Paypal classes events as high-risk transactions (as they require people to pay upfront often far in advance of the event) so you're at much more risk of being suspended if you breach their risk thresholds.<p>Imagine if you're a fraudster, you've knocked up a fake event and you've sold $10k-$20k in tickets, you could withdraw the money and disappear before the date of the event. Now Paypal are on the hook for the money, when they get creditcard charge-backs it comes out of Paypal's account and not the fraudsters.<p>Does anyone consider it reasonable that Paypal take this risk ? - the reason for the 90 day limit is that's the length of time most consumers have to request a credit card chargeback. Paypal is simply protecting themselves.<p>If you're engaged in high-risk transactions you're much better off going with a specialist provider (i.e Amiando or Eventbrite in this case) as they have risk fraud models designed to handle the specific risk factors.
Paypal also has terrible customer service. Every time I call them, I get pushed around to people who barely speak English, and just repeat things they see on a sheet of paper.<p>To add to this, think about charge backs. Paypal doesn't even make an effort to fight for you, in the case of a Charge Back. I had a charge back <i>NINE</i> months after a transaction for 2 $500 amounts. Ouch. The worst part is... if you want to dispute the charge back, they charge you ANOTHER fee to do it.<p>Paypal has been an absolute nightmare - and if there was an alternative, I'd jump on it right away.
We use Eventbrite for all our Entrepreneurs Unpluggd events, and while they're not multi-day conferences, I still think Eventbrite is the best platform for any size event to use for ticket sales, registration, waiting list, and all that jazz.<p>Never once had an issue with them on any level.<p>And no, I don't work for them or get paid by them in any way. They just have a kick ass product. :)<p>EDIT: The reason I'm even saying this is the author mentions in his post that he switched from PayPal to Eventbrite.
Seems to be another case of 'Paypal isn't a bank.'<p>And while the Author seems to understand that (and hence didn't keep a lot of money under their control) it is something a number of people 'miss.'<p>What I find most interesting is that a lot of people would <i>like</i> Paypal to be a bank (or certainly more bank like) and complain bitterly when it comes up short, and yet few actual banks seem able or willing to extend their business model to include a lighter weight payments services.<p>The discontinuity in the market (a demand for services served poorly because the best entity to serve it doesn't enter the market) is one of those things that makes me wonder if anyone is paying attention or not.
> "I knew PayPal couldn't be trusted, but I used them anyway, and they shafted me, just like I thought they would!"<p>He only froze my money because he loves me, he won't do it again, I promise!
It's been said before, but it's worth repeating. Conferences are a high risk business operation. For every SXSW, there's a thousand "Learn to Buy Real Estate with No Money Down" conferences at the Ramada Inn next to the airport. Paypal is not in the business of assuming your risk. They are in the business of processing payments while mitigating their own.
I've been running an event in the UK for around 4 years now. We have around 1200 attendees and push around £55,000 (around $90,000) through each year.<p>We had a few small issues the first year where paypal froze our account until additional verification had taken place but since then and three years of continuous use we haven't had a single problem. However we've also never had a chargeback so I would imagine that's heavily worked into their risk calculations.
You know I keep seeing tech types going on about how much they hate PayPal - so why doesn't somebody do a startup to go head to head with them? I realize I'm just a humble designer, but I can tell that even from a usability point of view they're very vulnerable.
PayPal is a horrible company. They freeze accounts, hold money hostage (pretty sure illegally), refuse to delete user data (illegal in the UK), and screw smaller users over by forcing them to add bank accounts or sign up for their shitty credit card just to verify that their account is real.