I haven't trusted Paypal for a long time, since they repeatedly froze my account just for accessing it from a foreign IP. That wouldn't be so bad, except for their demands of things like faxes of utility bills and bank account statements just to get it unfrozen. Ridiculous.<p>I recently had to receive a significant payment from a client of mine. It would have been convenient--and worth the fees--for me to use Paypal to receive that money. But after all the stories of frozen accounts and my own experiences, I'm scared to use Paypal for more than a few hundred dollars. I had the client send a check instead.
The fundamental problem here: PayPal doesn't really care about how merchants feel about it. PayPal cares about making people who spend money really happy, and they succeed at that. They have a huge captive audience with eBay, which <i>requires</i> the use of PayPal. They have thus created a huge base of clients who want to spend money using PayPal, because they find it convenient, because in many cases because it doesn't require a credit card, and because the customers know that they can always complain to PayPal and PayPal will make them happy.<p>Thus, PayPal doesn't particularly care if merchants despise them, because the merchants have little choice; you can't easily convince people to use a new service, and on eBay you have no choice at all. PayPal will quickly provide a refund to customers because PayPal want to keep customers happy, and because they know merchants will eat a refund now and then. And PayPal doesn't particularly care about understanding merchants who don't ship physical objects to customers in boxes, because they don't want to think too hard about that case when it doesn't matter to most of their customers; they'd rather err on the side of "you haven't shipped a product, so we'll issue a refund".<p>No amount of bad PR among people like us, who actually care about merchant woes, will overcome the incredibly positive impression PayPal makes on people who spend money.
I lost trust in PayPal a LONG time ago.<p>Once upon a time, I was ordering a shiny new processor from eBay. The processor was located in Italy and the seller was Italian (obviously). I think nothing of what PayPal would do and send the money. Mere hours later: "Your account has been frozen." They wanted my utility bill, SSN card, drivers' license, and a copy of my birth certificate (I still live with my parents because I'm in high school, so my name wasn't even on the utility bill). To pay for one fucking $200 processor.<p>Luckily, I contacted the seller and we did the transaction through Escrow. He was pretty understanding of it and claimed that his account had been suspended numerous times. He used the exact words "piece of shit scammers" to describe PayPal.<p>WePay all the way. Someone needs to start a rival auction site that uses these other payment services. I'd use that nonstop as I have a ton of stuff to sell but my eBay account is banned (and my name is blacklisted from both PayPal and eBay, hilariously).
Well done TechCrunch for finally jumping on the bandwagon.<p>The first line about people no longer trusting Paypal. People haven't trusted Paypal for many years, but used them anyway.
Paypal is the shadiest of mainstream internet companies. You're better of doing business with organized crime.<p>The whole business of freezing legit accounts and consequently stonewalling the owners, <i>often for months</i> has all the hallmarks of a scam.<p>I would not be surprised to see Paypal execs end up in jail.
Google could've really capitalized on this now if they didn't sit on their asses for <i>years</i> with Google Checkout. They will probably focus more on it now that they've renamed it to Google Wallet and they need it for Android, but it will take a while before it can even touch Paypal.
It really took you this long to lose confidence in PayPal? The Regretsy & Diaspora account freezes are just the tip of an iceberg of consumer abuse whose girth spans over a decade now. The real question is this: Why is it that all consumer banks become incredibly anti-consumer once they reach a certain scale? Paypal's business practices are no less abusive and invasive from that of Chase, Wells Fargo or Bank Of America.
A friend of mine recently had some money stolen from his Paypal account. The long and short is that someone was sat outside his house connected to his wireless and were monitoring keystrokes somehow. I don't know the detailed story as they were telling me over a series of months and I lost track.<p>Paypal would not release where his money had gone or even how to get it back and even went as far as suggesting his parents had stolen it from his account before finally releasing the money back into his account. This went on for months, it was all over a nominal £200 theft.
But that Paypal does this shit has been a hardy perennial new story for years now. Competitors are coming, slowly, from different directions, but it's not clear that Paypal is actually much damaged by these stories.
People are complaining about PayPal "hiding behind antifraud", but real banks do this too - at least in the UK. My bank has phoned me up multiple times to check transactions. On one occasion they simply "black-holed" a credit card transaction and didn't bother to tell me, nor did the merchant contact me. On another, they made a simple purchase take 45 minutes of phone-tag because buying a bed is an "unusual" purchase. Well, DUH. Moving house is pretty fucking unusual, too.<p>I now try to remember to phone them before buying computer bits or large "unusual" purchases, but that has a 50% chance of a dropped call as they try to transfer my request.<p>So, no, PayPal aren't really any different to any other payment processor in my experience.
yep, Paypal is awful. They hide behind 'fraud protection' as an excuse for absolutely awful and opaque customer services, yet... how many people here have had their bank account hacked/defrauded? And, at least for me, I can usually get my bank on the phone and most problems resolved within 5 minutes (and that's living in China dealing with a UK bank account).<p>I have a business account with my bank and I'm a valued customer and they offer me extra services and discounts. Yet with Paypal, if you run a business through them, you're almost automatically treated like a hassle, a criminal, a 'suspect'.
Wishful thinking. PayPal simply does not give a fuck what noise the silicon valley crowd makes. The startups that choose not to do business with PayPal are a drop in the bucket.
"Hey PayPal, do you realize people no longer trust you?"<p>The truth is they couldn't care less; they're a preferred point for e-transactions on eBay and elsewhere.<p>It's back when you wanted an iPhone but hated AT&T, they knew you couldn't get an iPhone with another provider, so they didn't give two shits about their crappy service and customer care.
So what is the alternative for subscription-based software services? Is WePay a viable option here? I'm currently in the market, and, while not afraid of PayPal, I'm not fully enamored of them, either.
I was done with them as soon as I read about the passing of Ilya Zhitomirskiy because I can't imagine the additional stresses put upon him because of how Paypal treated Diaspora. I stopped using them years ago but we need to organize a massive snub of the service until they revise their policies, make them fully transparent and stop constantly screwing people. Remember that we, as a country, were able to get the banks to scrap the $5 debit card fee. What are we waiting for with Paypal?
It seems like everyone wants less security precautions. If a new company does just this and your account gets hacked, are you going to blame the service provider or expect them to take the hit for your lost money?<p>Paypal does need to make some changes, but many of the people that get their accounts frozen are either transferring lots of money in a short amount of time or are running suspicious businesses (even though they may not be illegal or even unethical).
The article implies there have been problems with <i>withdrawing</i> your own money. I've <i>never</i> seen that come up in any of the stories over the years. Has anyone experienced that issue?<p>I never withdraw less than $5000 at a time...
"Startups are gunning" for PayPal? Since when? No one else has gone beyond the US. No one is creating any alternatives for international ecommerce. And how many years has it been that PayPal has had complete domination?<p>Is it that hard for startups to provide international support?<p>Until there is a viable alternative, most of the world will be compelled to use PayPal.