with credit cards, charge extra fees to credit card users.
- hydrogen18 10y ago
  I usually just do the opposite. I mark everything up knowing that somewhere a cut will be taken. If you have to pay me cash, then I just make more on that transaction.
  - chipperyman573 10y ago
    If you're able to sell something at the same rate with an increased price, you should've been doing that before you heard about the credit cards' cut.
    - hydrogen18 10y ago
      You're forgetting the convenience factor that the payment service creates in the market. Let's say I sell trinkets for $10/each online. They are nice trinkets, but no one really needs my trinkets. No one is going to send me a money order in the mail for a single trinket for $10. Basically, there is no online market at all, unless I can make it easy to buy my product. But if I charge $11/each and accept Paypal (or credit cards in general), I now have a real market for my trinkets. People like my trinkets, so they will gladly click on a Paypal icon and send me the money that way. Now my trinkets are somewhat popular. A couple times a year someone stops by my workshop and asks to buy a trinket in person. I still charge them $11.
- Paul-ish 10y ago
  Could I try to get around this by offering two "different" (sharpie a red dot on the bottom of the lamp) items, one you can purchase with paypal and another you cannot. Can Paypal require you to accept paypal on everything your business sells?
fencepost 10y ago
Well, if I can't "mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method" then how can I "treat PayPal's payment mark at least at par with other payment methods offered"? Their use of "other payment methods" would imply to me that they consider PayPal also to be a "payment method" though I suppose they might want to call it Bob instead. I can just see it now: "PayPal is not a legitimate payment method! If you doubt this, see their Terms & Conditions where they explicitly state that you may not 'mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method.'" Someone did a really crappy job of phrasing.
- cnnsucks 10y ago
  >> Someone did a really crappy job of phrasing. Legal work is an area of life where one should not apply Hanlon's razor by default. Not one comma or period in that work went unscrutinized by highly compensated executive talent at PayPal and any ambiguity you find is deliberate. Assume malice.
  - arkades 10y ago
    This can't be understated. My wife is a mid-tier firm attorney in (a field). Any contract generally has a low-level associate take a pass at the material, which she then scrutinizes, polishes, etc. and then shares with her supervising attorney, who also scrutinizes and polishes. This is then shared with the client, who has their own staff to scrutinize, who are relevant executives, content experts, and often in-house attorneys of their own. Several iterations of this cycle are the bare minimum. Because this process involves low-tier associates being taught by upper level attorneys, the "basic" stuff that top experts take for granted gets scrutinized and explained, as well, so even the parts you think of as "stock components" are being carefully looked over and considered at length. There isn't a single word in those contracts that hasn't been reviewed by at least a half-dozen experts.
  - Silhouette 10y ago
    It's still an ambiguous construction in the middle of a standard form contract, which is bad news for whoever drafted the contract in many legal systems. And from my experience of lawyers, highly paid or otherwise, incompetence is just as plausible an explanation for their bad work as anyone else's.

jxi 10y ago

They also snuck in some fee hikes to their "policy update".

celticninja 10y ago

People will continue to prefer PayPal alternatives when the costs are so much higher to use paypal and I would assume this is generally difficult to enforce because it relies on a user telling paypal that a vendor asked them to use an alternative method. I would make paypal my last payment option offered to a buyer.

hackermailman 10y ago
There's sites where they openly ask buyers not to use PP for some items that are high fraud risk and allow PP for less risky items. This means retailers will just drop PP as an option completely. I generally use it for most of my online buying as it's become difficult lately to use prepaid cards for some reason, I used to be able to effortlessly convert cryptocurrency into a virtual visa and buy anything but alas. Paypal, for buyers, is an easy experience now there's no waiting for your account to be loaded from a bank.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  As a buyer, I would rather send in a check or not make the purchase before using Pay Pal.
adamqureshi 10y ago
Buyer insisted on PP. I needed the project / money and did not wanna cause a problem. I asked buyer many times to wire / ACH the money. I kinda "had" to accept PP. Im not a rockstar. Can't demand / insist my preferred method. But there is a happy ending. I still have the gig and now they pay with stripe. ;-)

Animats 10y ago

Why is eBay so protective of PayPal? PayPal has been a separate company from eBay since 2015.

hyperbovine 10y ago
eBay stockholders got PYPL shares 1:1 when they split. People who own lots of the former (eBay insiders & higher ups) have a large stake in the latter.
iaw 10y ago
Presuming absolutely no shared financial interests and pretending there are no remaining synergies. The people who run ebay have to be close with the people that run Paypal... The strategies that built paypal were in line with the ebay ethos.
hazelnut 10y ago
They still got binding contracts. For example they have to have PayPal as a payment option till 2020 and a decent amount must be processed through PayPal. It might change after 2020.
DrScump 10y ago
With eBay, you have a new fraud vector to worry about: eBay's "Buyer Protection" is a superset of the former Paypal-centric coverage such that if a buyer initiates a return against a seller, eBay can choose to make that buyer whole by charging the credit card you use for your eBay seller fees and memberships (if any), regardless of payment method used by the buyer.

adamqureshi 10y ago

PP froze my account. (concentrated buyer exposure) They asked me what im selling, i said i offer software services , they asked what is the product , what do i deliver, i said i deliver code , they asked for the service agreement, i said well you'd have to ask the buyer that. They asked me to send them the last 4 invoices , i did. long story short , It was PITA to refund my bread , getting paid with STRIPE is better now. WHAT a damn hassle! I got the buyer on the phone W/ PP.PP said to me only thing i can do i is refund the last 4 invoices and get paid outside PP. Buyer said there is NO issue at all we are very happy with seller services. PP said to buyer: "nothing you did or can do". PP said to " they'd hold my bread for 180 days" then said hold for 90 days OR i can refund the 4 invoices , each time i called i spoke to someone different, they said it was their system, not my fault or the buyer , buyer made no claims at all.. Luckily, the buyer was cool enough to help me. I had to call PP each time todo a refund. Lift HOLD, refund, with then on the phone, repeat. What a damn HASSLE! i set up stripe the next day and its all good to go now! good lucky with PP. they can hold your shit without informing you and you can't do jack shit. And i had people to pay! I am kinda pissed but happy i got paid all my invoices. Does this mean i can't write a blog post about what happ to me? maybe this type of shit is normal with PP.

angry-hacker 10y ago
Write a blog post but use few paragraphs ;) the story is interesting but difficult to read.
- adamqureshi 10y ago
  dyslexia. ;-)
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    PayPal froze my account (for concentrated buyer exposure). They asked me what I'm selling, I said I offer software services. They asked what is the product, what do I deliver, I said I deliver code. They asked for the service agreement, I said "well, you'd have to ask the buyer for that". They asked me to send them the last 4 invoices, so I did. Long story short, it was PITA to refund my bread. Getting paid with STRIPE is better now. WHAT a damn hassle! I got the buyer on the phone with PayPal. PayPal said to me only thing I can do I is refund the last 4 invoices and get paid outside PayPapl. Buyer said there is NO issue at all we are very happy with seller services. They said to the buyer: "there's nothing you did or can do". PayPal told me "they'd hold my bread for 180 days", then for 90 days, OR I can refund the 4 invoices. Each time I called I spoke to someone different. They said it was their system's fault, not mine or the buyer, the buyer made no claims at all.. Luckily, the buyer was cool enough to help me. I had to call PayPal each time to do a refund. Lift HOLD, refund, with them on the phone, repeat. What a damn HASSLE! I set up Stripe the next day and it's all good to go now! Good luck with PayPal. They can hold your shit without informing you and you can't do jack shit. And I had people to pay! I am kinda pissed but happy I got all of my invoices paid. Does this mean I can't write a blog post about what happened to me? Maybe this type of shit is normal with PayPal. - - - If you'd like to write a blog post, feel free to reach out to me for editing help. Email in my profile.

jseliger 10y ago

I'm amazed people will still use Paypal. The horror stories about it are legion online; I had my own, many years ago, when I did some editing work for someone who then disputed the charge on their credit card. Paypal then retroactively decided that I had a negative balance on my account! At the time I was young and stupid and idealistic and principled enough to waste a lot of time suing Paypal and the collections agency in small claims court (suing anyone in small claims court can be a pretty bad idea, even if you are technically in the right: https://jakeseliger.com/2010/08/28/dont-rent-an-apartment-from-navid-abedian-in-tucson-arizona-or-how-i-learned-to-be-wary-of-lawsuits https://jakeseliger.com/2010/08/28/dont-rent-an-apartment-fr... , if your time and attention are worth anything). Still, I did definitely, definitively learn that you cannot trust and should not use Paypal.

jpalomaki 10y ago
As a customer I very much prefer PayPal. If site supports PayPal as payment method, this increases the propability of getting my money. CC is more cumbersome, because I don't want to give my primary credit card info for random merchants and creating new virtual card takes a few steps.
- hyperbovine 10y ago
  Visa Checkout is, just 20 years too late, finally attempting to solve this problem. I'm way more copacetic about Visa have access to my account information since they already do :)
  - imglorp 10y ago
    The card companies are shockingly glacial in this market. You'd think the day after Ebay and PP came online, they'd be working on an online card solution. It would have encouraged people to spend billions more on their cards and they've crushed PP in the cradle.
    - hyperbovine 10y ago

bencollier49 10y ago

"At all your points of sale (in whatever form)" Does this not mean that any bricks'n'clicks business has to offer Paypal at their physical counter? And that they can't levy variable card processing fees, at least not where the fee for Paypal is higher?

edoceo 10y ago
Thank you for "bricks-n-clicks"

bcrescimanno 10y ago

Disclaimer: PP employee--below opinions are my own and do not represent PayPal. Things I have actually seen myself: * Charging a fee to use PayPal that is not charged otherwise. * Modal dialogs before PayPal describing PayPal as slower / riskier / less customized / etc. * Disallowing PayPal for certain items. I'm sure there are a lot of others. As patio11 mentioned in a comment below, this sort of boilerplate is common for Payments and I don't see it as unreasonable to ask for equal treatment to be given.

minxomat 10y ago
Charging extra for any payment method while offering other common ones is not a problem at all. You have to consider the trouble that a massive number of merchants have with paypal. The risk of dealing with something odd is financially relevant. The time spent on conflict resolution (between merchant and paypal that is) consumes time, which delays payments and has a cascading effect on other operations. This time costs money, which many add as a fee for people that want to use paypal. I don't know a single commercial seller that once offered or still offers paypal payments and doesn't have a horror story that resulted in serious financial and operational trouble for them. PP could introduce this if they had a good image. Right now it's considered by many to be the ... Oracle of payment processing.
Atheros 10y ago
It wouldn't be unreasonable for equal treatment to be given if the service you provided was equal. It is not. That's why merchants dissuade its use.
chipperyman573 10y ago
All of these things are done because PP has, at some point in the past, screwed over the merchant. Paypal is so bad that at this point, it's not even unreasonable to assume that even a part-time seller has never had a problem with them. The only reason any seller uses them is because the customers prefer it or they don't want to set up their own Stripe integration. It's blatantly clear that PP existed with nearly no competition for many years.
stordoff 10y ago

ve55 10y ago

Paypal is offered a lot as an option for virtual goods, such as virtual items or services for games. There is always a lot of caution around it, because anyone that has used it in this area for longer than a day realizes that they can be scammed nearly arbitrary amounts if they decide to trust payments from Paypal. For this reason, it's generally required either that you do out of bound methods to help verify your identity (i.e. show us a picture of your ID and we will make sure it matches your Paypal name after you pay us), and/or that you have a lot of reputation within whatever community you're working from. If you do this verification wrong as a merchant, you will find yourself charged back with absolutely no recourse after you have only sold to a few customers. I've seen this happy many times, sometimes with $10 and sometimes with $1,000. Even if you do this verification correct, you can still find yourself charged back with no recourse, so it's advised not to do this with large payments or sketchy customers, especially in the area of virtual goods. This is also commonly done in areas wiht donations, such as Twitch donations of thouands of dollars being charged back after the sender has already recieved their desired reaction/fame/etc. Given what I have seen, I read this clause as a requirement that you are not allowed to fairy inform users about the risks of Paypal, and depending on how this requirement is enforced, it could mean the end of Paypal as a method in the virtual goods area, as new methods like Bitcoin slowly take over due to the lack of chargebacks.

inopinatus 10y ago

I run a two-sided network. Our providers sometimes ask if PayPal is possible. It's helpful they include draconian language like this in their contracts; giving me something to reference, other than the myriad horror stories, when saying No. They're their own worst enemy.

cardiffspaceman 10y ago
I read that draconian language myself back when the buzz first started about Paypal, too. I don't understand how convenience is so valuable that you'd put your whole account at risk.

throwawaydbfif 10y ago

I can't believe PayPal and the credit card cartels can get away with this shit. Card fees eat up an astounding amount of profit from low margin items, retailers should be able to encourage whatever payment method they want. If customers knew how much they were actually paying to these card companies indirectly (thousands of dollars a year) most people would switch to cash

nayuki 10y ago
True. At the same time, don't forget that banks charge business a small fee to deposit cash into their bank account. For example: https://www.tdcanadatrust.com/products-services/small-business/fees.jsp https://www.tdcanadatrust.com/products-services/small-busine...
- csdreamer7 10y ago
  That's for Canada. In the US I have seen a lot of business checking accounts accept the few bunch of checks for free. ACH transfers are unlimited. They even fee cash and coin deposits. I have never had a bank charge a fee for cash (or coin) deposits.
- tveita 10y ago
  In Canada the Interac debit card network has transaction fees on the order of a few cents. It's crazy how much money US payment processors manage to skim off.
  - throwawaydbfif 10y ago
    It's crazy that having a couple huge companies that silently collude to maintain their existing market share somehow isn't antitrust

DrScump 10y ago

Prior posting, 45+ comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591601