3 ms·

I can think of a bunch of reasons: * PayPal support leaves a lot to be desired. They lock accounts without reason and don't offer much support as to why. * Tr

I can think of a bunch of reasons: * PayPal support leaves a lot to be desired. They lock accounts without reason and don't offer much support as to why. * Transferring money from your bank to your PayPal account takes a long time. Even longer if you are not from the US. * Many people have credit cards. Why add another middleman? Less personal but relevant issues: * PayPal makes you spend money that you HAVE. A credit card doesn't. * Branding. Not everyone trusts companies with their credit card, why would they trust a company that has very little do with the process over one who is actually vending the item/service.

hellweaver666 17y ago
* PayPal makes you spend money that you HAVE. A credit card doesn't. Not strictly true, you can register a credit card on your Paypal account and charge that each time you make a transaction if there are no funds in PayPal.
- ajross 17y ago
  Not true at all, in fact. Paypal has routinely refused, over several years of trying, to link to my bank account (a small "Internet Bank"). Credit card purchases are my only option, and they work instantly and without trouble. The occasional inbound money flow from an eBay sale or whatnot just becomes a credit on my next purchase. As a customer, at this point I shop only at merchants where I already have a account memorized (which in practice means "amazon.com") or via Paypal or Google checkout payments, which I can also authenticate from memory. Everything else is just too much of a hassle. I can see the seller-side complaints against Paypal as valid, I've just never experienced them myself. As a buyer, though, I completely sympathize with the linked blog. Paypal or something similar (Google checkout, Amazon affiliates) really should be more popular than it is.
TomOfTTB 17y ago
* PayPal support leaves a lot to be desired. They lock accounts without reason and don't offer much support as to why I'm not sure this is what keeps people from using Paypal on the consumer side but from the vendor side I can attest to how damaging this can be. At my work we took PayPal for donations until one day a donor called and told us Paypal "wouldn't accept money" I looked into it and found they had, for whatever reason, decided we weren't a non-profit. They then locked the account with not so much as an e-mail to us. There is pretty much no way to get an actual person at paypal so I had to upload scans of our proof and just wait for paypal to "review them." All in all it took 9 days to remedy the situation and who knows how much money we lost in the meantime. Worse yet, I'm almost sure we lost a couple first time donors forever simply because seeing "This Paypal account has been locked" makes a company (us) look disreputable
omouse 17y ago
Transferring money from your bank to your PayPal account takes a long time That's the banks' fault. They still take their sweet time clearing checks, and screw customers over in other ways so it's not surprising that it takes a long time to transfer cash from them
- ianbishop 17y ago
  I don't know how true this is. I am in Canada, so I understand it likely isn't exactly the same. PayPal says it should take 6-8 days for a money transfer. In my experience, I have found it takes 6-8 days before I see it withdrawn from my bank account. After that, it can be up to another 6-8 days to see it ever show up in my PayPal account.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  But in the context of "why don't people use PayPal" it still looks like PayPal has a problem to the customer.
- nradov 17y ago
  Unless there is some unusual situation, check clearing doesn't take nearly that long. http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/truncation/faqs2.htm#ques6 http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/truncation/faqs...
froo 17y ago
PayPal support leaves a lot to be desired. They lock accounts without reason and don't offer much support as to why. That's an understatement, I had my account locked (for no reason, it just randomly got locked one day) and spent about 45 minutes trying to get through the phone system (being hung up on by the phone system around 15-20 times, because it seemed at the time those options were unavailable). It gets a little overblown when you start actually drawing tree maps to try and map out what options end up with hangups, what ends up with reroutes (and eventual hangups) and what gets you to speak to an operator, who redirects your call, which ended up in a hangup. In the end, it took about an hour to sort through, but only about 5 minutes of talk time.

hellweaver666 17y ago

* PayPal makes you spend money that you HAVE. A credit card doesn't. Not strictly true, you can register a credit card on your Paypal account and charge that each time you make a transaction if there are no funds in PayPal.

ajross 17y ago
Not true at all, in fact. Paypal has routinely refused, over several years of trying, to link to my bank account (a small "Internet Bank"). Credit card purchases are my only option, and they work instantly and without trouble. The occasional inbound money flow from an eBay sale or whatnot just becomes a credit on my next purchase. As a customer, at this point I shop only at merchants where I already have a account memorized (which in practice means "amazon.com") or via Paypal or Google checkout payments, which I can also authenticate from memory. Everything else is just too much of a hassle. I can see the seller-side complaints against Paypal as valid, I've just never experienced them myself. As a buyer, though, I completely sympathize with the linked blog. Paypal or something similar (Google checkout, Amazon affiliates) really should be more popular than it is.

TomOfTTB 17y ago

* PayPal support leaves a lot to be desired. They lock accounts without reason and don't offer much support as to why I'm not sure this is what keeps people from using Paypal on the consumer side but from the vendor side I can attest to how damaging this can be. At my work we took PayPal for donations until one day a donor called and told us Paypal "wouldn't accept money" I looked into it and found they had, for whatever reason, decided we weren't a non-profit. They then locked the account with not so much as an e-mail to us. There is pretty much no way to get an actual person at paypal so I had to upload scans of our proof and just wait for paypal to "review them." All in all it took 9 days to remedy the situation and who knows how much money we lost in the meantime. Worse yet, I'm almost sure we lost a couple first time donors forever simply because seeing "This Paypal account has been locked" makes a company (us) look disreputable

omouse 17y ago

Transferring money from your bank to your PayPal account takes a long time That's the banks' fault. They still take their sweet time clearing checks, and screw customers over in other ways so it's not surprising that it takes a long time to transfer cash from them

ianbishop 17y ago
I don't know how true this is. I am in Canada, so I understand it likely isn't exactly the same. PayPal says it should take 6-8 days for a money transfer. In my experience, I have found it takes 6-8 days before I see it withdrawn from my bank account. After that, it can be up to another 6-8 days to see it ever show up in my PayPal account.
randallsquared 17y ago
But in the context of "why don't people use PayPal" it still looks like PayPal has a problem to the customer.
nradov 17y ago
Unless there is some unusual situation, check clearing doesn't take nearly that long. http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/truncation/faqs2.htm#ques6 http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/truncation/faqs...

froo 17y ago

PayPal support leaves a lot to be desired. They lock accounts without reason and don't offer much support as to why. That's an understatement, I had my account locked (for no reason, it just randomly got locked one day) and spent about 45 minutes trying to get through the phone system (being hung up on by the phone system around 15-20 times, because it seemed at the time those options were unavailable). It gets a little overblown when you start actually drawing tree maps to try and map out what options end up with hangups, what ends up with reroutes (and eventual hangups) and what gets you to speak to an operator, who redirects your call, which ended up in a hangup. In the end, it took about an hour to sort through, but only about 5 minutes of talk time.