23 ms·

I fought the PayPal and I won

868 points by exolymph 4y ago

DeathArrow 4y ago
I haven't been using PayPal since more than 5 years. For quick transfers I can use Revolut. For buying something I can use card. For easy payment integration with Web apps there are countless tools. So I am wondering what use cases PayPal still serves, use cases which aren't already better covered by better means. Why pay heavy commissions to PayPal?
- throwaway290 4y ago
  Places not served by Revolut, small time sellers that don't have the capacity/infrastructure to process cards, etc.
  - notpushkin 4y ago
    I'm wondering wow difficult can it be to just set up Stripe in addition to PayPal. I've set one up without any legal entity at all, just as a plain old human being resident of Estonia, and it seems to just work for occasional payments. Should work in US, too.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      Try doing it in Thailand for example. There're plenty of countries where neither Stripe nor Revolut are present...
      - patio11 4y ago
        News you may potentially be able to use: Stripe (which employs me) launched in Thailand about 2 weeks ago.
- mike_ivanov 4y ago
  From the buyer's perspective: hassle-free unsubscription, seeing all my subscriptions in one place, no need to create accounts on random seller sites. And yes, I'm willing to pay a couple of %% to anyone who can fulfill those needs, not necessarily PayPal.
- EMIRELADERO 4y ago
  The value is that it's easy from the perspective of the user. You mentioned that you use Revolut for one thing, direct card payment for another, and other tools for web app integration. PayPal offers all that in a neatly packaged solution. It's no surprise users would choose that instead of 3+ different services that serve different purposes
- atirip 4y ago
  I only buy from merchants that offer PayPal (there are few I trust by card, like Amazon). And the reason is that whatever it happens, I can always get my money back with PayPal. It happened 3 times in last 5 years that seller took the money and never shipped anything. I got all them resolved very quickly.
  - cute_boi 4y ago
    Well, we can use credit card charge back for such purpose?
    - lmm 4y ago
      You can, but you probably have to call up your bank during business hours, wait on hold for a while, and then get given the runaround for a while. PayPal you just push a button and it's done.
      - ripe 4y ago
        My Bank of America credit card lets me dispute charges online, with a simple series of web forms. Very convenient.
    - switch007 4y ago
      In the UK my experience with chargebacks is that they’re very biased towards the company. It’s a drawn-out process during which you get harassed by the company’s anti-chargeback team in to accepting an ex gratia payment etc. you have to supply lots of evidence and when the company provides some poor quality evidence the bank goes “oh well that’s decided then” as if responding was sufficient.
      - dazc 4y ago
        This is true, you have to very persistent with the chargeback route, sometimes only a threat of legal action against the bank will move things forward.
  - egorfine 4y ago
- pauljurczak 4y ago
  One of my credit cards had a 7% cash back promotion last quarter, if used through PayPal. I saved a couple of bucks.
- lmm 4y ago
  Buying things in a foreign country, or where a seller hasn't integrated the card type you want to use (particularly a problem for small/local websites). Sending money to a friend internationally. Avoiding having to give someone your bank details or credit card number.
- trinovantes 4y ago
  I still use paypal to pay for stuff when I'm too lazy to walk to the other room to get my wallet. As a consumer, the price is the same.
- avereveard 4y ago
  With virtual cards and whatnot I don't use PayPal anymore to protect the card number from circulation. But I still find them useful for long therm subscriptions to provider. That why when I need to change the card I don't need to login to (and remember) all websites where I have an ongoing payment plan
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    And cancelling subscriptions via PayPal is easy too.
  - npc12345 4y ago
- Andys 4y ago
  I like using it for subscriptions, because it lists them all in one place and gives me a hassle-free way to cancel each of them.
- urbandw311er 4y ago
  My co published an App in Germany as recently as 2 years ago and PayPal support was almost unavoidable. It turns out that penetration of credit and debit cards in Germany is significantly behind other parts of the EU and many of them habitually use PayPal for e-commerce payments.
  - lytefm 4y ago
    > It turns out that penetration of credit and debit cards in Germany is significantly behind other parts of the EU. Yep. Therefore, we also use PayPal a lot to transfer money to a friend when we're at some place that is cash only and someone doesn't have cash on them. No need to type an IBAN and wait for a day. Also, it's a great backup solution for online purchases if I don't want to share my credit card details or things don't work. For example, many vendors borked the 3d visa verification process so PayPal often was the only realistic option.
    - ce4 4y ago
      > IBAN and wait for a day. The delay can be skipped in many cases via the IBAN instant payment option. Requires both banks to be participating in the program and trust each other (the delay will happen if additional checks are needed, for example if the transction gets flagged for manual inspection, eg if you write "funny" purpose text, etc)
      - Scharkenberg 4y ago
        AFAIK banks here charge extra for that.
        licebmi__at__ 4y ago
        Really, my only banking experience here in germany is with n26 and since they offer it free, I thought that was the norm.
        scrollaway 4y ago
        Use Wise (https://wise.com https://wise.com). In Germany especially N26 is also popular but IMO they went downhill quite a bit as soon as they realized that being a neobank is a losing venture. Source: I work in finance.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Some companies like BandCamp mandate PayPal. This is incredibly annoying and unhelpful, but there's no other option.
  - notpushkin 4y ago
    Could this be a startup idea? “Like Bandcamp but with sane payouts system.”
  - dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
    I use a VISA CC on bandcamp (US) and pretty sure I've bought from there well before I had a PayPal account.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  I certainly put Revolut in the same category as PayPal. No morals, anti-consumer policies, very little protection.
  - colinb 4y ago
    I can't comment on their morals or views on customers, but I think they've been governed by banking regulations for some time now. In my country (.ie) that's their claim. Banking regulations come with quite a lot of consumer protection, both national and EU originated.
    - danpalmer 4y ago
      In the UK they are not covered by the FSCS.
      - notpushkin 4y ago
        Yeah, I think they only have banking licence in Lithuania, so EU only.
- yread 4y ago
  I use it if the seller forces me to type my CC number into their interface. If it's some payment provider, that's fine but I don't trust random webshops to keep my credit card details safe
- KronisLV 4y ago
  > For easy payment integration with Web apps there are countless tools. Could you (or anyone else) comment on these? I think the most popular indeed are PayPal and Stripe, whereas any others (like Paddle) are more niche or some others (Alipay) are just more regional.
CaliforniaKarl 4y ago
First off, congratulations! Second, I wish there was more followup from "My account got limited/blocked, and I need help." HN posts of that nature—assuming they reach the front page—typically get resolution in enough time that the person with the issue posts a followup, but I don't think that's the norm.
- Infrid 4y ago
  Sure, but not without blaming the victim first. There are countless threads where the victim is accused to be wrong.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    It's possible they are wrong. Assuming they are a victim isn't right. Questions to establish that aren't accusations.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> For consumers, I suspect that much of the power “arbitration” seems to confer on corporations lies in its opacity This one hundred times. There has been a surprisingly-effective PR scare campaign around arbitration in the U.S. Sure, for sexual harassment, it’s a bad forum. That’s approaching criminal territory. But for civil disputes, it’s straightforward and cheap.
- wongarsu 4y ago
  I'd have more faith in arbitration if it was offered as an option instead of being required by the TOS. If it's universally good for me, surely there's no reason to force me to use it?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- Analemma_ 4y ago
  It's "straightforward and cheap" because it always rules against the consumer. That's not a desired property of an adjudicator.
urban_winter 4y ago
It's worth knowing that in the UK PayPal is covered by the Financial Ombudsman service. They wouldn't be interested in accounts being blocked as in this case but they were very helpful to me when PayPal made a payment that I did not authorize and then refused to put it right. I don't use PayPal any more. Their support staff are impossibility hopeless so any kind of problem with your account will cause you a world of pain.
- dazc 4y ago
  The Financial Ombudsman Service is one of the few UK organizations that is anyway effective. If only all other regulatory authorities were half as good? One problem I have found with some UK eCommerce sites though is that their payment gateways are often broken with Brave/Chrome and the paypal payment option is an easy way of bypassing this issue.
  - stevesimmons 4y ago
    The FOS seems effective to consumers because it levies a £750 charge to the financial institution for each case it investigates. It is often cheaper to do whatever the customer wants, whether or not the complaint is justified. The financial institutions at the receiving end of FOS decisions don't necessarily regard it as effective. Claims management companies, for instance, can flood banks with very many dubious claims, with the FOS as effectively the enforcer.
    - Spooky23 4y ago
      My state (New York) has a similar regulatory feature. I had an issue with bees inside of the utility pole that feeds my home. Issue: the pole is owned by the telephone company. So power people tell me to call the phone company, and the phone company tells me to get a landline before they will talk to me. So I called the public utility commission, which apparently starts fining both parties within 48 hours of the complaint, which I submitted on Sunday. Monday morning arrives, and there is a comical gathering of trucks with crews frantically working to replace the pole (which is a fascinating process). The foreman told me that the government is essentially level 3 support, and had I worked through the company, he probably would have inspected it over a few months before any work would have started, and only if I was persistent. The key lesson is that large companies only perceive pain. PayPal lives in a big loophole, so it’s difficult to inflict pain on them and thus difficult to ever be satisfied with them.
ggreer 4y ago
The author of this article is a public defender in the pacific northwest. He sometimes writes for Jesse Singal, but he also has his own substack.[1] Many of his posts provide a unique window into the criminal justice system. If that sounds interesting to you, I strongly recommend reading more of his writing. In my opinion, his greatest hits are Eleven Magic Words[2] and Death of a Client[3]. 1. https://ymeskhout.substack.com/ https://ymeskhout.substack.com/ 2. https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/eleven-magic-words-unlocked https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/eleven-magic-words-unlocked 3. https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/death-of-a-client https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/death-of-a-client
- whoooooo123 4y ago
  Only upon reading your comment did I realise that the Substack article I just read was not written by Jesse Singal.
  - TheFlyingFish 4y ago
    I regularly read Singal-Minded and it still took me until "I am a lawyer" before I scrolled back up and checked the author name.
- skrebbel 4y ago
  I just read "Eleven Magic Words" and I'm entirely baffled. Also what a writer, wow.
  - SapporoChris 4y ago
    "It's the functional equivalent of an attorney's XP level", I laughed embarrassingly loud. Thank you and grandparent for recommendations.
  - kator 4y ago
    Yes very well written and reminds us all that in the end we're humans, and once in a while things can go right if only for us asking why they aren't.
  - 4y ago
mrspencehimself 4y ago
honestly, that was a riveting read
mrspencehimself 4y ago
Honestly, fantastic writing style lol... made reading a legal case about arbitration clauses a riveting read!
Maursault 4y ago
> While PayPal is technically a private company that can work with basically whoever it wants for whatever reason, its centralized role as an online payment processor makes this a weirdly potent free speech fight. > He did share correspondence with me where prominent free speech attorneys told him, in an apparent contradiction to my claims, that he had no viable legal recourse to getting his account reinstated. Though somehow money is speech, the author never supports his claim how PayPal, which is not a government actor, can violate free speech. The First Amendment does not prohibit private individuals, companies and employers from restricting speech.
- b800h 4y ago
  Oh not this old canard again. The US constitutional guarantee of freedom from government interference in speech is just one aspect of the matter. If private companies own every method of articulating your views, and are preventing you from doing so, then you aren't free to speak.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    > If private companies own every method of articulating your views, They aren't. We're nowhere even close. To the point where I can't even envision how that could happen. Perhaps in some sort of fantasy libertarian future where everything has been privatized, including the streets and sidewalks. But that's certainly not anything like now.
    - michaelt 4y ago
      If you want to envisage such a future for a dystopian novel or something like that, just imagine this wild fantasy: 1. Imagine a world where all the major online spaces - twitter, reddit, facebook, tumblr, HN, tiktok, instagram, youtube, twitch, slack, and discord and so on are privately owned. As are skype, zoom and google meet. Imagine a world where you can't even send e-mails if private companies don't like your 'sender reputation'. 2. Then imagine a world where all Radio and TV channels, newspapers and billboards are owned by private corporations. Maybe they're even owned by a tiny number of corporations, with specific political leanings. 3. Then fantasise that universities and similar venues for public speaking are a law unto themselves, and are within their rights to choose who they invite to speak. 4. Imagine a world of rising land values and increasing urbanisation, where only the absolute richest people could hold an event of any scale on land they own themselves. 5. Then imagine a world where public squares and parks in cities increasingly in private ownership. Perhaps city hall is sold to an investment firm who lease it back to the city. As it's private land, private security can move anyone on for 'unacceptable behaviour'. 6. There's still a risk some free speech would happen on public roads - we probably can't transfer those to private companies. We'll have to use the state's power here and arrest them - but don't worry, it's not a free speech issue. They were, uh, obstructing ambulance traffic. Or we could just make it legal for motorists to drive into people and let nature take it's course. Thank goodness such an absurd fiction could never happen in real life :)
jasmer 4y ago
Retail Fintech desperately needs consumer regulation, hopefully with a 'light and enlightened' quality.
vector_spaces 4y ago
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Sorry, what does this article have to do with social justice issues?
  - urbandw311er 4y ago
    I also did a double take here, but I think the poster is referring to the link on the article’s page that could be seen as supportive of the activities of Colin Wright.
    - hvdijk 4y ago
      There's no "could be seen as", the phrase "sex realist" makes it clear beyond any doubt that the author does support the activities of Colin Wright.
  - parker_mountain 4y ago
    Aside from the article's snide mention of "sex realism", the reason this person was banned from paypal was likely tied to their anti-trans "activism".
    - TulliusCicero 4y ago
      Hmm, maybe, but if that was the case, would they get reinstated so easily? Getting immediately reinstated makes it sound more like it was a mistake, not the result of some real internal policy.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - hairybobbins 4y ago
ryan-c 4y ago
- rippercushions 4y ago
  - ryan-c 4y ago
    The author, in fact, brought it up. The fact that he works with someone who has a problematic history is relevant to contextualize.
  - hvdijk 4y ago
    It isn't guilt by association when the article directly uses anti-trans rhetoric.
    - rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago
- hksoftware 4y ago
  Nice bait
- hairybobbins 4y ago
  Why do you find this offensive? Wright's key points regarding 'sex realism', as I understand them, are that sex is not a spectrum (as many people are claiming these days) but a male-female binary, and that sex is still an important characteristic in many circumstances, such that it cannot realistically be supplanted by 'gender identity' or similar. Seems like a reasonable viewpoint to me, and not one that would generally be considered offensive for others to mention.
  - hvdijk 4y ago
tluyben2 4y ago
PayPal is such a weird company. I was a loyal customer for 20 years until I wanted to convert my account from business to personal (I closed the business) and the site refused to do so. after months of calls with support, it became clear that no one was able to do this (something locked the flow and no one was able to see what; I guess my account was so ancient, it has some db flags no longer used but still checked by their backend?), so I asked just to terminate my account. That also was not possible. It took 6 months to figure out why; my company still existed they said; it most certainly did not. It took 2 months to find out why they thought that; apparently, somewhere in the past 20 years, they searched for my company in the NL company register and attached the wrong company number to my account. So I told them the real number and they said; now all is fine, we can even convert it to personal. 1 hour later I received an email from PayPal that I am permanently banned as I am trading with a business account of which the company no longer exists… Well done!
- rutierut 4y ago
  This is so quintessentially Paypal, were they upfront about their services, they'd put this testimonial on their home page.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  To be honest I'm surprised they even tried as hard as they did. Normally in my experience if you cost them more than about 30 minutes of staff time fixing any problem, they'll ban your account just on the basis that you're costing them more in customer service than the revenue you bring in.
  - tluyben2 4y ago
    The Dutch support is really very good. Before they had local support it was even worse. But the dutch support, as far as I have used them (quite a lot from begin ‘20 to begin ‘22 as I tried to convert my account), they were professional and nice, but have very little power and need to talk to their US counterparts all the time (which, I presume, is why the weeks/months fly by over something I would assume is a support-portal lookup). Edit; I guess by having written this, if a PayPal manager reads this, the Dutch support will get an ‘urgent read now!’ email from their manager to not waste so much time on customers…
mro_name 4y ago
how would one do that from within the EU? Is it still sending a certified letter to Omaha?
- sofixa 4y ago
  PayPal probably have a legal entity in the EU, and different terms of service/privacy policy (to reflect EU regulations like GDPR), so probably not. You're free to read the double digits terms of service you agreed to to check the exact process :p
  - throw_m239339 4y ago
    There was an article posed on HN not long ago (I am unable to find the link), where some business tried to sue Paypal for stealing them money (yes literally) and Paypal were giving them the run around claiming that this or that jurisdiction had no authority to sue them, maybe somebody can find the link, basically paypal claimed they couldn't be sued in any country. In the EU paypal is deemed a bank I believe thus must abide by the same rules as regular ones. That's not the case in US.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  The EU PayPal entity seems to be PayPal (Europe) S.à.r.l. et Cie, S.C.A. Attention: Legal Department, 22-24 Boulevard Royal, L-2449 Luxembourg. Legal claims fall under the Luxembourgish laws. I'm not seeing any language in the Dutch terms of service that mention any arbitrage. Another thing to note is that the European branch of PayPal actually has a banking license. The Dutch national bank lists the permits (though the registration was done in Luxembourg, obviously): https://www.dnb.nl/en/public-register/information-detail/?registerCode=WFTKF&relationNumber=B1302 https://www.dnb.nl/en/public-register/information-detail/?re... It looks like the 2007 basic banking license was extended around 2018.
ryan-c 4y ago
- wooque 4y ago
  - MerelyMortal 4y ago
    People probably don't like it being called a mental illness. It's not a good idea to generalize a whole group of people when that only applies to a very small percentage, while the rest make the decision because they've been led to believe they should feel that way by no fault of their own.
- b112 4y ago
  There's probably a lot of political stuff I am unaware of here, but a "sex realist" immediately made me understand what Colin's views probably area. I don't get the "legitimatize" bit. If I acknowledge that some people believe the Earth is flat, and call them flat Earthers, how does this make their position legitimate? Is the thought process here to pretend such people do not exist? I don't grok.
  - blep_ 4y ago
    "Realist" is a bit non-neutral in the attitude it expresses toward the view. Compare it to "planet shape realist" and it'll be more obvious.
  - gwd 4y ago
    "Flat earther" is an accurate representation of their beliefs; it doesn't say whether those beliefs reflect reality or not. "Sex realist", however, implies that this Colin person's beliefs correspond to reality, while his opponent's beliefs do not. Imagine if flat earthers started going around calling themselves "geological realists" -- anyone who then used that term would pretty clearly identify themselves as aligned with them. Everyone on both sides of this debate would claim to be a "sex realist". I'm not at all familiar with Colin's views, but "trans denier" or "biological determinist" might be more neutral terms.
Proven 4y ago
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Thanks, I remembered I was receiving a few dollars a month from patreon which added up over the years, I just transfered a big chunk of that out of my account. At this point, I'm not worried about Paypal's security, but more about their own policies of shutting down accounts. I wish companies were required to specify why an account was blocked, but I'm 99% sure they don't and they've weaseled their way out of it so that challenging the decision becomes more difficult. If they specify a reason to someone who is more ligituous or who knows legalese, they could probably pick the reasoning apart. Or just a "oh you have ruled 'fraudulent activity'? Prove it"
kybernetyk 4y ago
Logging into PayPal is now more annoying than logging into my German online banking. Which is telling as that is already a major pain. Every time I have to solve 2 captchas and fill the log in form twice until I log in. I’ve switched to using my online banking to pay for stuff over clicking the PayPal button.
- TonyTrapp 4y ago
  Same! The number of times they claim I'm logging in from a new, unknown device has gone up significantly, even though I'm using the same browser on the same device all the time, and I don't clear cookies between sessions. The most egregious thing to me is that after solving the captcha, you are thrown back to the login form claiming that the password you entered is incorrect - which is impossible, as I just pasted it from my password manager. I'm happy about every web shop adding GiroPay as an alternative payment method in Germany.
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    Giropay is great!
qwerty456127 4y ago
I have been locked out of my account by the stupid 2FA made mandatory. I have previously entered my phone number for contact purposes, forgot about it, and once I returned in some years they won't let me sign-in without a code sent to that number (which isn't mine anymore). Apparently I'm not alone caught in this. Luckily I only had about $20 there and don't really need PayPal nowadays.
gadders 4y ago
In the UK, paypal recently generated a lot of adverse publicity for banning the Free Speech Union [0] for, er, free speech [1]. This has now generated such controversy that MPs are proposing amendments in parliament preventing Paypal from blocking accounts on political grounds. [0] https://freespeechunion.org/about/ https://freespeechunion.org/about/ [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/27/paypal-reinstates-free-speech-union-accounts-accused-politically/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/27/paypal-reins...
- Mindwipe 4y ago
  As always, not actually doing something useful like banning payment discrimination, just passing laws to protect speech they like and not speech they don't like.
Jon_Lowtek 4y ago
> the contract you “agreed” to means you are legally not allowed to take them to a real court. Your only recourse is arbitration. americans can sign away their rights to sue at their own courts? That seems wrong. For me, as a german, the paypal contract reads that i can escalate a conflict to the EU consumer protection agency or the french regulatory authority for financial institutions (which signs their banking license). It further reads that the governing body of law and court of of justice should be in Wales, but that this does not limit my consumer right to sue at my local court. No arbitration clause, especially no mandatory arbitration with an agency of the corporations choice. I do understand the idea that private arbitration may be cheaper than court proceedings, but is mandatory arbitration even legally enforceable, or is that just scary text a court would overrule?
- indymike 4y ago
  > americans can sign away their rights to sue at their own courts? That seems wrong. You still have immediate access to the courts if you are challenging the legality of the contract (i.e. something is actually against the law in the contract or you are claiming the contract is so unjust it should be allowed ). If it's just a dispute under the terms of the agreement, you usually have to do arbitration and then you can go to court. Every time I've done arbitration, the outcome has been pretty fair (which to me, means I won) and even a better experience that US Courts are. US Courts use an adversarial system, so if you don't spend a lot of time in courtrooms (which I don't), it's not a pleasant place to be even when you win.
- staticman2 4y ago
  The U.S. congress passed a law a while back making arbitration terms in contracts legally enforceable.
- gnopgnip 4y ago
  The US Paypal terms also allow you to take the case to small claims. Mandatory arbitration can be enforceable if certain requirements are met. The big difference between the EU and US is the American rule, each side bears their own costs. Lawyers might be $300 an hour, so arbitration can be a lot less expensive for everyone
walrus01 4y ago
The important thing for Americans to understand is that Paypal is not a bank. You can have an "account" and hold money in it and it may function similar to one, but it has none of the federally mandated legal protections of being a bank. Some much more recent Fintech startups such as Chime are legally underpinned by something that is an FDIC regulated bank.
- creeble 4y ago
  Indeed, it’s the magic that made PayPal what it is today. Back when it was x.com, they were trying to figure out how to avoid being a bank, and they did it with something that violated credit card merchant agreements: by crediting accounts without correlated purchases (you can still do this today, depending on your card processor I think). That got noticed, so they just started holding the money instead. I never figured out how a company that holds your cash with exclusive rights to do anything they want with it has avoided banking regulation.
veddox 4y ago
FWIW, I had a successful arbitration process this year via the German Insurance Ombudsman after my bike was stolen and the insurance didn't want to pay. The process took a few months, but was pretty easy overall and I got my money back :-) (In the end, the insurance paid just to avoid further hassle.) Regarding PayPal: I've always avoided getting an account with them, because I generally don't like online services having access to my bank account. Two weeks ago, though, I was forced to create an account with them to pay a conference fee - just to have the PayPal account locked literally the minute it was created. I have no idea why, I didn't get any further information, and no useful response from customer service. So I guess I will remain a non-PayPal customer...
ciroduran 4y ago
This article reminds me of the epic patio11's thread: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/906384638733467648 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/906384638733467648 "You do not want to be read as someone who is angry and needs to be talked down. You want to be read as someone collecting a paper trail."
- blitzar 4y ago
  "One group in the bank is scored on tickets per hour. Another's KPI is "zero regulatory actions this quarter." You only want to talk to them."
- themeiguoren 4y ago
  Written up as a blog post: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Bellamy 4y ago
I quit PayPal as I heard they can take 2500$ from your account for "misinformation". https://bgr.com/business/new-paypal-rule-the-company-can-take-2500-from-your-account-for-sharing-misinformation/ https://bgr.com/business/new-paypal-rule-the-company-can-tak...
wdb 4y ago
Yes, I also won my case against Paypal after a topic from a person on this site. I was able to get my money back from Paypal that they froze before the start of the pandemic and it appears they might be forced to pay me interest over it too
cflynnus 4y ago
bitcoin fixes this
- vehemenz 4y ago
  ...while introducing ten other issues.
  - nullc 4y ago
    But they're different issues-- having options is good.
baidifnaoxi 4y ago
ITT: people that think PayPal was acting alone as a “private” company. I’m under the firm belief that this is just our federal government pushing a censorship and “misinformation” policy that is unconstitutional, but using pressure on private companies to accomplish said policies. Twitter docs leaked: https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/ https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformat... PayPal: https://www.techdirt.com/2010/12/07/visa-mastercard-kkk-is-a-ok-wikileaks-is-wicked/ https://www.techdirt.com/2010/12/07/visa-mastercard-kkk-is-a... (yes source is questionable , but actual events did occur
- nullc 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
dcminter 4y ago
When I originally opened my PayPal account many years ago, the terms and conditions were displayed in a textarea and thus completely editable. So I deleted them before I clicked the confirm button, and ran off a screenshot of the page. I always wondered what would have happened if I'd had any kind of dispute with them; would this have over-ridden the various "we're updating your terms and conditions" emails I received from them over the subsequent years? Or would continuing to use my account have amounted to acquiescence? (I assume the latter) In practice I closed my account a couple of years ago when I moved to Sweden as it's not possible to transfer the account between countries. I hadn't used it much because (Transfer)Wise makes international bank transfers so much cheaper than they used to be and for everything else I use a debit card (or, within Sweden, Swish). I don't think I'd go long on Paypal shares...
- flaviut 4y ago
  > I always wondered what would have happened if I'd had any kind of dispute with them NAL, but a contract requires a "meeting of the minds"[1]. You altering the contract without the other party knowing makes it invalid. The process when modifying a contract is generally to have all parties initial next to each modification to indicate that they've read and agree with the change. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds
  - dcminter 4y ago
    Right, but that's my point. I deleted the terms (contract). So what contract applies? There was clearly no meeting of minds on this. So, for example, I would speculate that I could not have been bound to arbitration in the event of a dispute. Usually the Ts&Cs also contain verbiage about how and when amendments to the terms must be accepted, hence I wonder if subsequent changes would automatically be binding without further notice (over simplified, but you know what I mean) in the way that they normally are. I don't think it's as clear-cut as all that, though in practice I wouldn't much want to trust my weight to that rather flimsy hypothesis. I'd love to hear a real legal opinion on this though, just for shits & giggles.
bluenotebo0k 4y ago
"I suspected it had something to do with my involvement in a certain group named after a certain slavery abolitionist." What's the group? I clicked on the link and it points to a podcast that's over 1.5 hours long.
- TheFreim 4y ago
  The only one I could think of would be the John Brown Gun Club. One of their members committed a terrorist attack on an ICE facility back in 2019 so perhaps that's why PayPal flagged the post author. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound_John_Brown_Gun_Club https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound_John_Brown_Gun_C...
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    That seems to check out given that the author lives in the PNW. [edit] And specifically mentions liking guns in the about page.
grumple 4y ago
Business take: Companies that scaled up quickly in earlier days of the internet tend to treat their customers like trash. Today, as they reach the limits of their growth (hard to grow when nearly every person on the planet has had an account with you or has one with a competitor), they will find that poor customer service comes back to bite them. Everyone will remember the time PayPal closed their account without warning, or the time AirBnB refused to refund them for the rodent feces and other unlivable conditions in their rental, or the nonsensical response from Google's "support" that ignored everything you sent them. Populist take: I would really love for some regulation and standardization of service usage agreements. We already know basically nobody actually reads them, despite the checkbox or button confirming it. Give us a summary with some popular icons or simplified lists. I'd also love for some regulation around forced arbitration clauses. It should not be legal to waive your rights to remedy by trial any more than it is to waive your right to minimum wage.
- mqus 4y ago
  > Companies that scaled up quickly in earlier days of the internet tend to treat their customers like trash. Well, it is just much cheaper to optimize for the 90% Case (Everything works just fine, nothing unusual is happening) than aiming for covering 100% of cases. Ofc this is more of a general business rule imho than just startups(=scaling fast), but when you grow fast, you also need to prioritize much more. But in the more general sense it seems to me, that this is also the reason that government spending is quite a bit higher than if a company would do the same, because governments should be (and mostly are) aiming for 100% and not the most convenient subgroup of the population.
stewx 4y ago
TLDR: PayPal's user agreement says you can't sue them and must use arbitration for any disputes. And PayPal will pay all the costs of arbitration up to $10k. This guy followed the process and they unfroze his account without any explanation of why they froze it in the first place.
hrdwdmrbl 4y ago
This is great! I just sent out a Notice of Dispute to eBay. I think I'll send one to Shopify next! Correction: Shopify does not have an arbitration clause. Instead they specify the court of jurisdiction. Looks like it's Ontario court system for me.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> Arbitration — by design — happens behind closed doors in boring confidential proceedings. So the only information we get comes to us piecemeal, but it indicates consumers and workers win between 1% to 6% of the time. > Notably, neither Square nor Stripe offer to cover arbitration costs, and Stripe even requires the loser of the dispute to pay the winner’s entire legal expenses I am glad the author got it sorted, but it appears that if this was a material dispute with money at stake for PayPal, the game is stacked against you so much, you might as well be a medieval surf teying to get justice against the Lord that has wronged him.
- Tangurena2 4y ago
  We need some modern version of Ashford v. Thornton to abolish forced arbitration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashford_v_Thornton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashford_v_Thornton
joelrunyon 4y ago
Feels like this would be a perfect add-on use case for https://donotpay.com/ https://donotpay.com/
photochemsyn 4y ago
This piece demonstrates excellent writing skills - bits of humor interspere information-dense sections on legalese, allowing the reader to easily absorb the information. As far as the byzantine arbitration process described here, signed off on by the US Supreme Court and adopted across most of the corporate world, with the obvious intent of making it hard for ordinary citizens to sue corporations for damages, see this quote: "Control the coinage and the courts -- let the rabble have the rest." Thus the Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you: "If you want profits, you must rule." There is truth in these words, but I ask myself: "Who are the rabble and who are the ruled?" -Dune, by Frank Herbert
- jibe 4y ago
  There should be real skepticism about arbitration in user agreements, but didn’t make it easier in this case? Only someone rich or famous enough to entice a free lawyer could afford to sue PayPal over a suspended account. But many many more people could afford to try arbitration.
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    There are probably greater risks to a company if the case goes to something like a jury trial. Here, they may have run afoul of 'political discrimination' which some locales have made illegal. For example, there was a 'refusal to provide services to a Trump employee' case in New York: > "Had the incident taken place in Washington, D.C., it would have likely been illegal. The District of Columbia has an anti-discrimination law covering political affiliation. In Madison, Wisconsin, it most certainly would have been. The city’s broad non-discrimination clause defines political beliefs and physical appearance in its law. Political views can include 'opinions, manifested in speech or association, concerning the social, economic, and governmental structure of society and its institutions.' " Hence a dedicated person could plausibly incorporate their business in the District of Columbia, and then bring a (potentially very expensive and public) lawsuit against PayPal on the basis of political discrimination. Such incidents might be relatively rare, but they could also have major negative PR effects as well as the possibility of large jury awards, outcomes that binding arbitration is designed to avoid. https://huckleberry.com/blog/right-to-refuse-service/ https://huckleberry.com/blog/right-to-refuse-service/ As far as where the line between 'respectable political affiliation' and 'member of a violent organization' lies, Irish history is worth looking at, i.e. Sinn Fein vs. the IRA.
WaitWaitWha 4y ago
> the strongest criticism for me [for Arbitration,] is its lack of transparency. ... and the incentive for an arbitrator to favour the corporation for repeat business.
einpoklum 4y ago
In recent years, financial institutions - Paypal being one of them - have had an increased tendency to deny service to clients based on their having espousing unpopular views. Glenn Greenwald has recently written on this matter: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-consortium-imposing-the-growing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-consortium-imposing-the...
WaitWaitWha 4y ago
I want to ditch PayPal. My problem is that PayPal is the primary, and often only method of payment accepted on online auction sites, specially person-to-person of used electronics. I buy electronics by the boat load (I think, never seen the boat) to experiment with them. Most Asian or individual sellers will accept just PayPal. Yes, it is a monopoly in the niche field of online auctions.
- intrasight 4y ago
  I accept that Paypal is part of my financial life. Therefore I aim to manage the risks. I use a "burner" bank account to send and receive funds. It's a bank account with a bank with whom I do no other business.
anderspitman 4y ago
Computers have gotten so complicated, exploitable, and finicky that sometimes I feel only some programmers are able to fully enjoy the benefits of them. Likewise our legal system has gotten so complex, exploitable, and finicky that only lawyers can navigate disputes with other entities. I wonder which is a more valuable skill.
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and even PayPal are public utilities at this point, and we need better accountability from them. If there's one piece of legislation I think the US needs, it's to make these monstrous, global, faceless, tech companies use a tiny portion of their mind-boggling profits to staff a proper help desk that can actually FIX these kinds of problems. Make the data public, and if the user-satisfaction rate isn't high-enough, stiff (actual!) penalties start being applied until it gets there. I know this won't be popular here, but I stand by it.
- astura 4y ago
  This isn't a "tech company" thing - PayPal is no different from any bank in this regard. Banks close accounts for seemingly no reason (or silly reasons) with no recourse literally all the time.
  - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
    And yet, your point is completely pointless. I can easily go find another bank. By design, they're fungible. PayPal's position and "reputation" puts them in a league of their own when it comes to accepting online payments. I don't even know of something that has the same mindshare. Venmo? Owned by PayPal, in yet another CLASSIC American monopolistic cannibalization, engineered to explicitly deny my ability to USE SOMEONE ELSE. Seriously, I don't know of any others besides Apple Pay. Does Ebay work with that? My point is that your options are limited, like the power company, water, or sewer.
intrasight 4y ago
The article and comments here talk about "money in the account". This confuses me as my use of Paypal is to send and receive money. The money is in my bank account - a "burner" account as I use it for Internet stuff and never have more cash there than is necessary for whatever transaction I'm doing. I never thought of Paypal as a bank where I can park funds.
Gelob 4y ago
Can this be done for a Twitter account that was suspended ?
caseysoftware 4y ago
I participated in the arbitration swarm against Indie Go Go a few years back.. There was a crowdfunding which was successful, they charged all of us, told the creator they were sending the money, then after a week canceled the crowd funding and refunded our money. According to their TOS, they were NOT a party to the contract we had with the creator and forced arbitration, so we fought it. Each participant (200+ iirc) each had to pay $200 while IGG had to pay the other $2300/participant (~$460k) to get the arbitration initiated. Then they tried to push it to a class action (to simplify their legal battle) but according to their own TOS a class action was not allowed so that died quickly. So then we collectively worked through one firm who iterated on our filings based on how each one went. After a year+, IGG finally unlocked the creator's account, issued an apology, and updated their TOS. Insiders at IGG claim that the legal bill was into the millions. It's not easy but you can fight bad behavior from these guys.
thefounder 4y ago
I still fail to see this as a win given the waste of time.
gunapologist99 4y ago
> PAYPAL WILL COVER THE COST OF ARBITRATION: .. PayPal isn’t alone here as Etsy has basically the same provision, as does Amazon Pay and many others. > (Notably, neither Square nor Stripe offer to cover arbitration costs, and Stripe even requires the loser of the dispute to pay the winner’s entire legal expenses. yikes.
fortran77 4y ago
I think a lot of these companies make two mistakes. They allow rogue employees to have too much power in banning users, and their knee-jerk reaction to an account that gets too many “reporters” is to suspend it. So a bunch of Tumbler users who get mad at someone can report en masse a Twitter user, or an Etsy employee who gets his feelings hurts can click on a button and get an account blocked. The C staff and legal have no idea this is going on.
phillipdi 4y ago
In Australia we have AFCA, the AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL COMPLAINTS AUTHORITY https://www.afca.org.au/make-a-complaint https://www.afca.org.au/make-a-complaint This is AWESOME, other countries have it. Paypal refunded a customer over one thousand dollars despite the tracking number AND the buyer saying the item was delivered after they opened a case, the buyer simply failed to close the case but they commented on the case saying it was delivered and tracking showed it was delivered. AFCA got my money back, got them to pay me compensation and I got a personal apology from someone in Ireland over the phone.

868 points by exolymph 4y ago

I haven't been using PayPal since more than 5 years. For quick transfers I can use Revolut. For buying something I can use card. For easy payment integration with Web apps there are countless tools. So I am wondering what use cases PayPal still serves, use cases which aren't already better covered by better means. Why pay heavy commissions to PayPal?

throwaway290 4y ago
Places not served by Revolut, small time sellers that don't have the capacity/infrastructure to process cards, etc.
- notpushkin 4y ago
  I'm wondering wow difficult can it be to just set up Stripe in addition to PayPal. I've set one up without any legal entity at all, just as a plain old human being resident of Estonia, and it seems to just work for occasional payments. Should work in US, too.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    Try doing it in Thailand for example. There're plenty of countries where neither Stripe nor Revolut are present...
    - patio11 4y ago
      News you may potentially be able to use: Stripe (which employs me) launched in Thailand about 2 weeks ago.
mike_ivanov 4y ago
From the buyer's perspective: hassle-free unsubscription, seeing all my subscriptions in one place, no need to create accounts on random seller sites. And yes, I'm willing to pay a couple of %% to anyone who can fulfill those needs, not necessarily PayPal.
EMIRELADERO 4y ago
The value is that it's easy from the perspective of the user. You mentioned that you use Revolut for one thing, direct card payment for another, and other tools for web app integration. PayPal offers all that in a neatly packaged solution. It's no surprise users would choose that instead of 3+ different services that serve different purposes
atirip 4y ago
I only buy from merchants that offer PayPal (there are few I trust by card, like Amazon). And the reason is that whatever it happens, I can always get my money back with PayPal. It happened 3 times in last 5 years that seller took the money and never shipped anything. I got all them resolved very quickly.
- cute_boi 4y ago
  Well, we can use credit card charge back for such purpose?
  - lmm 4y ago
    You can, but you probably have to call up your bank during business hours, wait on hold for a while, and then get given the runaround for a while. PayPal you just push a button and it's done.
    - ripe 4y ago
      My Bank of America credit card lets me dispute charges online, with a simple series of web forms. Very convenient.
  - switch007 4y ago
    In the UK my experience with chargebacks is that they’re very biased towards the company. It’s a drawn-out process during which you get harassed by the company’s anti-chargeback team in to accepting an ex gratia payment etc. you have to supply lots of evidence and when the company provides some poor quality evidence the bank goes “oh well that’s decided then” as if responding was sufficient.
    - dazc 4y ago
      This is true, you have to very persistent with the chargeback route, sometimes only a threat of legal action against the bank will move things forward.
- egorfine 4y ago
pauljurczak 4y ago
One of my credit cards had a 7% cash back promotion last quarter, if used through PayPal. I saved a couple of bucks.
lmm 4y ago
Buying things in a foreign country, or where a seller hasn't integrated the card type you want to use (particularly a problem for small/local websites). Sending money to a friend internationally. Avoiding having to give someone your bank details or credit card number.
trinovantes 4y ago
I still use paypal to pay for stuff when I'm too lazy to walk to the other room to get my wallet. As a consumer, the price is the same.
avereveard 4y ago
With virtual cards and whatnot I don't use PayPal anymore to protect the card number from circulation. But I still find them useful for long therm subscriptions to provider. That why when I need to change the card I don't need to login to (and remember) all websites where I have an ongoing payment plan
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  And cancelling subscriptions via PayPal is easy too.
- npc12345 4y ago
Andys 4y ago
I like using it for subscriptions, because it lists them all in one place and gives me a hassle-free way to cancel each of them.
urbandw311er 4y ago
My co published an App in Germany as recently as 2 years ago and PayPal support was almost unavoidable. It turns out that penetration of credit and debit cards in Germany is significantly behind other parts of the EU and many of them habitually use PayPal for e-commerce payments.
- lytefm 4y ago
  > It turns out that penetration of credit and debit cards in Germany is significantly behind other parts of the EU. Yep. Therefore, we also use PayPal a lot to transfer money to a friend when we're at some place that is cash only and someone doesn't have cash on them. No need to type an IBAN and wait for a day. Also, it's a great backup solution for online purchases if I don't want to share my credit card details or things don't work. For example, many vendors borked the 3d visa verification process so PayPal often was the only realistic option.
  - ce4 4y ago
    > IBAN and wait for a day. The delay can be skipped in many cases via the IBAN instant payment option. Requires both banks to be participating in the program and trust each other (the delay will happen if additional checks are needed, for example if the transction gets flagged for manual inspection, eg if you write "funny" purpose text, etc)
    - Scharkenberg 4y ago
      AFAIK banks here charge extra for that.
      - licebmi__at__ 4y ago
        Really, my only banking experience here in germany is with n26 and since they offer it free, I thought that was the norm.
      - scrollaway 4y ago
        Use Wise (https://wise.com https://wise.com). In Germany especially N26 is also popular but IMO they went downhill quite a bit as soon as they realized that being a neobank is a losing venture. Source: I work in finance.
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Some companies like BandCamp mandate PayPal. This is incredibly annoying and unhelpful, but there's no other option.
- notpushkin 4y ago
  Could this be a startup idea? “Like Bandcamp but with sane payouts system.”
- dinosaurdynasty 4y ago
  I use a VISA CC on bandcamp (US) and pretty sure I've bought from there well before I had a PayPal account.
danpalmer 4y ago
I certainly put Revolut in the same category as PayPal. No morals, anti-consumer policies, very little protection.
- colinb 4y ago
  I can't comment on their morals or views on customers, but I think they've been governed by banking regulations for some time now. In my country (.ie) that's their claim. Banking regulations come with quite a lot of consumer protection, both national and EU originated.
  - danpalmer 4y ago
    In the UK they are not covered by the FSCS.
    - notpushkin 4y ago
      Yeah, I think they only have banking licence in Lithuania, so EU only.
yread 4y ago
I use it if the seller forces me to type my CC number into their interface. If it's some payment provider, that's fine but I don't trust random webshops to keep my credit card details safe
KronisLV 4y ago
> For easy payment integration with Web apps there are countless tools. Could you (or anyone else) comment on these? I think the most popular indeed are PayPal and Stripe, whereas any others (like Paddle) are more niche or some others (Alipay) are just more regional.

CaliforniaKarl 4y ago

First off, congratulations! Second, I wish there was more followup from "My account got limited/blocked, and I need help." HN posts of that nature—assuming they reach the front page—typically get resolution in enough time that the person with the issue posts a followup, but I don't think that's the norm.

Infrid 4y ago
Sure, but not without blaming the victim first. There are countless threads where the victim is accused to be wrong.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  It's possible they are wrong. Assuming they are a victim isn't right. Questions to establish that aren't accusations.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> For consumers, I suspect that much of the power “arbitration” seems to confer on corporations lies in its opacity This one hundred times. There has been a surprisingly-effective PR scare campaign around arbitration in the U.S. Sure, for sexual harassment, it’s a bad forum. That’s approaching criminal territory. But for civil disputes, it’s straightforward and cheap.

wongarsu 4y ago
I'd have more faith in arbitration if it was offered as an option instead of being required by the TOS. If it's universally good for me, surely there's no reason to force me to use it?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Analemma_ 4y ago
It's "straightforward and cheap" because it always rules against the consumer. That's not a desired property of an adjudicator.

urban_winter 4y ago

It's worth knowing that in the UK PayPal is covered by the Financial Ombudsman service. They wouldn't be interested in accounts being blocked as in this case but they were very helpful to me when PayPal made a payment that I did not authorize and then refused to put it right. I don't use PayPal any more. Their support staff are impossibility hopeless so any kind of problem with your account will cause you a world of pain.

dazc 4y ago
The Financial Ombudsman Service is one of the few UK organizations that is anyway effective. If only all other regulatory authorities were half as good? One problem I have found with some UK eCommerce sites though is that their payment gateways are often broken with Brave/Chrome and the paypal payment option is an easy way of bypassing this issue.
- stevesimmons 4y ago
  The FOS seems effective to consumers because it levies a £750 charge to the financial institution for each case it investigates. It is often cheaper to do whatever the customer wants, whether or not the complaint is justified. The financial institutions at the receiving end of FOS decisions don't necessarily regard it as effective. Claims management companies, for instance, can flood banks with very many dubious claims, with the FOS as effectively the enforcer.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    My state (New York) has a similar regulatory feature. I had an issue with bees inside of the utility pole that feeds my home. Issue: the pole is owned by the telephone company. So power people tell me to call the phone company, and the phone company tells me to get a landline before they will talk to me. So I called the public utility commission, which apparently starts fining both parties within 48 hours of the complaint, which I submitted on Sunday. Monday morning arrives, and there is a comical gathering of trucks with crews frantically working to replace the pole (which is a fascinating process). The foreman told me that the government is essentially level 3 support, and had I worked through the company, he probably would have inspected it over a few months before any work would have started, and only if I was persistent. The key lesson is that large companies only perceive pain. PayPal lives in a big loophole, so it’s difficult to inflict pain on them and thus difficult to ever be satisfied with them.

ggreer 4y ago

The author of this article is a public defender in the pacific northwest. He sometimes writes for Jesse Singal, but he also has his own substack.[1] Many of his posts provide a unique window into the criminal justice system. If that sounds interesting to you, I strongly recommend reading more of his writing. In my opinion, his greatest hits are Eleven Magic Words[2] and Death of a Client[3]. 1. https://ymeskhout.substack.com/ https://ymeskhout.substack.com/ 2. https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/eleven-magic-words-unlocked https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/eleven-magic-words-unlocked 3. https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/death-of-a-client https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/death-of-a-client

whoooooo123 4y ago
Only upon reading your comment did I realise that the Substack article I just read was not written by Jesse Singal.
- TheFlyingFish 4y ago
  I regularly read Singal-Minded and it still took me until "I am a lawyer" before I scrolled back up and checked the author name.
skrebbel 4y ago
I just read "Eleven Magic Words" and I'm entirely baffled. Also what a writer, wow.
- SapporoChris 4y ago
  "It's the functional equivalent of an attorney's XP level", I laughed embarrassingly loud. Thank you and grandparent for recommendations.
- kator 4y ago
  Yes very well written and reminds us all that in the end we're humans, and once in a while things can go right if only for us asking why they aren't.
- 4y ago

mrspencehimself 4y ago

honestly, that was a riveting read

mrspencehimself 4y ago

Honestly, fantastic writing style lol... made reading a legal case about arbitration clauses a riveting read!

Maursault 4y ago

> While PayPal is technically a private company that can work with basically whoever it wants for whatever reason, its centralized role as an online payment processor makes this a weirdly potent free speech fight. > He did share correspondence with me where prominent free speech attorneys told him, in an apparent contradiction to my claims, that he had no viable legal recourse to getting his account reinstated. Though somehow money is speech, the author never supports his claim how PayPal, which is not a government actor, can violate free speech. The First Amendment does not prohibit private individuals, companies and employers from restricting speech.

b800h 4y ago
Oh not this old canard again. The US constitutional guarantee of freedom from government interference in speech is just one aspect of the matter. If private companies own every method of articulating your views, and are preventing you from doing so, then you aren't free to speak.
- eesmith 4y ago
  > If private companies own every method of articulating your views, They aren't. We're nowhere even close. To the point where I can't even envision how that could happen. Perhaps in some sort of fantasy libertarian future where everything has been privatized, including the streets and sidewalks. But that's certainly not anything like now.
  - michaelt 4y ago
    If you want to envisage such a future for a dystopian novel or something like that, just imagine this wild fantasy: 1. Imagine a world where all the major online spaces - twitter, reddit, facebook, tumblr, HN, tiktok, instagram, youtube, twitch, slack, and discord and so on are privately owned. As are skype, zoom and google meet. Imagine a world where you can't even send e-mails if private companies don't like your 'sender reputation'. 2. Then imagine a world where all Radio and TV channels, newspapers and billboards are owned by private corporations. Maybe they're even owned by a tiny number of corporations, with specific political leanings. 3. Then fantasise that universities and similar venues for public speaking are a law unto themselves, and are within their rights to choose who they invite to speak. 4. Imagine a world of rising land values and increasing urbanisation, where only the absolute richest people could hold an event of any scale on land they own themselves. 5. Then imagine a world where public squares and parks in cities increasingly in private ownership. Perhaps city hall is sold to an investment firm who lease it back to the city. As it's private land, private security can move anyone on for 'unacceptable behaviour'. 6. There's still a risk some free speech would happen on public roads - we probably can't transfer those to private companies. We'll have to use the state's power here and arrest them - but don't worry, it's not a free speech issue. They were, uh, obstructing ambulance traffic. Or we could just make it legal for motorists to drive into people and let nature take it's course. Thank goodness such an absurd fiction could never happen in real life :)

jasmer 4y ago

Retail Fintech desperately needs consumer regulation, hopefully with a 'light and enlightened' quality.

vector_spaces 4y ago

TulliusCicero 4y ago
Sorry, what does this article have to do with social justice issues?
- urbandw311er 4y ago
  I also did a double take here, but I think the poster is referring to the link on the article’s page that could be seen as supportive of the activities of Colin Wright.
  - hvdijk 4y ago
    There's no "could be seen as", the phrase "sex realist" makes it clear beyond any doubt that the author does support the activities of Colin Wright.
- parker_mountain 4y ago
  Aside from the article's snide mention of "sex realism", the reason this person was banned from paypal was likely tied to their anti-trans "activism".
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    Hmm, maybe, but if that was the case, would they get reinstated so easily? Getting immediately reinstated makes it sound more like it was a mistake, not the result of some real internal policy.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - hairybobbins 4y ago

ryan-c 4y ago

rippercushions 4y ago
- ryan-c 4y ago
  The author, in fact, brought it up. The fact that he works with someone who has a problematic history is relevant to contextualize.
- hvdijk 4y ago
  It isn't guilt by association when the article directly uses anti-trans rhetoric.
  - rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago
hksoftware 4y ago
Nice bait
hairybobbins 4y ago
Why do you find this offensive? Wright's key points regarding 'sex realism', as I understand them, are that sex is not a spectrum (as many people are claiming these days) but a male-female binary, and that sex is still an important characteristic in many circumstances, such that it cannot realistically be supplanted by 'gender identity' or similar. Seems like a reasonable viewpoint to me, and not one that would generally be considered offensive for others to mention.
- hvdijk 4y ago

tluyben2 4y ago

PayPal is such a weird company. I was a loyal customer for 20 years until I wanted to convert my account from business to personal (I closed the business) and the site refused to do so. after months of calls with support, it became clear that no one was able to do this (something locked the flow and no one was able to see what; I guess my account was so ancient, it has some db flags no longer used but still checked by their backend?), so I asked just to terminate my account. That also was not possible. It took 6 months to figure out why; my company still existed they said; it most certainly did not. It took 2 months to find out why they thought that; apparently, somewhere in the past 20 years, they searched for my company in the NL company register and attached the wrong company number to my account. So I told them the real number and they said; now all is fine, we can even convert it to personal. 1 hour later I received an email from PayPal that I am permanently banned as I am trading with a business account of which the company no longer exists… Well done!

rutierut 4y ago
This is so quintessentially Paypal, were they upfront about their services, they'd put this testimonial on their home page.
londons_explore 4y ago
To be honest I'm surprised they even tried as hard as they did. Normally in my experience if you cost them more than about 30 minutes of staff time fixing any problem, they'll ban your account just on the basis that you're costing them more in customer service than the revenue you bring in.
- tluyben2 4y ago
  The Dutch support is really very good. Before they had local support it was even worse. But the dutch support, as far as I have used them (quite a lot from begin ‘20 to begin ‘22 as I tried to convert my account), they were professional and nice, but have very little power and need to talk to their US counterparts all the time (which, I presume, is why the weeks/months fly by over something I would assume is a support-portal lookup). Edit; I guess by having written this, if a PayPal manager reads this, the Dutch support will get an ‘urgent read now!’ email from their manager to not waste so much time on customers…

mro_name 4y ago

how would one do that from within the EU? Is it still sending a certified letter to Omaha?

sofixa 4y ago
PayPal probably have a legal entity in the EU, and different terms of service/privacy policy (to reflect EU regulations like GDPR), so probably not. You're free to read the double digits terms of service you agreed to to check the exact process :p
- throw_m239339 4y ago
  There was an article posed on HN not long ago (I am unable to find the link), where some business tried to sue Paypal for stealing them money (yes literally) and Paypal were giving them the run around claiming that this or that jurisdiction had no authority to sue them, maybe somebody can find the link, basically paypal claimed they couldn't be sued in any country. In the EU paypal is deemed a bank I believe thus must abide by the same rules as regular ones. That's not the case in US.
jeroenhd 4y ago
The EU PayPal entity seems to be PayPal (Europe) S.à.r.l. et Cie, S.C.A. Attention: Legal Department, 22-24 Boulevard Royal, L-2449 Luxembourg. Legal claims fall under the Luxembourgish laws. I'm not seeing any language in the Dutch terms of service that mention any arbitrage. Another thing to note is that the European branch of PayPal actually has a banking license. The Dutch national bank lists the permits (though the registration was done in Luxembourg, obviously): https://www.dnb.nl/en/public-register/information-detail/?registerCode=WFTKF&relationNumber=B1302 https://www.dnb.nl/en/public-register/information-detail/?re... It looks like the 2007 basic banking license was extended around 2018.

ryan-c 4y ago

wooque 4y ago
- MerelyMortal 4y ago
  People probably don't like it being called a mental illness. It's not a good idea to generalize a whole group of people when that only applies to a very small percentage, while the rest make the decision because they've been led to believe they should feel that way by no fault of their own.
b112 4y ago
There's probably a lot of political stuff I am unaware of here, but a "sex realist" immediately made me understand what Colin's views probably area. I don't get the "legitimatize" bit. If I acknowledge that some people believe the Earth is flat, and call them flat Earthers, how does this make their position legitimate? Is the thought process here to pretend such people do not exist? I don't grok.
- blep_ 4y ago
  "Realist" is a bit non-neutral in the attitude it expresses toward the view. Compare it to "planet shape realist" and it'll be more obvious.
- gwd 4y ago
  "Flat earther" is an accurate representation of their beliefs; it doesn't say whether those beliefs reflect reality or not. "Sex realist", however, implies that this Colin person's beliefs correspond to reality, while his opponent's beliefs do not. Imagine if flat earthers started going around calling themselves "geological realists" -- anyone who then used that term would pretty clearly identify themselves as aligned with them. Everyone on both sides of this debate would claim to be a "sex realist". I'm not at all familiar with Colin's views, but "trans denier" or "biological determinist" might be more neutral terms.

Proven 4y ago

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

Thanks, I remembered I was receiving a few dollars a month from patreon which added up over the years, I just transfered a big chunk of that out of my account. At this point, I'm not worried about Paypal's security, but more about their own policies of shutting down accounts. I wish companies were required to specify why an account was blocked, but I'm 99% sure they don't and they've weaseled their way out of it so that challenging the decision becomes more difficult. If they specify a reason to someone who is more ligituous or who knows legalese, they could probably pick the reasoning apart. Or just a "oh you have ruled 'fraudulent activity'? Prove it"

kybernetyk 4y ago

Logging into PayPal is now more annoying than logging into my German online banking. Which is telling as that is already a major pain. Every time I have to solve 2 captchas and fill the log in form twice until I log in. I’ve switched to using my online banking to pay for stuff over clicking the PayPal button.

TonyTrapp 4y ago
Same! The number of times they claim I'm logging in from a new, unknown device has gone up significantly, even though I'm using the same browser on the same device all the time, and I don't clear cookies between sessions. The most egregious thing to me is that after solving the captcha, you are thrown back to the login form claiming that the password you entered is incorrect - which is impossible, as I just pasted it from my password manager. I'm happy about every web shop adding GiroPay as an alternative payment method in Germany.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  Giropay is great!

qwerty456127 4y ago

I have been locked out of my account by the stupid 2FA made mandatory. I have previously entered my phone number for contact purposes, forgot about it, and once I returned in some years they won't let me sign-in without a code sent to that number (which isn't mine anymore). Apparently I'm not alone caught in this. Luckily I only had about $20 there and don't really need PayPal nowadays.

gadders 4y ago

In the UK, paypal recently generated a lot of adverse publicity for banning the Free Speech Union [0] for, er, free speech [1]. This has now generated such controversy that MPs are proposing amendments in parliament preventing Paypal from blocking accounts on political grounds. [0] https://freespeechunion.org/about/ https://freespeechunion.org/about/ [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/27/paypal-reinstates-free-speech-union-accounts-accused-politically/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/27/paypal-reins...

Mindwipe 4y ago
As always, not actually doing something useful like banning payment discrimination, just passing laws to protect speech they like and not speech they don't like.

Jon_Lowtek 4y ago

> the contract you “agreed” to means you are legally not allowed to take them to a real court. Your only recourse is arbitration. americans can sign away their rights to sue at their own courts? That seems wrong. For me, as a german, the paypal contract reads that i can escalate a conflict to the EU consumer protection agency or the french regulatory authority for financial institutions (which signs their banking license). It further reads that the governing body of law and court of of justice should be in Wales, but that this does not limit my consumer right to sue at my local court. No arbitration clause, especially no mandatory arbitration with an agency of the corporations choice. I do understand the idea that private arbitration may be cheaper than court proceedings, but is mandatory arbitration even legally enforceable, or is that just scary text a court would overrule?

indymike 4y ago
> americans can sign away their rights to sue at their own courts? That seems wrong. You still have immediate access to the courts if you are challenging the legality of the contract (i.e. something is actually against the law in the contract or you are claiming the contract is so unjust it should be allowed ). If it's just a dispute under the terms of the agreement, you usually have to do arbitration and then you can go to court. Every time I've done arbitration, the outcome has been pretty fair (which to me, means I won) and even a better experience that US Courts are. US Courts use an adversarial system, so if you don't spend a lot of time in courtrooms (which I don't), it's not a pleasant place to be even when you win.
staticman2 4y ago
The U.S. congress passed a law a while back making arbitration terms in contracts legally enforceable.
gnopgnip 4y ago
The US Paypal terms also allow you to take the case to small claims. Mandatory arbitration can be enforceable if certain requirements are met. The big difference between the EU and US is the American rule, each side bears their own costs. Lawyers might be $300 an hour, so arbitration can be a lot less expensive for everyone

walrus01 4y ago

The important thing for Americans to understand is that Paypal is not a bank. You can have an "account" and hold money in it and it may function similar to one, but it has none of the federally mandated legal protections of being a bank. Some much more recent Fintech startups such as Chime are legally underpinned by something that is an FDIC regulated bank.

creeble 4y ago
Indeed, it’s the magic that made PayPal what it is today. Back when it was x.com, they were trying to figure out how to avoid being a bank, and they did it with something that violated credit card merchant agreements: by crediting accounts without correlated purchases (you can still do this today, depending on your card processor I think). That got noticed, so they just started holding the money instead. I never figured out how a company that holds your cash with exclusive rights to do anything they want with it has avoided banking regulation.

veddox 4y ago

FWIW, I had a successful arbitration process this year via the German Insurance Ombudsman after my bike was stolen and the insurance didn't want to pay. The process took a few months, but was pretty easy overall and I got my money back :-) (In the end, the insurance paid just to avoid further hassle.) Regarding PayPal: I've always avoided getting an account with them, because I generally don't like online services having access to my bank account. Two weeks ago, though, I was forced to create an account with them to pay a conference fee - just to have the PayPal account locked literally the minute it was created. I have no idea why, I didn't get any further information, and no useful response from customer service. So I guess I will remain a non-PayPal customer...

ciroduran 4y ago

This article reminds me of the epic patio11's thread: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/906384638733467648 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/906384638733467648 "You do not want to be read as someone who is angry and needs to be talked down. You want to be read as someone collecting a paper trail."

blitzar 4y ago
"One group in the bank is scored on tickets per hour. Another's KPI is "zero regulatory actions this quarter." You only want to talk to them."
themeiguoren 4y ago
Written up as a blog post: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Bellamy 4y ago

I quit PayPal as I heard they can take 2500$ from your account for "misinformation". https://bgr.com/business/new-paypal-rule-the-company-can-take-2500-from-your-account-for-sharing-misinformation/ https://bgr.com/business/new-paypal-rule-the-company-can-tak...

wdb 4y ago

Yes, I also won my case against Paypal after a topic from a person on this site. I was able to get my money back from Paypal that they froze before the start of the pandemic and it appears they might be forced to pay me interest over it too

cflynnus 4y ago

bitcoin fixes this

vehemenz 4y ago
...while introducing ten other issues.
- nullc 4y ago
  But they're different issues-- having options is good.

baidifnaoxi 4y ago

ITT: people that think PayPal was acting alone as a “private” company. I’m under the firm belief that this is just our federal government pushing a censorship and “misinformation” policy that is unconstitutional, but using pressure on private companies to accomplish said policies. Twitter docs leaked: https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/ https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformat... PayPal: https://www.techdirt.com/2010/12/07/visa-mastercard-kkk-is-a-ok-wikileaks-is-wicked/ https://www.techdirt.com/2010/12/07/visa-mastercard-kkk-is-a... (yes source is questionable , but actual events did occur

nullc 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

dcminter 4y ago

When I originally opened my PayPal account many years ago, the terms and conditions were displayed in a textarea and thus completely editable. So I deleted them before I clicked the confirm button, and ran off a screenshot of the page. I always wondered what would have happened if I'd had any kind of dispute with them; would this have over-ridden the various "we're updating your terms and conditions" emails I received from them over the subsequent years? Or would continuing to use my account have amounted to acquiescence? (I assume the latter) In practice I closed my account a couple of years ago when I moved to Sweden as it's not possible to transfer the account between countries. I hadn't used it much because (Transfer)Wise makes international bank transfers so much cheaper than they used to be and for everything else I use a debit card (or, within Sweden, Swish). I don't think I'd go long on Paypal shares...

flaviut 4y ago
> I always wondered what would have happened if I'd had any kind of dispute with them NAL, but a contract requires a "meeting of the minds"[1]. You altering the contract without the other party knowing makes it invalid. The process when modifying a contract is generally to have all parties initial next to each modification to indicate that they've read and agree with the change. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meeting_of_the_minds
- dcminter 4y ago
  Right, but that's my point. I deleted the terms (contract). So what contract applies? There was clearly no meeting of minds on this. So, for example, I would speculate that I could not have been bound to arbitration in the event of a dispute. Usually the Ts&Cs also contain verbiage about how and when amendments to the terms must be accepted, hence I wonder if subsequent changes would automatically be binding without further notice (over simplified, but you know what I mean) in the way that they normally are. I don't think it's as clear-cut as all that, though in practice I wouldn't much want to trust my weight to that rather flimsy hypothesis. I'd love to hear a real legal opinion on this though, just for shits & giggles.

bluenotebo0k 4y ago

"I suspected it had something to do with my involvement in a certain group named after a certain slavery abolitionist." What's the group? I clicked on the link and it points to a podcast that's over 1.5 hours long.

TheFreim 4y ago
The only one I could think of would be the John Brown Gun Club. One of their members committed a terrorist attack on an ICE facility back in 2019 so perhaps that's why PayPal flagged the post author. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound_John_Brown_Gun_Club https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound_John_Brown_Gun_C...
- aidenn0 4y ago
  That seems to check out given that the author lives in the PNW. [edit] And specifically mentions liking guns in the about page.

grumple 4y ago

Business take: Companies that scaled up quickly in earlier days of the internet tend to treat their customers like trash. Today, as they reach the limits of their growth (hard to grow when nearly every person on the planet has had an account with you or has one with a competitor), they will find that poor customer service comes back to bite them. Everyone will remember the time PayPal closed their account without warning, or the time AirBnB refused to refund them for the rodent feces and other unlivable conditions in their rental, or the nonsensical response from Google's "support" that ignored everything you sent them. Populist take: I would really love for some regulation and standardization of service usage agreements. We already know basically nobody actually reads them, despite the checkbox or button confirming it. Give us a summary with some popular icons or simplified lists. I'd also love for some regulation around forced arbitration clauses. It should not be legal to waive your rights to remedy by trial any more than it is to waive your right to minimum wage.

mqus 4y ago
> Companies that scaled up quickly in earlier days of the internet tend to treat their customers like trash. Well, it is just much cheaper to optimize for the 90% Case (Everything works just fine, nothing unusual is happening) than aiming for covering 100% of cases. Ofc this is more of a general business rule imho than just startups(=scaling fast), but when you grow fast, you also need to prioritize much more. But in the more general sense it seems to me, that this is also the reason that government spending is quite a bit higher than if a company would do the same, because governments should be (and mostly are) aiming for 100% and not the most convenient subgroup of the population.

stewx 4y ago

TLDR: PayPal's user agreement says you can't sue them and must use arbitration for any disputes. And PayPal will pay all the costs of arbitration up to $10k. This guy followed the process and they unfroze his account without any explanation of why they froze it in the first place.

hrdwdmrbl 4y ago

This is great! I just sent out a Notice of Dispute to eBay. I think I'll send one to Shopify next! Correction: Shopify does not have an arbitration clause. Instead they specify the court of jurisdiction. Looks like it's Ontario court system for me.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

> Arbitration — by design — happens behind closed doors in boring confidential proceedings. So the only information we get comes to us piecemeal, but it indicates consumers and workers win between 1% to 6% of the time. > Notably, neither Square nor Stripe offer to cover arbitration costs, and Stripe even requires the loser of the dispute to pay the winner’s entire legal expenses I am glad the author got it sorted, but it appears that if this was a material dispute with money at stake for PayPal, the game is stacked against you so much, you might as well be a medieval surf teying to get justice against the Lord that has wronged him.

Tangurena2 4y ago
We need some modern version of Ashford v. Thornton to abolish forced arbitration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashford_v_Thornton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashford_v_Thornton

joelrunyon 4y ago

Feels like this would be a perfect add-on use case for https://donotpay.com/ https://donotpay.com/

photochemsyn 4y ago

This piece demonstrates excellent writing skills - bits of humor interspere information-dense sections on legalese, allowing the reader to easily absorb the information. As far as the byzantine arbitration process described here, signed off on by the US Supreme Court and adopted across most of the corporate world, with the obvious intent of making it hard for ordinary citizens to sue corporations for damages, see this quote: "Control the coinage and the courts -- let the rabble have the rest." Thus the Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you: "If you want profits, you must rule." There is truth in these words, but I ask myself: "Who are the rabble and who are the ruled?" -Dune, by Frank Herbert

jibe 4y ago
There should be real skepticism about arbitration in user agreements, but didn’t make it easier in this case? Only someone rich or famous enough to entice a free lawyer could afford to sue PayPal over a suspended account. But many many more people could afford to try arbitration.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  There are probably greater risks to a company if the case goes to something like a jury trial. Here, they may have run afoul of 'political discrimination' which some locales have made illegal. For example, there was a 'refusal to provide services to a Trump employee' case in New York: > "Had the incident taken place in Washington, D.C., it would have likely been illegal. The District of Columbia has an anti-discrimination law covering political affiliation. In Madison, Wisconsin, it most certainly would have been. The city’s broad non-discrimination clause defines political beliefs and physical appearance in its law. Political views can include 'opinions, manifested in speech or association, concerning the social, economic, and governmental structure of society and its institutions.' " Hence a dedicated person could plausibly incorporate their business in the District of Columbia, and then bring a (potentially very expensive and public) lawsuit against PayPal on the basis of political discrimination. Such incidents might be relatively rare, but they could also have major negative PR effects as well as the possibility of large jury awards, outcomes that binding arbitration is designed to avoid. https://huckleberry.com/blog/right-to-refuse-service/ https://huckleberry.com/blog/right-to-refuse-service/ As far as where the line between 'respectable political affiliation' and 'member of a violent organization' lies, Irish history is worth looking at, i.e. Sinn Fein vs. the IRA.

WaitWaitWha 4y ago

> the strongest criticism for me [for Arbitration,] is its lack of transparency. ... and the incentive for an arbitrator to favour the corporation for repeat business.

einpoklum 4y ago

In recent years, financial institutions - Paypal being one of them - have had an increased tendency to deny service to clients based on their having espousing unpopular views. Glenn Greenwald has recently written on this matter: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-consortium-imposing-the-growing https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-consortium-imposing-the...

WaitWaitWha 4y ago

I want to ditch PayPal. My problem is that PayPal is the primary, and often only method of payment accepted on online auction sites, specially person-to-person of used electronics. I buy electronics by the boat load (I think, never seen the boat) to experiment with them. Most Asian or individual sellers will accept just PayPal. Yes, it is a monopoly in the niche field of online auctions.

intrasight 4y ago
I accept that Paypal is part of my financial life. Therefore I aim to manage the risks. I use a "burner" bank account to send and receive funds. It's a bank account with a bank with whom I do no other business.

anderspitman 4y ago

Computers have gotten so complicated, exploitable, and finicky that sometimes I feel only some programmers are able to fully enjoy the benefits of them. Likewise our legal system has gotten so complex, exploitable, and finicky that only lawyers can navigate disputes with other entities. I wonder which is a more valuable skill.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

Companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, and even PayPal are public utilities at this point, and we need better accountability from them. If there's one piece of legislation I think the US needs, it's to make these monstrous, global, faceless, tech companies use a tiny portion of their mind-boggling profits to staff a proper help desk that can actually FIX these kinds of problems. Make the data public, and if the user-satisfaction rate isn't high-enough, stiff (actual!) penalties start being applied until it gets there. I know this won't be popular here, but I stand by it.

astura 4y ago
This isn't a "tech company" thing - PayPal is no different from any bank in this regard. Banks close accounts for seemingly no reason (or silly reasons) with no recourse literally all the time.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  And yet, your point is completely pointless. I can easily go find another bank. By design, they're fungible. PayPal's position and "reputation" puts them in a league of their own when it comes to accepting online payments. I don't even know of something that has the same mindshare. Venmo? Owned by PayPal, in yet another CLASSIC American monopolistic cannibalization, engineered to explicitly deny my ability to USE SOMEONE ELSE. Seriously, I don't know of any others besides Apple Pay. Does Ebay work with that? My point is that your options are limited, like the power company, water, or sewer.

intrasight 4y ago

The article and comments here talk about "money in the account". This confuses me as my use of Paypal is to send and receive money. The money is in my bank account - a "burner" account as I use it for Internet stuff and never have more cash there than is necessary for whatever transaction I'm doing. I never thought of Paypal as a bank where I can park funds.

Gelob 4y ago

Can this be done for a Twitter account that was suspended ?

caseysoftware 4y ago

I participated in the arbitration swarm against Indie Go Go a few years back.. There was a crowdfunding which was successful, they charged all of us, told the creator they were sending the money, then after a week canceled the crowd funding and refunded our money. According to their TOS, they were NOT a party to the contract we had with the creator and forced arbitration, so we fought it. Each participant (200+ iirc) each had to pay $200 while IGG had to pay the other $2300/participant (~$460k) to get the arbitration initiated. Then they tried to push it to a class action (to simplify their legal battle) but according to their own TOS a class action was not allowed so that died quickly. So then we collectively worked through one firm who iterated on our filings based on how each one went. After a year+, IGG finally unlocked the creator's account, issued an apology, and updated their TOS. Insiders at IGG claim that the legal bill was into the millions. It's not easy but you can fight bad behavior from these guys.

thefounder 4y ago

I still fail to see this as a win given the waste of time.

gunapologist99 4y ago

> PAYPAL WILL COVER THE COST OF ARBITRATION: .. PayPal isn’t alone here as Etsy has basically the same provision, as does Amazon Pay and many others. > (Notably, neither Square nor Stripe offer to cover arbitration costs, and Stripe even requires the loser of the dispute to pay the winner’s entire legal expenses. yikes.

fortran77 4y ago

I think a lot of these companies make two mistakes. They allow rogue employees to have too much power in banning users, and their knee-jerk reaction to an account that gets too many “reporters” is to suspend it. So a bunch of Tumbler users who get mad at someone can report en masse a Twitter user, or an Etsy employee who gets his feelings hurts can click on a button and get an account blocked. The C staff and legal have no idea this is going on.

phillipdi 4y ago

In Australia we have AFCA, the AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL COMPLAINTS AUTHORITY https://www.afca.org.au/make-a-complaint https://www.afca.org.au/make-a-complaint This is AWESOME, other countries have it. Paypal refunded a customer over one thousand dollars despite the tracking number AND the buyer saying the item was delivered after they opened a case, the buyer simply failed to close the case but they commented on the case saying it was delivered and tracking showed it was delivered. AFCA got my money back, got them to pay me compensation and I got a personal apology from someone in Ireland over the phone.