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What strikes me as really disappointing here is that the person has no idea why PayPal has frozen their account. It's surprising to me that they don't understan

What strikes me as really disappointing here is that the person has no idea why PayPal has frozen their account. It's surprising to me that they don't understand the inherent risks to PayPal from a kickstarter program (how dare they ask me for my business plan?!). In this post at least it seems like they just think PayPal doesn't like them and wants to hold their money for a long time. I guess they should have done more reading up around the financial side of a kickstarter. And PayPal is clearly at fault that this person is so confused and upset too. How hard is it for them to say "In the past, we have seen crowd funding sites/services that never delivered anything. That resulted in a lot of unhappy end users going to their credit card companies and initiating a chargeback which we're on the hook to pay. As you can see, if you took the money from your account and disappeared we'd be on the hook for that entire $X. That's why it's important we understand more about what you're up to" It would be ideal if this happened pre account/money collecting but I don't know all the details around that (Perhaps this is a long term account used for "normal" credit card processing who then decided, without informing PayPal, to run a Kickstarter. Who knows)

jtbigwoo 13y ago
>> How hard is it for them to say "In the past, we have seen crowd funding sites/services that never delivered anything. That resulted in a lot of unhappy end users going to their credit card companies and initiating a chargeback which we're on the hook to pay. As you can see, if you took the money from your account and disappeared we'd be on the hook for that entire $X. That's why it's important we understand more about what you're up to" The reason they don't is probably experience. If you're delivering bad news, don't mess around and don't over-explain. Every extra sentence in your communication is just a potential complication. Tell the target the problem simply, including details that directly relate to their conduct, and tell them how to fix it to your satisfaction. Don't tell them the history of this type of problem. You do this because the target is going to be upset about it and they're going to want to argue. The more you communicate, the more points they have to argue. In your description, I see at least four more points to argue ("we're not like those guys that didn't deliver...our users are different...we're trustworthy people...you're only a percentage of our total funding so your risk really isn't that great..."). None of those points matter and none of them are going to change anything. Paypal has told them what's wrong and given them concrete steps to fix it. Anything more is just going to drag out the resolution of the problem from Paypal's perspective.
- jusben1369 13y ago
  The problem with your answer though is that this was the top post on HN for x hours and damaged an already damaged (and trying to recover) brand. So I would say the complications of additional details would offset the risk of saying little and sending a bewildered blogger into the wilderness.
- triplesec 13y ago
  That reasoning is akin to a police officer ordering you about without any reference to the relevant laws, or justification, or politeness. Not a way to do business, nor indeed keep the peace.

jtbigwoo 13y ago

>> How hard is it for them to say "In the past, we have seen crowd funding sites/services that never delivered anything. That resulted in a lot of unhappy end users going to their credit card companies and initiating a chargeback which we're on the hook to pay. As you can see, if you took the money from your account and disappeared we'd be on the hook for that entire $X. That's why it's important we understand more about what you're up to" The reason they don't is probably experience. If you're delivering bad news, don't mess around and don't over-explain. Every extra sentence in your communication is just a potential complication. Tell the target the problem simply, including details that directly relate to their conduct, and tell them how to fix it to your satisfaction. Don't tell them the history of this type of problem. You do this because the target is going to be upset about it and they're going to want to argue. The more you communicate, the more points they have to argue. In your description, I see at least four more points to argue ("we're not like those guys that didn't deliver...our users are different...we're trustworthy people...you're only a percentage of our total funding so your risk really isn't that great..."). None of those points matter and none of them are going to change anything. Paypal has told them what's wrong and given them concrete steps to fix it. Anything more is just going to drag out the resolution of the problem from Paypal's perspective.

jusben1369 13y ago
The problem with your answer though is that this was the top post on HN for x hours and damaged an already damaged (and trying to recover) brand. So I would say the complications of additional details would offset the risk of saying little and sending a bewildered blogger into the wilderness.
triplesec 13y ago
That reasoning is akin to a police officer ordering you about without any reference to the relevant laws, or justification, or politeness. Not a way to do business, nor indeed keep the peace.