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I've been sitting here for the last five minutes trying to make a point eloquently. I'm having a hard time with it. So I'll just put it like this: What else ca

I've been sitting here for the last five minutes trying to make a point eloquently. I'm having a hard time with it. So I'll just put it like this: What else can we really expect from a product whose parent is eBay? This company is a fucking fossil with all the hunger for customer satisfaction of a used tissue. Is it convenient for users? Yeah. Is it worth gambling your entire business on? Given the lack of accountability these clowns enjoy, I'm going to say probably not. Neither eBay or PayPal has evolved in any meaningful way in the last decade. On the contrary: they've steadily declined in user experience and customer satisfaction. Why trust a business to such a stagnant concern? On principle, on practicality, for the sake of all of our futures: just say no to PayPal.

wdewind 15y ago
For the other side: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3318009 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3318009 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3318173 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3318173
- eykanal 15y ago
  Paypal may have a point, they may not. Regardless, freezing thousands of dollars on a whim because "they're worried" and then freezing the individual's personal account is just boneheaded. You can't run a bank like that.
  - scott_s 15y ago
    PayPal is not a bank, which perhaps is the problem. People expect them to behave like a bank, despite the fact they clearly state they do not behave like one.
  - thenextcorner 15y ago
    To my knowledge, Paypal is not a bank!
  - wdewind 15y ago
    On the contrary, NOT freezing them would be totally boneheaded. OP describes an EXTREMELY sketchy way of collecting money (take money from one random person on the internet, promise you they are sending a "mystery" gift to some other person on the internet) that clearly violates PayPal's TOS (you can only ship to billing addresses on paypal). There is not a payment processor in the world that wouldn't freeze someone under these conditions.
gergles 15y ago
Wow, that's histrionic. PayPal's customers are the people who use it. You, as a merchant, are not a customer of theirs, but a necessary evil to keep the customers coming. PayPal's customers love it. PayPal's merchants don't like it because PayPal has fraud prevention methods that are opaque and hamfistedly applied. That's a fine complaint, but this breathless "for the sake of the world don't ever use PayPal" garbage is pretty ridiculous. If you want to do anything beyond selling tangible goods or simple subscriptions, you should probably reevaluate using PayPal to do that. PayPal isn't the best product for everything, and frankly, I'm sick of every merchant doing some crazy scheme (seriously, "give us money and maybe we'll send you a gift of some unspecified value in the future"? can you fucking spell "chargeback"?) bitching and moaning into the HN echo chamber whenever PayPal tells them to stop that.
- danilocampos 15y ago
  > but this breathless "for the sake of the world don't ever use PayPal" You know, I've been working on my condescension. I really have – my last girlfriend hated that shit. And it's gotten a lot better. But you just had to use a cutely loaded little word like "histrionic," so there's really no other course... So what I'd like to do now is offer a brief explanation of how quotation marks work. Generally, quotation marks are used to attribute their contained content, verbatim, to a specific person. By including words in quotation marks you are saying, in effect, "this person said precisely this." I did not say precisely what you quoted. What I said instead (handily, the text is right there), was that for all our futures, where we is a group of people who care about building things and getting paid, that we shouldn't pin our hopes on a company that can declare our money limbo-ed on a whim. The more who avoid PayPal as a result of their flakiness, the brighter the future looks for a sane payment processing landscape. It's okay to have policies. It's okay to have business models you will and won't support. What isn't okay is to both handle large sums of people's money and make your customer service a recourse-free black box at the same time.
  - non123 15y ago
    > A single word or a short phrase may be enclosed in quotation marks to indicate ironic use. http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Quotation-Marks-Correctly http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Quotation-Marks-Correctly I think it was pretty clear that this was the case, when I read it didn't make me think that you said that.
masklinn 15y ago
> Why trust a business to such a stagnant concern? Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it. Oh if you're in the US for the US you might be able (and want) to gamble on an other younger service, but in the wider world? It's a fucking wasteland, it's either Paypal or Big Bank Merchant Account, and those are no fun at all either. My card expired (and was renewed) recently, I decided to stop using paypal (so I did not update the account to the new card), by the third christmas gift I tried to get I had to re-activate it, because either the gift in question wasn't available from anybody not using Paypal (etsy merchants, for instance) or because the CC gateway alternatives to paypal were unusable to plain broken.
- etheric 15y ago
  >>Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it. Off the top of my head, https://payments.amazon.com/ https://payments.amazon.com/ is a great alternative. Not sure how the rates stack up, but I definitely trust Amazon more than I trust PayPal. I'm sure there are more alternatives available, I don't know why so many people insist on using PayPal. I think Amazon allows donations cause kickstarter.com uses it, and you don't necessarily get anything if you fund a project. I'm guessing the tricky part here is the "donations", but PayPal certainly has a poor customer satisfaction record.
  - jacques_chester 15y ago
    You didn't read closely. Inside the US there are lots of alternatives. Outside the US it is, as the fellow said, a wasteland. Take Amazon payments, for example: "Q: What countries and currencies are supported by Amazon FPS? Amazon FPS allows U.S. as well as international customers to use major credit cards to make payments on Amazon FPS-powered websites. ... All transactions are in U.S. dollars." Emphasis mine, because that little aside renders Amazon worthless to me. Source: http://aws.amazon.com/fps/faqs/ http://aws.amazon.com/fps/faqs/
    - morsch 15y ago
      I don't know about other European countries, but there is a German subsidiary of Amazon Payments, so EUR transactions are possible. https://payments.amazon.de/home https://payments.amazon.de/home
Strom 15y ago
Neither eBay or PayPal has evolved in any meaningful way in the last decade. PayPal has been continually extending it's international merchant support. They may look like bloodsucking imbeciles in the US, but as an Estonian I am thankful for their support as nobody else cares.
shdon 15y ago
"On principle, on practicality, for the sake of all of our futures: just say no to PayPal." I did just that, a few days ago. If I hadn't, the Regretsy story would've done it. http://www.shdon.com/blog/2011/12/06/bye-bye-paypal-you-suck http://www.shdon.com/blog/2011/12/06/bye-bye-paypal-you-suck
scott_s 15y ago
Please read saurik's posts in this thread. He provides excellent, reasoned explanations for what is going on. Personally, I think the conclusion should be: if you have an unusual business model or transactions that are not seller-to-buyer, don't use PayPal. It goes against their rules, and you will lose money and go through a lot of grief. edit: wdewind as well.

wdewind 15y ago

For the other side: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3318009 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3318009 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3318173 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3318173

eykanal 15y ago
Paypal may have a point, they may not. Regardless, freezing thousands of dollars on a whim because "they're worried" and then freezing the individual's personal account is just boneheaded. You can't run a bank like that.
- scott_s 15y ago
  PayPal is not a bank, which perhaps is the problem. People expect them to behave like a bank, despite the fact they clearly state they do not behave like one.
- thenextcorner 15y ago
  To my knowledge, Paypal is not a bank!
- wdewind 15y ago
  On the contrary, NOT freezing them would be totally boneheaded. OP describes an EXTREMELY sketchy way of collecting money (take money from one random person on the internet, promise you they are sending a "mystery" gift to some other person on the internet) that clearly violates PayPal's TOS (you can only ship to billing addresses on paypal). There is not a payment processor in the world that wouldn't freeze someone under these conditions.

gergles 15y ago

Wow, that's histrionic. PayPal's customers are the people who use it. You, as a merchant, are not a customer of theirs, but a necessary evil to keep the customers coming. PayPal's customers love it. PayPal's merchants don't like it because PayPal has fraud prevention methods that are opaque and hamfistedly applied. That's a fine complaint, but this breathless "for the sake of the world don't ever use PayPal" garbage is pretty ridiculous. If you want to do anything beyond selling tangible goods or simple subscriptions, you should probably reevaluate using PayPal to do that. PayPal isn't the best product for everything, and frankly, I'm sick of every merchant doing some crazy scheme (seriously, "give us money and maybe we'll send you a gift of some unspecified value in the future"? can you fucking spell "chargeback"?) bitching and moaning into the HN echo chamber whenever PayPal tells them to stop that.

danilocampos 15y ago
> but this breathless "for the sake of the world don't ever use PayPal" You know, I've been working on my condescension. I really have – my last girlfriend hated that shit. And it's gotten a lot better. But you just had to use a cutely loaded little word like "histrionic," so there's really no other course... So what I'd like to do now is offer a brief explanation of how quotation marks work. Generally, quotation marks are used to attribute their contained content, verbatim, to a specific person. By including words in quotation marks you are saying, in effect, "this person said precisely this." I did not say precisely what you quoted. What I said instead (handily, the text is right there), was that for all our futures, where we is a group of people who care about building things and getting paid, that we shouldn't pin our hopes on a company that can declare our money limbo-ed on a whim. The more who avoid PayPal as a result of their flakiness, the brighter the future looks for a sane payment processing landscape. It's okay to have policies. It's okay to have business models you will and won't support. What isn't okay is to both handle large sums of people's money and make your customer service a recourse-free black box at the same time.
- non123 15y ago
  > A single word or a short phrase may be enclosed in quotation marks to indicate ironic use. http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Quotation-Marks-Correctly http://www.wikihow.com/Use-Quotation-Marks-Correctly I think it was pretty clear that this was the case, when I read it didn't make me think that you said that.

masklinn 15y ago

> Why trust a business to such a stagnant concern? Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it. Oh if you're in the US for the US you might be able (and want) to gamble on an other younger service, but in the wider world? It's a fucking wasteland, it's either Paypal or Big Bank Merchant Account, and those are no fun at all either. My card expired (and was renewed) recently, I decided to stop using paypal (so I did not update the account to the new card), by the third christmas gift I tried to get I had to re-activate it, because either the gift in question wasn't available from anybody not using Paypal (etsy merchants, for instance) or because the CC gateway alternatives to paypal were unusable to plain broken.

etheric 15y ago
>>Because there is no alternative and they fucking know it. Off the top of my head, https://payments.amazon.com/ https://payments.amazon.com/ is a great alternative. Not sure how the rates stack up, but I definitely trust Amazon more than I trust PayPal. I'm sure there are more alternatives available, I don't know why so many people insist on using PayPal. I think Amazon allows donations cause kickstarter.com uses it, and you don't necessarily get anything if you fund a project. I'm guessing the tricky part here is the "donations", but PayPal certainly has a poor customer satisfaction record.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  You didn't read closely. Inside the US there are lots of alternatives. Outside the US it is, as the fellow said, a wasteland. Take Amazon payments, for example: "Q: What countries and currencies are supported by Amazon FPS? Amazon FPS allows U.S. as well as international customers to use major credit cards to make payments on Amazon FPS-powered websites. ... All transactions are in U.S. dollars." Emphasis mine, because that little aside renders Amazon worthless to me. Source: http://aws.amazon.com/fps/faqs/ http://aws.amazon.com/fps/faqs/
  - morsch 15y ago
    I don't know about other European countries, but there is a German subsidiary of Amazon Payments, so EUR transactions are possible. https://payments.amazon.de/home https://payments.amazon.de/home

Strom 15y ago

Neither eBay or PayPal has evolved in any meaningful way in the last decade. PayPal has been continually extending it's international merchant support. They may look like bloodsucking imbeciles in the US, but as an Estonian I am thankful for their support as nobody else cares.

shdon 15y ago

"On principle, on practicality, for the sake of all of our futures: just say no to PayPal." I did just that, a few days ago. If I hadn't, the Regretsy story would've done it. http://www.shdon.com/blog/2011/12/06/bye-bye-paypal-you-suck http://www.shdon.com/blog/2011/12/06/bye-bye-paypal-you-suck

scott_s 15y ago

Please read saurik's posts in this thread. He provides excellent, reasoned explanations for what is going on. Personally, I think the conclusion should be: if you have an unusual business model or transactions that are not seller-to-buyer, don't use PayPal. It goes against their rules, and you will lose money and go through a lot of grief. edit: wdewind as well.