23 ms·

Paypal Does it Again

486 points by cwan 15y ago

danbmil99 15y ago
If Paypal was taking, say, 0.2% commissions, I could understand this attitude. At close to 4%, they need to man up and pay for experienced CS reps with discretion to put things right when their systems slam down on someone who isn't actually running a Nigerian ponzi scheme.
jasonlotito 15y ago
For some reason (maybe it's the fact that I'm currently reading 11/22/63), a picture of a battered wife staying with her abusive husband comes to mind.
sadris 15y ago
Why is it everyone assumes that making a pity post on the internet will fix their issues with PayPal? File a suit in a small claims court if you want some relief.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- Uchikoma 15y ago
  Yes, do that. The court will dismiss your case as you did not read the Paypal terms and user agreements.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - Karunamon 15y ago
    I'd be willing to bet that completely ignoring your customer is a business practice that goes above and beyond the T&C. Unless the T&C says "In the event we flag your account for fraud, we will not touch you with a ten foot pole..." Again, the problem isn't the automated risk prevention system, the problem is the complete lack of customer service if/when it happens to you.
    - Uchikoma 15y ago
      My answer was about going to court. So you think they have a case in court because PP has not customer service on the level you want them to have?
- rprasad 15y ago
  Small claims courts will not handle intercompany disputes. They are intended for small disputes between individuals.
- regretsy 15y ago
  For a few reasons. First, it's not always "small claims." In the case of our charity fundraising at Christmas, we had collected $20,000 for those kids. That means real court, with real lawyers, and going up against PayPal's legal department. They will file motion after motion after motion and bankrupt your legal fund. And really, public airing of corporate bad deeds is extremely effective. After we publicly shamed PayPal for keeping fees on charity donations they forced us to refund, they were embarrassed enough to donate $20,000 to 200 needy families. Traditional court is not where individuals really have power.
  - Florin_Andrei 15y ago
    > going up against PayPal's legal department Good luck with that. Whoever has more money for lawyers, wins.
mrkmcknz 15y ago
This is why I can't wait for a Square or Stripe in the UK. At the moment you have PayPal as your only option to take payments rapidly for say a quick idea you have had and want to hack up.
- itsprofitbaron 15y ago
  FWIW a 'Square' competitor are launching in the UK soon and they use Chip & Pin as well - http://www.izettle.com http://www.izettle.com
  - mrkmcknz 15y ago
    Any idea when?
    - itsprofitbaron 15y ago
      I'm not 100% sure although if you email hello@izettle.com they will probably give you a better idea regarding timescales or may let you in on their testing in the UK - which I know they are doing right now
- zorlem 15y ago
  I've been more than happy with the services offered by Skrill/Moneybookers [1], and AFAIK they have no issues working with UK merchants. Might be worth checking them. [1] https://www.moneybookers.com/ https://www.moneybookers.com/
spurgu 15y ago
Are there any decent alternatives to Paypal btw?
- squadron 15y ago
  I think you have to be more specific with your question. If you are you dealing with international funds, or you are outside the US, I don't think there is. Maybe Google checkout? But I know the answer to the question "Is there anyone else who can match PayPal feature for feature?" The answer is a clear and resounding no. But Sweet Moses, I wish there was!
- jerguismi 15y ago
  Bitcoin is the final solution to all your payment problems. It just takes some 10-20 years to develop the necessary services etc. around it.
- thinkcomp 15y ago
  No, the regulatory hurdles are too high. We're working on it. http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=716056 http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=716056
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- dangrossman 15y ago
  Depending on your needs, a traditional merchant account or another 3rd party processor like Amazon Payments, Google Checkout, Stripe, 2Checkout, etc. may serve as an alternative. But there is no equivalent substitute for PayPal. There is no no-monthly-fee, no-credit-check, no-application 3rd party processor that lets you accept all major credit cards, eChecks, bank transfers, and includes all 190 countries and regions PayPal supports, including those where credit cards are uncommon and Google/Amazon/etc do not offer accounts.
  - drucken 15y ago
    In addition, of the fee-free services, Paypal may be the only one that does not require end customers to make accounts to use it. This is, for me, by far the biggest disadvantage to the otherwise competent Google Checkout product.
glimcat 15y ago
A big part of the problem is that fraud prevention is HARD. Worse, it's prone to expensive scaling laws, and more so if you want to catch edge cases, and much more so if avoiding false positives is critical. Any PayPal successor which is successful enough to become an interesting target for fraud will have to deal with exactly the same problems, possibly causing service to break down in similar (or equally problematic) ways.
- tbsdy 15y ago
  Really? So if I used Visa or Amex and I got a sudden run of orders they would suspend my account? I hardly think so!
  - dangrossman 15y ago
    Yes, they would. With a traditional merchant account (as you apply for to directly accept Visa or Amex), you declare your expected monthly volume and average ticket size on the application. If your actual processing deviates from those values significantly, the risk department will almost definitely hold your funds in a reserve account until they straighten things out with you and establish you're still operating within the bounds of the risk profile established when they opened your account.
    - mcherm 15y ago
      And if PayPal did that then they wouldn't get the same criticism that they get for holding your funds WITHOUT being willing to straighten things out.
    - timdorr 15y ago
      When I got my first merchant account, I declare those numbers based on the current state of the business: About $1000/mo. I never revised those numbers in the 6 years I had the account. When I sold the company, we were doing +$1MM/yr. I've never had this happen on any other merchant account I've used since. Obviously YMMV, but that's just my experience with risk tiers.
huggyface 15y ago
There are always those subtle little details that get missed in these discussion. For instance the site is, right now, taking pre-orders, not orders. There is no published timeframe when they'll actually ship the books that I can see. Paypal only allows you to accept pre-orders up to 20 days in advance of shipping the product to buyers, and even then they can demand significant additional proof. Because, unfortunately, pre-orders are the classic setup of too many scams (which some random agent probably won't easily be able to eliminate), and it's the domain where PayPal ends up holding the bag. 5000 people pre-ordered some cool internet controller and then maker disappears, etc. We've been hearing these sorts of "horror" stories for years (wow do people not understand how hard and exclusive the payment process used to be!), yet despite PayPal still being relatively small -- especially compared to the banks and credit card companies -- no one is credibly doing what they do. Maybe because they're doing something rather hard?
- Uchikoma 15y ago
  Yes, see the debable with the JooJoo successor tablet where preorders were not fulfilled.
- saurik 15y ago
  Going even further, it is the stated position of most credit card companies that at the time of purchase you are only allowed to take out an "authorization" (hold) on the funds: you cannot "capture" (get) the money until you are pretty much just about to (within 24-48 hours) ship the product.
  - tokenadult 15y ago
    you cannot "capture" (get) the money until you are pretty much just about to (within 24-48 hours) ship the product. I'm not sure what the general worldwide fact is for all kinds of payment processing. But it is general practice (not federal law, as I thought before editing this) in the United States that a seller can't actually get money from a transaction paid by a credit card unless the item ordered has actually entered the shipment process. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre28.shtm http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre28.shtm That's the way Amazon has always billed me, and I think it's the reason that Amazon sends me partial shipments even when I didn't ask for separate shipments when I order several items at once.
Uchikoma 15y ago
"I told her that the money generated by the pre-orders taken through the web site effectively pays for the production and distribution of the book [...]". Same post as most of the time. Someone takes money through Paypal for a product that does not (yet) exist, without reading Paypals terms, then money gets frozen, then people start to cry. PayPal Acceptable Use Policy: "(d) are for the sale of certain items before the seller has control or possession of the item [...] collecting donations as a charity or non-profit organization" Paypal terms (and here my English might not be good enough): "Initiation of transactions considered to be cash advances or assisting in cash advances; [...] and listing items for sale that have a delayed delivery date of 20 days or more after the transaction list." I also found that interesting: "Use of an anonymizing proxy;"
- bigiain 15y ago
  "Same post as most of the time. Someone takes money through Paypal for a product that does not (yet) exist, without reading Paypals terms, then money gets frozen, then people start to cry." I've got a client who does this every year - he starts taking pre-orders for the new version of his book in September, gets his PayPal withdrawals suspended in October, ships his books late December, and gets his money around the end of January. He's happy to keep doing it that way, 'cause he's using the pre-orders to accurately gauge demand and to decide how many copied to get printed, rather than as a way of pre-funding the production or printing costs. (The fact that it's played out identically for ~4 years now also includes the bit where he gets a bit drunk over xmas/newyear and rings up any PayPal phone number he can find and swears abuse at whoever answers… It's much more likely to be that which ends up getting him banned from PayPal than the $20 or $30k of transactions who's funds they get to hang on to for 3 or 4 months every year)
conradfr 15y ago
"you are now at the mercy of the customer service representative, who is asked to make “a judgment call.” Wrong, the CSR never makes judgment. This is for services like Account Review. So you can yell at or sweet talk to the guy on the phone, it won't change much. Anyway it's sad that PayPal shows almost no progress year after year to handle legitimate "small" business, especially when they cancel transactions of goods already delivered. But people need to READ THE TOS. We're talking about MONEY, being on a shiny Internet website does not change that fact.
- tibbon 15y ago
  Unfortunately, its impossible to get the email of a real singular person at Account Review to interact with, let alone get them on the phone, or even fly there to meet them in person. Sounds absurd, but if I had to buy a $200 plane ticket to get $20K unfrozen, I'd do it. Instead, they just stonewall you, keep the fees, hold your money and provide no way for you to make things right.
  - conradfr 15y ago
    I am a former PayPal Resolution CSR and I was always making request for the fees to be refunded and it was usually accepted. It was ridiculous to the point that account was suspended because of a negative balance due to fees. I have heard of people coming to the call center with baseball bat to get their money, so paying a place ticket is not that stupid :)
    - tibbon 15y ago
      Any tips to how to actually deal with Paypal when something goes "bad" on your account (frozen, 21-day holds put on it, etc, etc) and you really need to talk to a human and get real resolution?
      - conradfr 15y ago
        I must say we were trained to give the best service. Now resolution cases can be hard to figure out for an agent (especially as no one is assigned to an account, so it's random at each call). Now, as in a lot of companies, you can try to be an asshole, call again and again, ask to be called back, send mail after mail, ask to speak to a senior agent etc. At some point it can trigger a special handling of your case, but everyone want you to disappear.
bhb916 15y ago
I believe that Paypal (and judging by the comments above: banking institutions and credit card companies) are going to these customer-service-destroying efforts at fraud prevention because the regulatory environment forces them to do so. If so, lets put aside the question of whether it is "right" to put the responsibility of service abuse on the service provider, but instead ask the question: is any of this really in our best interests? It seems to me that a consumer population would be better served by not being artificially protected and thus completely off-guard when they do get caught in a scam. Any payment processed online should be done with the same amount of wariness and forethought that a purchase at a brick-and-mortar retailer would be. Now, it's possible that I'm wrong here and Paypal is actually doing all of this as some sort of verification service to provide a fraud-free environment for payers (i.e. paying with paypal will never be a scam). If that's the case , then this is a really ineffective way of going about it. It seems like a great deal more upfront investigation and analysis would be appropriate. I would take some of the peer-to-peer lending services as a model.
- Karunamon 15y ago
  >are going to these customer-service-destroying efforts at fraud prevention because the regulatory environment forces them to do so. I'm pretty sure there's no fraud prevention regulation that requires you to stonewall your customers.
  - bhb916 15y ago
    True, this certainly could be just a bad policy on Paypal's part. However, if there is even a remote possibility that Paypal could be held liable for fraud using their services then I can sympathize with "shut them all down" approach. After all, like garbage mashers, some things should not be trifled with.
ig1 15y ago
Simple Rule: You can't take pre-orders (be it for physical products or events) via any kind of credit-card payment system without pre-agreement with your credit card processors. If you fail to deliver the product then whoever processed the credit card orders is going to be on the hook for payments when the consumers run chargebacks. Obviously they don't want this risk. So if you want to do this you need to come to an arrangement with your credit card company before-hand (for example letting them hold onto all the cash until you've delivered the goods).
- aidenn0 15y ago
  Yes these people broke the rules, but it seems that PayPal hasn't told them which rule they broke! How hard is it to say "preorders are not allowed, so we froze your account"
  - dedward 15y ago
    True enough - but paypal is not a regular merchant provider. Go get one of those - they communicate.
  - ig1 15y ago
    Because that's probably not why they suspended their account, PayPal suspended their account because it triggered a potential fraud tripwire. The owner just won't be able to unsuspended the account because they're in violation of the rules. If they weren't in violation they could just supply the required verification documents and get their account unsuspended.
EREFUNDO 15y ago
Fraud is hard especially for a small eCommerce store because of chargebacks. Unlike a brick and mortar store who can show the credit card association physical receipts with signatures, a video recording of a customer purchasing an item from a store, or ask a customer for an ID, online merchants can only show shipping receipts. These are often not enough. Chargeback policies are skewed towards buyers. The funny part is that this is only mostly true in the US, Canada, and Europe. If you're a credit card owner from another country (especially in Asia) it is very difficult to file for a chargeback.
Porter_423 15y ago
I have also faced this type of problem with pay pal before.I don't know why they are repeatedly doing this with their costumers.Its totally injustice.
nirvana 15y ago
I did business with paypal about 10 years ago. I had a similar bad experience with them. Despite me doing nothing wrong, and my customers being quite happy with what I was delivering to them, paypal decided to get involved and screw things up. Attempting to resolve the issue with them resulted in an unending series of demands, many of which were asinine (e.g.: show the original manufacturer invoice for this used piece of clothing you sold on ebay, or show us a contract with the creator of the software you're selling proving you have the right to sell it-- I was the creator, and obviously, of course, a contract from me, signed by me would not be acceptable to them.) I sent them endless amounts of documentation, but they demanded more, and they lost half of it. Their CSR reps are complete and total assholes-- after all, according to them, I was committing fraud otherwise I wouldn't be dealing with the fraud department, right? (this despite not a single chargeback or dispute on paypal from customers.) The sad thing was, I did many tens of thousands in business thru them, payed them thousands in fees, had very few customer complaints (and issued refunds when I did or otherwise resolved it)... but they don't care. I think that my experience and others experience has been out there for over a decade. I'm shocked that people actually use this company-- they are not trustworthy. As far as I'm concerned, they are straight up thieves. (and I'd LOVE them to sue me for saying so-- I'd love to go to court on that issue.) You do business with paypal, you do it at your own risk. They are not a reputable business. I don't like Amazon (for a variety of reasons) but at least they are a reputable business. I have my beefs with other companies, but they aren't criminals. Paypal is a criminal organization, as far as I'm concerned. In the end, they managed to steal about $600 from me. (I was lucky it wasn't more.)
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  "I don't like Amazon (for a variety of reasons) but at least they are a reputable business. I have my beefs with other companies, but they aren't criminals." I have a similar story with Amazon. I was doing business with them for a couple of years. I passed all of their tests (in the beginning, your account is put on hold for 30 days). 2 months ago, I had my first complaint (I have nearly 100% feedback, no complaints, and if there are any problems, I always pay return shipping and give a full refund). The customer was nasty, spiteful, and didn't want to send me back my goods (it was worth $100+). This was after I immediately apologized for any issues (which to this day, I'm still not sure the exact problem. The message I received was a babbling mess of terrible English) and gave them a return label. I think they scammed me. Amazon takes the customer's side and gives them a full refund and they got to keep the item. When you email them for support, you get automated responses signed with a name. In the automated response, they told me that I most likely just didn't make the customer happy enough. I should have answered their messages faster (I answered within 5 minutes on a Friday night at 10pm), or I should have made it easier for them to return my product (they just needed to print out the pre-paid label and mail it back). 2 days after this, my account was permanently suspended without warning (they are also keeping $5K of my cash for 3 months). I called them many times and was told that I can only get support through email (this was from a call center in India). Email support gets you absolutely nowhere. I don't even know if there's a person on the other end. Just automated cookie-cutter responses signed with a name. They most likely do this because they pay people peanuts to answer emails and don't want the backlash of having broken English in the responses. Amazon is also the biggest marketplace for sellers besides Ebay, and they know they can get away with it. As a marketplace seller, I was giving them thousands of dollars per-month in fees+$50/month for a pro account. They don't respect sellers at all and I advise anyone wanting to business with them to steer clear.
tibbon 15y ago
You know how they call the founder of Paypal the "Paypal Mafia"? It makes me wonder if that wasn't just an endearing term, but somewhat hinted at the culture of shady business practices that is still prevalent in the organization. I had Paypal instate a 21-day holding period on all money coming into my account for a while, making buying/selling of things (I sell X, and I buy Y as an upgrade) nearly impossible. I'd never had any refund problems on my account- ever. Emailing support got canned responses about how this is for my safety, and partially because I don't do regular business that they can pattern out on my account. Then about 8 months later, they removed it. No reason why I was suddenly more safe than before. I've had the account over 10 years. Zero problems. Yet, they seemed to think there was a problem for a while.
- joshu 15y ago
  No, the mafia thing is merely humorous.
- jacquesm 15y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk <- you mean this guy? He doesn't strike me as the Mafia type. The founders of paypal have long gone. Initially paypal wasn't all bad but the got worse over time and after the sale to ebay the customer relationships (or lack thereof) dropped through the floor.
wilfra 15y ago
Pay for a domain name or web development with PayPal and the person flat out scams you and PayPal will do nothing about it. Nor punish the person who stole your money. They'll just quote you the section of their terms that says virtual goods are not covered and close your case. Unfortunately they are a necessary evil until somebody disrupts them.
- wyclif 15y ago
  Don't use PayPal. They are legendarily evil.
- dangrossman 15y ago
  What should they be doing about it? How do they determine whether you were scammed, or you're now scamming the domain/development seller to get whatever you bought for free? As any merchant doing any volume will tell you, the latter is the more common case! A scamming seller will get enough disputes that they'll lose the account fairly quickly, but there's a couple billion buyers out there for whom risking a PayPal account to get free product/service is no big deal. It's not really something a payment service SHOULD be deciding. That's the job of small claims court.
epikur 15y ago
It seems like the guy writing the book should try Kickstarter instead.
jackreichert 15y ago
it seems that the second top google suggestion for the words "is there an alternative" continues "to paypal" #justsayin
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
damian2000 15y ago
We all accept that Paypal probably have a hard job to weed out frauds etc, but they could improve things immensley by just making sure their phone support people do not patronise and talk down to customers when they freeze their funds. I had a frozen payment once and the needless beauracracy and petty attitude coming out of those Paypal phone operators is truly mind blowing. If you ever have to deal with this sort of situation it just turns you right off PayPal altogether.
Inane_Chatter 15y ago
This comment will no doubt drift out of sight, however: Whenever this perennial "PayPal screwed us out of X monies" comes up (and I've seen it about 7 times in the last 3 years), no-one seems willing, or able, to actually understand why it happens. It's this simple: PayPal is an American company, and so has to obey US law, and in particular, financial regulations over money laundering. [i]Section 351: Amendments Relating to Reporting of Suspicious Activities This Section expands immunity from liability for reporting suspicious activities and expands prohibition against notification to individuals of SAR filing. No officer or employee of federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial governments within the U.S., having knowledge that such report was made may disclose to any person involved in the transaction that it has been reported except as necessary to fulfill the official duties of such officer or employee. Section 352: Anti-Money Laundering Programs Requires financial institutions to establish anti-money laundering programs, which at a minimum must include: the development of internal policies, procedures and controls; designation of a compliance officer; an ongoing employee training program; and an independent audit function to test programs. Section 356: Reporting of Suspicious Activities by Securities Brokers and Dealers; Investment Company Study Required the Secretary to consult with the Securities Exchange Commission and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve to publish proposed regulations in the Federal Register before January 1, 2002, requiring brokers and dealers registered with the Securities Exchange Commission to submit suspicious activity reports under the Bank Secrecy Act. Section 359: Reporting of Suspicious Activities by Underground Banking Systems This amends the BSA definition of money transmitter to ensure that informal/underground banking systems are defined as financial institutions and are thus subject to the BSA.[/i] http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/ http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/ PayPal is legally required to both freeze accounts for review under the Patriot act when large sums of money quickly flow into accounts from non-US sources, [b]and[/b] legally required not to disclose the reasons for freezing said funds. There's plenty more regulations for companies out there, however it amuses me no end to see the short-sighted band-wagon get going. If you're ignorant of the way these companies work, and even worse, ignorant about what the [i]law of your own country[/i] demands of companies, then please: do the world a favour, and step out of the discussion. Or, you know, protest against the people who wrote the Patriot Act. /looking on with amazement
- 15y ago
zrgiu_ 15y ago
Paypal once froze my account too (it had about $3000 in it then). I got it solved over the phone in about a week, but the customer service was really really hard to work with. And here's an anecdote: When I called the customer service for the first time, gave them a few details, up until the point I was from Romania.. their (clearly shocked) reaction: "Aaah, you're from Romania ? Let me redirect you to our India office". WHAT ?!? Are you kidding me ? Romania was in the European Union back then already, and I was already assigned to the Ireland branch of Paypal (an email about that was sent).
mrb 15y ago
Bitcoin is generally misunderstood by the HN crowd, but this is precisely one of the problem it solves. If this guy had collected donations in bitcoins, nobody would have the technical ability to shut down his "Bitcoin account" because it "suspiciously received too much too quickly". Don't downvote me. This is a true design principle about Bitcoin.
- jvm 15y ago
  I'm so glad you point this out since I think this is the only validly useful feature of Bitcoin. BC has its own problems but it's pretty awesome that transaction costs are nil.
jakejake 15y ago
If some unusual activity triggers a warning, I don't mind PayPal putting an account up for review in order to keep the system safe. But they should do it quickly and provide some way for the account owner to see what's going on instead of just freezing the funds and going radio silent. I'm sure one reason they move so slowly is to give everybody involved enough time to notice if money is missing and fraud has occurred. In which case PayPal will still have the money to issue a refund. I do appreciate that as a buyer. But as a seller, the way they're handing it can be disastrous for a business that is relying on their service.
robomartin 15y ago
Many have commented on my suggestion that something as powerful as US Congressional action might be required to fix some of the totalitarian behavior of the internet giants. I do realize that this is sort of thing often comes with collateral damage. I for one don't want to see government in my life. Their function is to do a few things, do them well and stay as invisible as possible. This is far from what we have today. Yet I wrestle with this issue of monopolies, particularly when they behave as badly as PayPal, Google, eBay and others seem to be doing with some frequency. Because they are monopolies they don't encounter any force that might compel them to fix some of these issues. Under a normal competitive environment participants would improve their offerings at many levels in order to gain points here and there. This would include improvements in customer service because this is most-definitely one item that could sway customers to use one service over the other. Examples of this effect abound. However, once a monopoly takes root the leverage disappears. The company who owns the market can then focus its attention on activities and policies that benefit them the most. Customer service is hard and it is expensive. Internet companies would much rather have algorithms make decisions. These are cheap and you don't have to feed them. Here the decision is simple: If the collateral damage caused by the brutality of a system without any semblance of customer service is but a rounding error in our revenue: Go forth and prosper. And that's how you end-up with what we are seeing happen with alarming regularity today. The fact that your business might go down in flames because of their algorithmic decisions is a rounding error in their revenue stream. Devoid of competition there is no incentive to expend any effort chasing after rounding errors. And so I search for solutions and can't seem to find any. A startup to compete with PayPal? Google? eBay? Not likely. Huge barrier to entry. They are in-effect, monopolies. It could happen, but I would not bet on this approach. How about a united front of users, bloggers, etc., making a lot of noise in very public ways? Hmmm. Well. If you are in good standing with PayPal and Google, do you want to risk the wrath of the machine and get banned for life? Because that is exactly what will happen in one way or another? How about suing them? Same issue. You almost can't exist on the internet without using services from these giants. Who wants to risk their wrath? For example, I'd sue eBay and Paypal in a second if I had the financial support and had a reasonable good certainty of a positive outcome. They have both caused me damage in the past with unfair unilateral/totalitarian actions. The problem is that when you look around you can't find a solid way to replace them. I'm willing to bet that thousands upon thousands of people just take it on the chin and move on precisely because of this effect. And so, that leads me to where I really didn't want to go: Governmental action. The only way to kick these giants in the nuts seems to be to meet force with force. As consumers of the services of monopolistic companies we have no leverage whatsoever. None. However, we do have the ability to get our government/s to take note and take action with overwhelming force. This is just about the only kind of fight that monopolies are afraid of. Everything else might very well be an exercise in futility. So, how does one get the ball rolling on something like this? While I have not been affected at the level that some of these stories relate I've had enough of a taste of how these machines work to be very concerned that one day I could incur tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage because of these unfair practices. I would prefer to see them corrected before that happens. What's the consensus among HN users? Is this something worth pursuing?
MRonney 15y ago
PayPal is what happens when you have a completely unregulated financial industry. They act like a bank, but they have no responsibilities like a bank. Somebody needs to find out what PayPal 'is' and slot it under some existing regulatory agency.

486 points by cwan 15y ago

If Paypal was taking, say, 0.2% commissions, I could understand this attitude. At close to 4%, they need to man up and pay for experienced CS reps with discretion to put things right when their systems slam down on someone who isn't actually running a Nigerian ponzi scheme.

jasonlotito 15y ago

For some reason (maybe it's the fact that I'm currently reading 11/22/63), a picture of a battered wife staying with her abusive husband comes to mind.

sadris 15y ago

Why is it everyone assumes that making a pity post on the internet will fix their issues with PayPal? File a suit in a small claims court if you want some relief.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
Uchikoma 15y ago
Yes, do that. The court will dismiss your case as you did not read the Paypal terms and user agreements.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- Karunamon 15y ago
  I'd be willing to bet that completely ignoring your customer is a business practice that goes above and beyond the T&C. Unless the T&C says "In the event we flag your account for fraud, we will not touch you with a ten foot pole..." Again, the problem isn't the automated risk prevention system, the problem is the complete lack of customer service if/when it happens to you.
  - Uchikoma 15y ago
    My answer was about going to court. So you think they have a case in court because PP has not customer service on the level you want them to have?
rprasad 15y ago
Small claims courts will not handle intercompany disputes. They are intended for small disputes between individuals.
regretsy 15y ago
For a few reasons. First, it's not always "small claims." In the case of our charity fundraising at Christmas, we had collected $20,000 for those kids. That means real court, with real lawyers, and going up against PayPal's legal department. They will file motion after motion after motion and bankrupt your legal fund. And really, public airing of corporate bad deeds is extremely effective. After we publicly shamed PayPal for keeping fees on charity donations they forced us to refund, they were embarrassed enough to donate $20,000 to 200 needy families. Traditional court is not where individuals really have power.
- Florin_Andrei 15y ago
  > going up against PayPal's legal department Good luck with that. Whoever has more money for lawyers, wins.

mrkmcknz 15y ago

This is why I can't wait for a Square or Stripe in the UK. At the moment you have PayPal as your only option to take payments rapidly for say a quick idea you have had and want to hack up.

itsprofitbaron 15y ago
FWIW a 'Square' competitor are launching in the UK soon and they use Chip & Pin as well - http://www.izettle.com http://www.izettle.com
- mrkmcknz 15y ago
  Any idea when?
  - itsprofitbaron 15y ago
    I'm not 100% sure although if you email hello@izettle.com they will probably give you a better idea regarding timescales or may let you in on their testing in the UK - which I know they are doing right now
zorlem 15y ago
I've been more than happy with the services offered by Skrill/Moneybookers [1], and AFAIK they have no issues working with UK merchants. Might be worth checking them. [1] https://www.moneybookers.com/ https://www.moneybookers.com/

spurgu 15y ago

Are there any decent alternatives to Paypal btw?

squadron 15y ago
I think you have to be more specific with your question. If you are you dealing with international funds, or you are outside the US, I don't think there is. Maybe Google checkout? But I know the answer to the question "Is there anyone else who can match PayPal feature for feature?" The answer is a clear and resounding no. But Sweet Moses, I wish there was!
jerguismi 15y ago
Bitcoin is the final solution to all your payment problems. It just takes some 10-20 years to develop the necessary services etc. around it.
thinkcomp 15y ago
No, the regulatory hurdles are too high. We're working on it. http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=716056 http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=716056
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dangrossman 15y ago
Depending on your needs, a traditional merchant account or another 3rd party processor like Amazon Payments, Google Checkout, Stripe, 2Checkout, etc. may serve as an alternative. But there is no equivalent substitute for PayPal. There is no no-monthly-fee, no-credit-check, no-application 3rd party processor that lets you accept all major credit cards, eChecks, bank transfers, and includes all 190 countries and regions PayPal supports, including those where credit cards are uncommon and Google/Amazon/etc do not offer accounts.
- drucken 15y ago
  In addition, of the fee-free services, Paypal may be the only one that does not require end customers to make accounts to use it. This is, for me, by far the biggest disadvantage to the otherwise competent Google Checkout product.

glimcat 15y ago

A big part of the problem is that fraud prevention is HARD. Worse, it's prone to expensive scaling laws, and more so if you want to catch edge cases, and much more so if avoiding false positives is critical. Any PayPal successor which is successful enough to become an interesting target for fraud will have to deal with exactly the same problems, possibly causing service to break down in similar (or equally problematic) ways.

tbsdy 15y ago
Really? So if I used Visa or Amex and I got a sudden run of orders they would suspend my account? I hardly think so!
- dangrossman 15y ago
  Yes, they would. With a traditional merchant account (as you apply for to directly accept Visa or Amex), you declare your expected monthly volume and average ticket size on the application. If your actual processing deviates from those values significantly, the risk department will almost definitely hold your funds in a reserve account until they straighten things out with you and establish you're still operating within the bounds of the risk profile established when they opened your account.
  - mcherm 15y ago
    And if PayPal did that then they wouldn't get the same criticism that they get for holding your funds WITHOUT being willing to straighten things out.
  - timdorr 15y ago
    When I got my first merchant account, I declare those numbers based on the current state of the business: About $1000/mo. I never revised those numbers in the 6 years I had the account. When I sold the company, we were doing +$1MM/yr. I've never had this happen on any other merchant account I've used since. Obviously YMMV, but that's just my experience with risk tiers.

huggyface 15y ago

There are always those subtle little details that get missed in these discussion. For instance the site is, right now, taking pre-orders, not orders. There is no published timeframe when they'll actually ship the books that I can see. Paypal only allows you to accept pre-orders up to 20 days in advance of shipping the product to buyers, and even then they can demand significant additional proof. Because, unfortunately, pre-orders are the classic setup of too many scams (which some random agent probably won't easily be able to eliminate), and it's the domain where PayPal ends up holding the bag. 5000 people pre-ordered some cool internet controller and then maker disappears, etc. We've been hearing these sorts of "horror" stories for years (wow do people not understand how hard and exclusive the payment process used to be!), yet despite PayPal still being relatively small -- especially compared to the banks and credit card companies -- no one is credibly doing what they do. Maybe because they're doing something rather hard?

Uchikoma 15y ago
Yes, see the debable with the JooJoo successor tablet where preorders were not fulfilled.
saurik 15y ago
Going even further, it is the stated position of most credit card companies that at the time of purchase you are only allowed to take out an "authorization" (hold) on the funds: you cannot "capture" (get) the money until you are pretty much just about to (within 24-48 hours) ship the product.
- tokenadult 15y ago
  you cannot "capture" (get) the money until you are pretty much just about to (within 24-48 hours) ship the product. I'm not sure what the general worldwide fact is for all kinds of payment processing. But it is general practice (not federal law, as I thought before editing this) in the United States that a seller can't actually get money from a transaction paid by a credit card unless the item ordered has actually entered the shipment process. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre28.shtm http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre28.shtm That's the way Amazon has always billed me, and I think it's the reason that Amazon sends me partial shipments even when I didn't ask for separate shipments when I order several items at once.

Uchikoma 15y ago

"I told her that the money generated by the pre-orders taken through the web site effectively pays for the production and distribution of the book [...]". Same post as most of the time. Someone takes money through Paypal for a product that does not (yet) exist, without reading Paypals terms, then money gets frozen, then people start to cry. PayPal Acceptable Use Policy: "(d) are for the sale of certain items before the seller has control or possession of the item [...] collecting donations as a charity or non-profit organization" Paypal terms (and here my English might not be good enough): "Initiation of transactions considered to be cash advances or assisting in cash advances; [...] and listing items for sale that have a delayed delivery date of 20 days or more after the transaction list." I also found that interesting: "Use of an anonymizing proxy;"

bigiain 15y ago
"Same post as most of the time. Someone takes money through Paypal for a product that does not (yet) exist, without reading Paypals terms, then money gets frozen, then people start to cry." I've got a client who does this every year - he starts taking pre-orders for the new version of his book in September, gets his PayPal withdrawals suspended in October, ships his books late December, and gets his money around the end of January. He's happy to keep doing it that way, 'cause he's using the pre-orders to accurately gauge demand and to decide how many copied to get printed, rather than as a way of pre-funding the production or printing costs. (The fact that it's played out identically for ~4 years now also includes the bit where he gets a bit drunk over xmas/newyear and rings up any PayPal phone number he can find and swears abuse at whoever answers… It's much more likely to be that which ends up getting him banned from PayPal than the $20 or $30k of transactions who's funds they get to hang on to for 3 or 4 months every year)

conradfr 15y ago

"you are now at the mercy of the customer service representative, who is asked to make “a judgment call.” Wrong, the CSR never makes judgment. This is for services like Account Review. So you can yell at or sweet talk to the guy on the phone, it won't change much. Anyway it's sad that PayPal shows almost no progress year after year to handle legitimate "small" business, especially when they cancel transactions of goods already delivered. But people need to READ THE TOS. We're talking about MONEY, being on a shiny Internet website does not change that fact.

tibbon 15y ago
Unfortunately, its impossible to get the email of a real singular person at Account Review to interact with, let alone get them on the phone, or even fly there to meet them in person. Sounds absurd, but if I had to buy a $200 plane ticket to get $20K unfrozen, I'd do it. Instead, they just stonewall you, keep the fees, hold your money and provide no way for you to make things right.
- conradfr 15y ago
  I am a former PayPal Resolution CSR and I was always making request for the fees to be refunded and it was usually accepted. It was ridiculous to the point that account was suspended because of a negative balance due to fees. I have heard of people coming to the call center with baseball bat to get their money, so paying a place ticket is not that stupid :)
  - tibbon 15y ago
    Any tips to how to actually deal with Paypal when something goes "bad" on your account (frozen, 21-day holds put on it, etc, etc) and you really need to talk to a human and get real resolution?
    - conradfr 15y ago
      I must say we were trained to give the best service. Now resolution cases can be hard to figure out for an agent (especially as no one is assigned to an account, so it's random at each call). Now, as in a lot of companies, you can try to be an asshole, call again and again, ask to be called back, send mail after mail, ask to speak to a senior agent etc. At some point it can trigger a special handling of your case, but everyone want you to disappear.

bhb916 15y ago

I believe that Paypal (and judging by the comments above: banking institutions and credit card companies) are going to these customer-service-destroying efforts at fraud prevention because the regulatory environment forces them to do so. If so, lets put aside the question of whether it is "right" to put the responsibility of service abuse on the service provider, but instead ask the question: is any of this really in our best interests? It seems to me that a consumer population would be better served by not being artificially protected and thus completely off-guard when they do get caught in a scam. Any payment processed online should be done with the same amount of wariness and forethought that a purchase at a brick-and-mortar retailer would be. Now, it's possible that I'm wrong here and Paypal is actually doing all of this as some sort of verification service to provide a fraud-free environment for payers (i.e. paying with paypal will never be a scam). If that's the case , then this is a really ineffective way of going about it. It seems like a great deal more upfront investigation and analysis would be appropriate. I would take some of the peer-to-peer lending services as a model.

Karunamon 15y ago
>are going to these customer-service-destroying efforts at fraud prevention because the regulatory environment forces them to do so. I'm pretty sure there's no fraud prevention regulation that requires you to stonewall your customers.
- bhb916 15y ago
  True, this certainly could be just a bad policy on Paypal's part. However, if there is even a remote possibility that Paypal could be held liable for fraud using their services then I can sympathize with "shut them all down" approach. After all, like garbage mashers, some things should not be trifled with.

ig1 15y ago

Simple Rule: You can't take pre-orders (be it for physical products or events) via any kind of credit-card payment system without pre-agreement with your credit card processors. If you fail to deliver the product then whoever processed the credit card orders is going to be on the hook for payments when the consumers run chargebacks. Obviously they don't want this risk. So if you want to do this you need to come to an arrangement with your credit card company before-hand (for example letting them hold onto all the cash until you've delivered the goods).

aidenn0 15y ago
Yes these people broke the rules, but it seems that PayPal hasn't told them which rule they broke! How hard is it to say "preorders are not allowed, so we froze your account"
- dedward 15y ago
  True enough - but paypal is not a regular merchant provider. Go get one of those - they communicate.
- ig1 15y ago
  Because that's probably not why they suspended their account, PayPal suspended their account because it triggered a potential fraud tripwire. The owner just won't be able to unsuspended the account because they're in violation of the rules. If they weren't in violation they could just supply the required verification documents and get their account unsuspended.

EREFUNDO 15y ago

Fraud is hard especially for a small eCommerce store because of chargebacks. Unlike a brick and mortar store who can show the credit card association physical receipts with signatures, a video recording of a customer purchasing an item from a store, or ask a customer for an ID, online merchants can only show shipping receipts. These are often not enough. Chargeback policies are skewed towards buyers. The funny part is that this is only mostly true in the US, Canada, and Europe. If you're a credit card owner from another country (especially in Asia) it is very difficult to file for a chargeback.

Porter_423 15y ago

I have also faced this type of problem with pay pal before.I don't know why they are repeatedly doing this with their costumers.Its totally injustice.

nirvana 15y ago

I did business with paypal about 10 years ago. I had a similar bad experience with them. Despite me doing nothing wrong, and my customers being quite happy with what I was delivering to them, paypal decided to get involved and screw things up. Attempting to resolve the issue with them resulted in an unending series of demands, many of which were asinine (e.g.: show the original manufacturer invoice for this used piece of clothing you sold on ebay, or show us a contract with the creator of the software you're selling proving you have the right to sell it-- I was the creator, and obviously, of course, a contract from me, signed by me would not be acceptable to them.) I sent them endless amounts of documentation, but they demanded more, and they lost half of it. Their CSR reps are complete and total assholes-- after all, according to them, I was committing fraud otherwise I wouldn't be dealing with the fraud department, right? (this despite not a single chargeback or dispute on paypal from customers.) The sad thing was, I did many tens of thousands in business thru them, payed them thousands in fees, had very few customer complaints (and issued refunds when I did or otherwise resolved it)... but they don't care. I think that my experience and others experience has been out there for over a decade. I'm shocked that people actually use this company-- they are not trustworthy. As far as I'm concerned, they are straight up thieves. (and I'd LOVE them to sue me for saying so-- I'd love to go to court on that issue.) You do business with paypal, you do it at your own risk. They are not a reputable business. I don't like Amazon (for a variety of reasons) but at least they are a reputable business. I have my beefs with other companies, but they aren't criminals. Paypal is a criminal organization, as far as I'm concerned. In the end, they managed to steal about $600 from me. (I was lucky it wasn't more.)

paulhauggis 15y ago
"I don't like Amazon (for a variety of reasons) but at least they are a reputable business. I have my beefs with other companies, but they aren't criminals." I have a similar story with Amazon. I was doing business with them for a couple of years. I passed all of their tests (in the beginning, your account is put on hold for 30 days). 2 months ago, I had my first complaint (I have nearly 100% feedback, no complaints, and if there are any problems, I always pay return shipping and give a full refund). The customer was nasty, spiteful, and didn't want to send me back my goods (it was worth $100+). This was after I immediately apologized for any issues (which to this day, I'm still not sure the exact problem. The message I received was a babbling mess of terrible English) and gave them a return label. I think they scammed me. Amazon takes the customer's side and gives them a full refund and they got to keep the item. When you email them for support, you get automated responses signed with a name. In the automated response, they told me that I most likely just didn't make the customer happy enough. I should have answered their messages faster (I answered within 5 minutes on a Friday night at 10pm), or I should have made it easier for them to return my product (they just needed to print out the pre-paid label and mail it back). 2 days after this, my account was permanently suspended without warning (they are also keeping $5K of my cash for 3 months). I called them many times and was told that I can only get support through email (this was from a call center in India). Email support gets you absolutely nowhere. I don't even know if there's a person on the other end. Just automated cookie-cutter responses signed with a name. They most likely do this because they pay people peanuts to answer emails and don't want the backlash of having broken English in the responses. Amazon is also the biggest marketplace for sellers besides Ebay, and they know they can get away with it. As a marketplace seller, I was giving them thousands of dollars per-month in fees+$50/month for a pro account. They don't respect sellers at all and I advise anyone wanting to business with them to steer clear.

tibbon 15y ago

You know how they call the founder of Paypal the "Paypal Mafia"? It makes me wonder if that wasn't just an endearing term, but somewhat hinted at the culture of shady business practices that is still prevalent in the organization. I had Paypal instate a 21-day holding period on all money coming into my account for a while, making buying/selling of things (I sell X, and I buy Y as an upgrade) nearly impossible. I'd never had any refund problems on my account- ever. Emailing support got canned responses about how this is for my safety, and partially because I don't do regular business that they can pattern out on my account. Then about 8 months later, they removed it. No reason why I was suddenly more safe than before. I've had the account over 10 years. Zero problems. Yet, they seemed to think there was a problem for a while.

joshu 15y ago
No, the mafia thing is merely humorous.
jacquesm 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk <- you mean this guy? He doesn't strike me as the Mafia type. The founders of paypal have long gone. Initially paypal wasn't all bad but the got worse over time and after the sale to ebay the customer relationships (or lack thereof) dropped through the floor.

wilfra 15y ago

Pay for a domain name or web development with PayPal and the person flat out scams you and PayPal will do nothing about it. Nor punish the person who stole your money. They'll just quote you the section of their terms that says virtual goods are not covered and close your case. Unfortunately they are a necessary evil until somebody disrupts them.

wyclif 15y ago
Don't use PayPal. They are legendarily evil.
dangrossman 15y ago
What should they be doing about it? How do they determine whether you were scammed, or you're now scamming the domain/development seller to get whatever you bought for free? As any merchant doing any volume will tell you, the latter is the more common case! A scamming seller will get enough disputes that they'll lose the account fairly quickly, but there's a couple billion buyers out there for whom risking a PayPal account to get free product/service is no big deal. It's not really something a payment service SHOULD be deciding. That's the job of small claims court.

epikur 15y ago

It seems like the guy writing the book should try Kickstarter instead.

jackreichert 15y ago

it seems that the second top google suggestion for the words "is there an alternative" continues "to paypal" #justsayin

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

damian2000 15y ago

We all accept that Paypal probably have a hard job to weed out frauds etc, but they could improve things immensley by just making sure their phone support people do not patronise and talk down to customers when they freeze their funds. I had a frozen payment once and the needless beauracracy and petty attitude coming out of those Paypal phone operators is truly mind blowing. If you ever have to deal with this sort of situation it just turns you right off PayPal altogether.

Inane_Chatter 15y ago

This comment will no doubt drift out of sight, however: Whenever this perennial "PayPal screwed us out of X monies" comes up (and I've seen it about 7 times in the last 3 years), no-one seems willing, or able, to actually understand why it happens. It's this simple: PayPal is an American company, and so has to obey US law, and in particular, financial regulations over money laundering. [i]Section 351: Amendments Relating to Reporting of Suspicious Activities This Section expands immunity from liability for reporting suspicious activities and expands prohibition against notification to individuals of SAR filing. No officer or employee of federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial governments within the U.S., having knowledge that such report was made may disclose to any person involved in the transaction that it has been reported except as necessary to fulfill the official duties of such officer or employee. Section 352: Anti-Money Laundering Programs Requires financial institutions to establish anti-money laundering programs, which at a minimum must include: the development of internal policies, procedures and controls; designation of a compliance officer; an ongoing employee training program; and an independent audit function to test programs. Section 356: Reporting of Suspicious Activities by Securities Brokers and Dealers; Investment Company Study Required the Secretary to consult with the Securities Exchange Commission and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve to publish proposed regulations in the Federal Register before January 1, 2002, requiring brokers and dealers registered with the Securities Exchange Commission to submit suspicious activity reports under the Bank Secrecy Act. Section 359: Reporting of Suspicious Activities by Underground Banking Systems This amends the BSA definition of money transmitter to ensure that informal/underground banking systems are defined as financial institutions and are thus subject to the BSA.[/i] http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/ http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/ PayPal is legally required to both freeze accounts for review under the Patriot act when large sums of money quickly flow into accounts from non-US sources, [b]and[/b] legally required not to disclose the reasons for freezing said funds. There's plenty more regulations for companies out there, however it amuses me no end to see the short-sighted band-wagon get going. If you're ignorant of the way these companies work, and even worse, ignorant about what the [i]law of your own country[/i] demands of companies, then please: do the world a favour, and step out of the discussion. Or, you know, protest against the people who wrote the Patriot Act. /looking on with amazement

15y ago

zrgiu_ 15y ago

Paypal once froze my account too (it had about $3000 in it then). I got it solved over the phone in about a week, but the customer service was really really hard to work with. And here's an anecdote: When I called the customer service for the first time, gave them a few details, up until the point I was from Romania.. their (clearly shocked) reaction: "Aaah, you're from Romania ? Let me redirect you to our India office". WHAT ?!? Are you kidding me ? Romania was in the European Union back then already, and I was already assigned to the Ireland branch of Paypal (an email about that was sent).

mrb 15y ago

Bitcoin is generally misunderstood by the HN crowd, but this is precisely one of the problem it solves. If this guy had collected donations in bitcoins, nobody would have the technical ability to shut down his "Bitcoin account" because it "suspiciously received too much too quickly". Don't downvote me. This is a true design principle about Bitcoin.

jvm 15y ago
I'm so glad you point this out since I think this is the only validly useful feature of Bitcoin. BC has its own problems but it's pretty awesome that transaction costs are nil.

jakejake 15y ago

If some unusual activity triggers a warning, I don't mind PayPal putting an account up for review in order to keep the system safe. But they should do it quickly and provide some way for the account owner to see what's going on instead of just freezing the funds and going radio silent. I'm sure one reason they move so slowly is to give everybody involved enough time to notice if money is missing and fraud has occurred. In which case PayPal will still have the money to issue a refund. I do appreciate that as a buyer. But as a seller, the way they're handing it can be disastrous for a business that is relying on their service.

robomartin 15y ago

Many have commented on my suggestion that something as powerful as US Congressional action might be required to fix some of the totalitarian behavior of the internet giants. I do realize that this is sort of thing often comes with collateral damage. I for one don't want to see government in my life. Their function is to do a few things, do them well and stay as invisible as possible. This is far from what we have today. Yet I wrestle with this issue of monopolies, particularly when they behave as badly as PayPal, Google, eBay and others seem to be doing with some frequency. Because they are monopolies they don't encounter any force that might compel them to fix some of these issues. Under a normal competitive environment participants would improve their offerings at many levels in order to gain points here and there. This would include improvements in customer service because this is most-definitely one item that could sway customers to use one service over the other. Examples of this effect abound. However, once a monopoly takes root the leverage disappears. The company who owns the market can then focus its attention on activities and policies that benefit them the most. Customer service is hard and it is expensive. Internet companies would much rather have algorithms make decisions. These are cheap and you don't have to feed them. Here the decision is simple: If the collateral damage caused by the brutality of a system without any semblance of customer service is but a rounding error in our revenue: Go forth and prosper. And that's how you end-up with what we are seeing happen with alarming regularity today. The fact that your business might go down in flames because of their algorithmic decisions is a rounding error in their revenue stream. Devoid of competition there is no incentive to expend any effort chasing after rounding errors. And so I search for solutions and can't seem to find any. A startup to compete with PayPal? Google? eBay? Not likely. Huge barrier to entry. They are in-effect, monopolies. It could happen, but I would not bet on this approach. How about a united front of users, bloggers, etc., making a lot of noise in very public ways? Hmmm. Well. If you are in good standing with PayPal and Google, do you want to risk the wrath of the machine and get banned for life? Because that is exactly what will happen in one way or another? How about suing them? Same issue. You almost can't exist on the internet without using services from these giants. Who wants to risk their wrath? For example, I'd sue eBay and Paypal in a second if I had the financial support and had a reasonable good certainty of a positive outcome. They have both caused me damage in the past with unfair unilateral/totalitarian actions. The problem is that when you look around you can't find a solid way to replace them. I'm willing to bet that thousands upon thousands of people just take it on the chin and move on precisely because of this effect. And so, that leads me to where I really didn't want to go: Governmental action. The only way to kick these giants in the nuts seems to be to meet force with force. As consumers of the services of monopolistic companies we have no leverage whatsoever. None. However, we do have the ability to get our government/s to take note and take action with overwhelming force. This is just about the only kind of fight that monopolies are afraid of. Everything else might very well be an exercise in futility. So, how does one get the ball rolling on something like this? While I have not been affected at the level that some of these stories relate I've had enough of a taste of how these machines work to be very concerned that one day I could incur tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage because of these unfair practices. I would prefer to see them corrected before that happens. What's the consensus among HN users? Is this something worth pursuing?

MRonney 15y ago

PayPal is what happens when you have a completely unregulated financial industry. They act like a bank, but they have no responsibilities like a bank. Somebody needs to find out what PayPal 'is' and slot it under some existing regulatory agency.