PayPal Tightens Transaction Reins

wired news ^ | 3/29/03 | By Christopher Null

[freepatriot32]

Message to would-be buyers of postage meters, CB amplifiers, mountain lion parts and speleothems taken from federal land: When you buy your goodies online, you'll have to pay for them with something other than PayPal.

Thanks to a sweeping set of changes to its acceptable-use policy, PayPal's exhaustive new rules now dictate exactly where users' funds can and cannot be spent.

[freepatriot32]

the people at paypal must have gone to the same business school as the owners of all the airlines they figure if they can p*ss off the customers and make doinng business with them as inconvienient as possible they will get twice as many customers.

[ChemistCat]

Went to send a VERY FINE artist, who does military art, (http://hometown.aol.com/woodblox/myhomepage/index.htm is the site by the way) some money through Paypal. They wanted us to sign a ridiculous new user agreement which absolves them from all responsibility at all for errors they make affecting our bank accounts. Since we've been a victim of Paypal before, we declined to agree to give them carte blanche that way. They lost us and convenience or no convenience I'm sure this was their last chance with us.

[Andyman]

You can thank the lawyers for this one I bet. Someone is bound to sue PayPal if funds transit through there for one purpose or another. CYA. BTW, I love PayPal.

[shattered]

Anyone else find it strange that they will let people SELL the stuff..just not BUY it with paypal? Ebay needs to decide one way or the other.

[goldstategop]

You can buy stuff with Paypal. Now that Ebay owns it its natural they want to cut off potential competitors from sharing in the revenue stream.

[larrysav]

They wanted us to sign a ridiculous new user agreement which absolves them from all responsibility at all for errors they make affecting our bank accounts.

This is why I'm getting rid of Paypal as a payment option on my website. The customers that buy my product are forced to join Paypal and then Paypal spams them until they turn it off. There are my customers - not Paypal's. Now I accept credit cards and have an online store. And it's going to be cheaper than Paypal.

[xp38]

home of the Spank-O-Matic and a wide variety of bondage and in-home torture equipment

Pardon me while I try to suppress ROFL.

[big bad easter bunny]

Thanks a lot for posting this, I am curently setting up my new site and we are probaly going to use Paypal.

[jimt]

the people at paypal must have gone to the same business school as the owners of all the airlines they figure if they can p*ss off the customers and make doinng business with them as inconvienient as possible they will get twice as many customers.

You've got that right. They set a limit of $2000 worth of transactions before they DEMAND direct access to your checking account. Well, I've spent my $2000 via Visa, Discover and Amex, and now, they can go to the theological place of eternal punishment. NOBODY has direct access to my checking account - a practice which has paid repeated dividends in the past.

Their arrogant buiness practices stink. I patronize vendors who allow more flexible means of payment.

[singletrack]

HEads Up! If you are going to use paypal,start a small account, at a different bank than the one that is your primary bank.There are horror stories of people having accounts frozen because of small discrepincies from on line payments.Stories of not being able to get into your checking or pay your mortgage because you complained to paypal about something and they "froze the accounts while it gets sorted out, you own protection etc".Check out paypalsucks.com for the whole story. I use paypal but keep a seperate account with less than $200 dollars in it. You should too.

[George from New England]

When the last delivery service STOPPED accepting CASH, outfits like paypal and credit cards got a massive boost.

I had heard that it was due to US government pressure that UPS stopped allowing for CASH payments to drivers. Laundering of monies was the reason I recall. This UPS change was also a hardship on the small business person who always sent packages COD for CASH. No bad checks. UPS gave them one less choice. If they didn't want to risk bad checks, they now had to give up $$$ to the banks for credit card transactions. This also makes it very easy for an internet tax to be levied with all monies being electronic.

Now options are dwindling for acceptable payment methods, ones without collection problems.

[TennesseeProfessor]

I'll just add that you are also prohibited from using PayPal to buy guns.

[Pylot]

And I will add to your post that I cancelled my paypal account on that news a few weeks ago.

So did many other law abiding citizens that will not go along with the selective support of our civil rights from communists like this who would like to pick and choose from the bill of rights.

[boris]

I perceive a business opportunity for a competitor which is not quite so fastidious.

Remember when E-bay stopped allowing the sale of firearms? Somebody started "Gun-bay" or something similar.

Anybody know of one (a freer alternative to Pay-pal)?

--Boris

[nanny]

Absolutely!! Don't let anyone, anyone have access to your personal checking account. WE have an account that we keep almost no money in, it is used to draft a payment each month and we only deposit that amount of money.

I have a Paypal card and use it at the ATM.

Now that I think about it , I haven't signed the new agreement - just didn't have time to read the first time it was presented and has been presented again. They may cut me off any day now.
I have been pleased with Paypal so far. While I don't like the idea of anyone selling adult material on line - I realize that is freedom. I sell books, and I won't be surprised when the times comes that someone complains and I can't sell a cerain kind of book. (I'm thinking conservative books.)

There are other on-line payment options out there - we may need to check them out just in case.

[fqued]

You, and most of the posters on this thread have overstated the case. I am an eBay seller of antiquarian books, and I accept PayPal payements. I have NEVER had a problem with PayPal. But then again, I sell rare books, not bondage equipment, not pornography, and not guns. I don't care if anyone else wants to purchase those items, but I do not see a problem with PayPal refusing to be the middleman in those transactions. Again, I have NEVER had a problem with PayPal.

[BJungNan]

home of the Spank-O-Matic and a wide variety of bondage and in-home torture equipment...

ROFL. Oh my gosh, you mean I can't pay for it with PayPal. Hmmm, maybe they can set up SpankPal payment service. Tooooooo Funnny! What the heck does a spank-o-matic look like anyhow?!!! LOL

[buickmackane]

Interesting. I used to buy and sell Yu-Gi-Oh! cards on eBay because my daughter's collection was so overloaded with duplicates. I had no problem with PayPal other than the fees that were deducted from my customers' payments. It was great until Christmas because demand was so high (there seemed to be a lot of grandparents online who had no idea what they were buying), but after that, prices started nosediving. I clearly stated that I would only accept electronic payments, but I kept getting high bids from kids who didn't have PayPal and were deadbeats when they promised to send money orders instead. After receiving negative feedback from one of these kids who didn't comply with the payment terms, I quit selling because I didn't need the hassle. PayPal does deduct directly from my checking account, but I only keep a small balance in it. They have my Visa debit card number as a supposed "backup," but they obviously don't realize that it all ties into the same little checking account, and that's just fine with me.

[buickmackane]

You asked...

I think I need to pop a Zantac now...

[LibKill]

Sometime back I wanted to buy some software from a company that only takes PayPal, no credit cards, no money orders, etc.

I started to set up the PayPal account ("Click Here, Easy to Do!"). They asked for my credit card number.

At this point I thought I might better do a little research on Paypal. (Will open in window.)

It turns out there is a LOT of negative information about PayPal. After that, I decided they would never get my credit information.