'Hidden' problems with Paypal

[billingviews]

Hi there,

I was a firm user both from a customer and business perspective for paypal...until I came across this article written by a former employee of paypal. http://paypalsucks.com/PayPalFormerEmployee1.shtml

This article made me CRINGE!!

I have sinced removed paypal support from an online commerce site that I run.

Kind Regards
Joe Wee
Daily Billing News And Expert Views
www.billingviews.com

[Exon]

We use 2CheckOut now and I've not had any problems with it.

[James]

Ok frist of all i have had a paypal account for 6 years +. i have seen the posted url before and the things they say to do will get noticed by paypal and get your account frozen i DO NOT sujest you do any of them.
paypal has securty in place to prevent that from happaning now.

best things to do to proect your account is:
1. change you password often!
2. never give it out even to you wife/husband(sounds cold but sorry)
3. turn on e-mail notfacation for ALL transactions from/to your paypal acount.
4. dont trust what you read on the net when it comes to hate sites like that.
5. dont give out ANY personal infomation unless it is a secure site! or in the case of paypal it starts with the https://

there are so meny fake e-mails floting around that it is rather hard to tell who is who but paypal will never EVER ask for your bank account infomation viea e-mail. they will ask you to update or at lest check your info viea the site only.

sorry about the rant here folks but that site that is in the start of the thread but im sick of people not getting all the facts and i hope the infomation i put in here will help others from having problems with paypal.

in my 6 years+ i have not had a single lock down or investagation by paypal on my account. (knocks on wood) I do not brake there rules ( as all banking busienss have there own set of rules) and if you do the same you will not have problems.

ill get off the soap box now

[nameslave]

... and if you do the same you will not have problems.
This is what I ALWAYS doubt about PayPal. Don't know why.

[James]

some people dont like the rules paypal have its there right. as the saying goes ....
to each there own...

[SDHosting]

I am not sure how much value I put into this. About a year ago my companies PayPal account was broken into. We used a secure password for the account (12 characters long, letters, numbers, uppercase, lowercase, etc.) but the email password on the account was only 8 letters long. The "hacker" charged about $2000 to our company credit card. It really did seem like all hope was lost- until I called PayPal. With a few phone calls and faxes of Photo ID/Agreement the money was returned in about 10 days. Have been using them since for about 40% of our transactions.

[kickmyserver]

I've not really had problems with Paypal until I got paid for something I sold for $500, then my account is all of a sudden "Limited". Paypal decided they are going to keep my money although I've already gave the customer what they bought... so I'm itemless and now money-less.... I did what the limitations required me to do, verify email, verify telephone number... after everything was verified, they email me and said they are going to keep the money anyways and tough luck to me. I don't know what laws they have out in the California area, but here in Indiana, it's illegal to do what they did. I'm going to contact my states attorney general office Monday morning as well as the FCC, California attorney general office, and any other office I can think of from now to Monday... If it comes down to it, I may have to go into litigation with them. Their "user agreement" says you have to file all suites against them in California, but a federal judge (Or a California judge, whichever one) already ruled that their user agreement is "illegal", therefore I am free to bring up charges in any state.

I do not recommend Paypal, I've requested to several TV networks to do an internal investigation on Paypal and.. well, that's all I can say right now :)

So if you use Paypal, this will eventually happen to you:
:jailed:

Hi there,

I was a firm user both from a customer and business perspective for paypal...until I came across this article written by a former employee of paypal. http://paypalsucks.com/PayPalFormerEmployee1.shtml

This article made me CRINGE!!

I have sinced removed paypal support from an online commerce site that I run.

Kind Regards
Joe Wee
Daily Billing News And Expert Views
www.billingviews.com

[shost]

I have used paypal since 1998 or before. I have never had a problem with them at all.
I have seen other companies have problems, and it is usually if not always due to multiple customer complaints, or major complaints.

Anything you sell to someone and use your paypal account,, make sure you get a return mail receipt that shows you proof of delivery, and you should be fine. Most problems are due to the seller not showing proof that the item was deliverd, and the customer complaining and getting their money back, even when wrongfully so,,, due to no singed return mail receipt.

I have heard of people having problems for apperently no reason,, but I really can't believe that paypal would lock down your funds without any reason at all.
ALSO: on that 500.00 sale mentioned above... on a low end paypal account the limit is only about 100 bucks - or it was last time I looked. So, I am sure a 500 dollar transaction would give problems unless your account was upgraded.

Tim L

[Corey Bryant]

You just have to realize - the bigger you get, the more customer you will have. This will increase your chances as a company not being able to please everyone all the time. And people love to complain much more so than they will give anyone a compliment.

[vito]

You just have to realize - the bigger you get, the more customer you will have. This will increase your chances as a company not being able to please everyone all the time. And people love to complain much more so than they will give anyone a compliment.

Very true, Corey. It goes without saying that a company with over 63 million customers will end up on the bad end of a review on occasion.

I still maintain that for the most part, provided you follow their TOS, and run a tight ship in your business, you will not have any problems, you will not have funds frozen, you will not have accounts suspended.

Generally, the horror stories you hear about Paypal are one sided, and usually are a result of the account user having breached TOS. That doesn't mean some legit accounts don't fall through the cracks, but hell, with 63+ million customers, do you really expect 100% track record?

Vito

[121merchant]

If you sell more than $1k a month, then why not open a real merchant account? You will save money not have any of these headaches.

:)

[gaiahost]

yeh if you sell more then 300 a month its worth opening a merchant account. bank of america only charges a one time fee of 200 for the hardware then its like 50 a month or something fairly cheap but i use paypal because my business isnt that big yet in future we will be going full merchant account though

[CDGcommerceJill]

While Paypal is a viable option for some ecommerce businesses, there is a big difference between a 3rd party processor (Paypal) and a true merchant provider.



The 3rd party processors do not give you the same functionality as the integrated, one-click, real-time credit card processing features of a true merchant account. This would appear as a seamless transaction on your site as opposed to having the user have to go to an external website to make their payment as with a 3rd party processor.



There are certainly pros and cons on both sides, but I find knowing all my options always the best in making a decision.



Good luck!

[Q151]

My one question is this: How do you know that article is legitimate?

We have been happily using PayPal for quite some time now, and as of yet have had no trouble. I would not change your payment processor just because you happened to read something which may or may not be true.

[Dexxa]

the sites probley ran by kids :moon:

Ive been with paypal for years, and not had a single problem :)

[blue27]

Never had a problem here either.
We process about 60% or our transactions through Paypal and have yet to have an issue in 3 years.

[Equonix]

I kind of feel sorry for Paypal they have about 80million accounts an eighth probably fake scammers... and they do have to put up with it long with http:/www.paypalsucks.com having that site trash them along with lawsuits worth millions of dollars. Some people may say "They Deserve it"

We have not had an issue with Paypal; I've personally had trouble with a Paypal Company which we all know of "Ebay" but I think everyone does :p

[linux-tech]

My one question is this: How do you know that article is legitimate?

10:1 it's not.
paypalsucks is designed, setup and maintained by users who have been "screwed" by the paypal system, or so they think. This is actually pretty common. Sites get big, then people get screwed, then create sites like this.

Paypal runs a legitimate and valid organization, and has for many years. I've personally been using them for almost 6 years now, with no issues whatsoever. Sure, they've denied claims, but they have lived 100% up to their TOS.

Their top issues are not only wrong, but very very misleading:

you waive your rights to credit card consumer protection laws if you want to use their service, and that you may not issue a chargeback for unauthorized use of your credit card
Paypal does no such thing whatsoever. In fact, if you want to dispute a charge, you can start with paypal, then go to your bank, should paypal deny the claim. Amazing, isn't it? I've done both of these in the past year, and gotten excellent responses from both. More lies and misinformation by paypalsucks.


Their customer service is horrible. They used to hide their telephone number, (intentionally - by their own admission) and only provided support via "form" emails:

WHile they MAY have hidden the number (can't say 100% for sure, as I've always been able to get ahold of them by phone), that's certainly not illegal, nor unethical. It simply means that they're trying to cut down on phone support. Nothing there is unusual.


3. Their terms of service are not completely disclosed upon signup and some key "conditions" are not disclosed.

More like:
We didn't bother to read the full terms and conditions, so they're not disclosed. Sorry, but I don't buy that. For legal reasons, of course they're going to make sure everything is disclosed.

There's more on there, but that's just the highlights. Sure, paypal isn't for everyone (and rightly so), but criticizing paypal, as paypalsucks does is just stupid and ridiculous. Sure, it's their right to do so, but it's nothing but misinformation.

[littleswebhost]

I have also been using paypal for years, for both buying and selling, and I have never had any problems with there service.

[ShadowOps]

IN MY OPINION, That site is just a BIG WHINING place. :sleep2: :sleep2:


Looks like its just made for advertising a company like paypal. :uzi2:

Just take a look at there forums categorys, COMPLAINTS COMPLAINTS COMPLAINTS :kitty2: :kitty2:

[lowesthost]

used pay pal for years no problems here except the ocational pay pal cancels a subscription for no aparent reason

but since they are not a bank i would not leave a whole lot of money in there

[GordonH]

Hello
I don't think I am allowed to link to articles on my own personal site so here is a reprint from my personal blog on this subject:

Paypal does NOT suck

Someone at Paypal posted their edits to the live part of the site rather than the test version:

"Should any suspicious activity occur, PayPal will either alert youeither by email or by a representative calling you. But PayPal doesn't stop there. We offer you [excellent] *[too strong I thinkgiven the limited ability to comply with SPP]*"

What this person means is that they want to have seller as well as buyer protection but because the chargeback procedures of the banks over ride anything they can offer they need to be careful about how they phrase it.

They COULD insure against losses but this is very risky in itself. I know that my merchant provider won't.We have under £2000 of chargebacks last year and our bank is holding £43,000 of our cash as security against this increasing.They wanted to increase that to £180,000 on deposit indefinitley with no interest.I tried to change bank but the new one wanted £250,000.

People using Paypal do not know how lucky they are in many ways:

1. Low fees if you have high volume.
2. Better ability to stop chargebacks (many transactions are from positive balances and they favour the seller if its non tangible goods not covered by the buyer protection policy).
3. Instant settlement if necessary (many merchant accounts are on 30 days deferred for online trading).
4. No security required.

I know that people bleat on about paypalsucks.com etc but at the end of the day even the worst cases I have heard of are NOTHING like as bad as the way real banks treat their credit card merchants.

[NyteOwl]

Didn't PayPal just recently finish losing a 9.6 million dollar class action suit for wrongfully suspending/cancelling/freezing accounts?

No one has problems with a company ... until they have problems with the company. While PayPal may proportionately have a high customer satisfaction, the risk from those cases that have been documented (as opposed to rants) are sufficienet, for me at least, to consider them a poor business risk. That said I might be tempted to use thm for making auction purchases (and this type of client probably compromises the majority of their customers) - so long as I don't keep a large balance with them.

As always YMMV.

[krystof]

Good information in this thread. Good to know the "worst case scenarios" etc.

Anything can happen no matter what you use. Sure, if I had 1k month coming in on internet, I'd probably get another processor.

In any case, I like the fact that using PayPal, I can accept credit cards but do not receive any credit card numbers etc. Well VeriSign also has a low-cost system that does not transfer the credit card number. But PayPal fees are low with zero up front. No monthly fees in basic account. Possibility to upgrade at any time. Not many other options for starting out and not wanting to invest a lot of cash.

Couple of years ago, I spent a month trying to make Miva Merchant look halfway decent. Finally gave up. And that was supposedly "the" low-budget shopping cart at that time, and everyone said easier to configure than any at any price.

Then PayPal came out with its free shopping cart system. Just paste the code into your HTML, and presto. That is mainly why I now have a commercial site running with 500 health supplements.

But right, PayPal can freeze your account arbitrarily. Don't keep a big balance in PayPal. And if you're really cautious, keep hardly nothing in the savings account it accesses. Easy to do. Then keep your nose clean and hope for the best.

[Zeleniak]

Didn't PayPal just recently finish losing a 9.6 million dollar class action suit for wrongfully suspending/cancelling/freezing accounts?

No one has problems with a company ... until they have problems with the company. While PayPal may proportionately have a high customer satisfaction, the risk from those cases that have been documented (as opposed to rants) are sufficienet, for me at least, to consider them a poor business risk. That said I might be tempted to use thm for making auction purchases (and this type of client probably compromises the majority of their customers) - so long as I don't keep a large balance with them.

As always YMMV.

Yeap and our was one of them with almost 600 dollars still witing almost a year later for the money I worked for back.

[syborius]

never had a problem with it..use it to run many, many transactions, still one of the most convenience systems available. ALl the others have even more problems. good luck

[g2webhosting]

Always used Paypal, and never had any problems with it at all!!

[rebelnetworks]

We use paypal as an option, but very little -- we use worldpay and have our own merchant account -- You look more professional and less 3rd party crap to deal with

[InnoHosting.com]

Been using PayPal ever since they started. They are strictly regulated in the UK too. I have read all the horror stories and although i have never had a major problem, you need to always limit what they have access to.

Withdraw money from your PayPal everytime it reaches $50/£50. Keep minimum in the account. Anything you buy, use credit card through paypal. Worst comes to worst, you can do a chargeback. If you use PayPal, and you dispute a charge that is a virtual good, it is unlikely you will see a penny of that..

Just read the TOS, it clearly states that virtual goods are not protected by their policies...

[MaxGlobin]

Seems to me people have a love-it or hate-it opinion of PayPal mostly based on personal experience. What we cannot deny is that PayPal is the largest payment solution on the internet and if there was another company of that size, it would also have the same negatives due to its magnitude

[XDeCX]

wow i never liked paypal but was stuck using it for ebay now i took my checking and creidt cards off

[wsi]

Ok frist of all i have had a paypal account for 6 years +. i have seen the posted url before and the things they say to do will get noticed by paypal and get your account frozen i DO NOT sujest you do any of them.
paypal has securty in place to prevent that from happaning now.

best things to do to proect your account is:
1. change you password often!
2. never give it out even to you wife/husband(sounds cold but sorry)
3. turn on e-mail notfacation for ALL transactions from/to your paypal acount.
4. dont trust what you read on the net when it comes to hate sites like that.
5. dont give out ANY personal infomation unless it is a secure site! or in the case of paypal it starts with the https://

there are so meny fake e-mails floting around that it is rather hard to tell who is who but paypal will never EVER ask for your bank account infomation viea e-mail. they will ask you to update or at lest check your info viea the site only.

sorry about the rant here folks but that site that is in the start of the thread but im sick of people not getting all the facts and i hope the infomation i put in here will help others from having problems with paypal.

in my 6 years+ i have not had a single lock down or investagation by paypal on my account. (knocks on wood) I do not brake there rules ( as all banking busienss have there own set of rules) and if you do the same you will not have problems.

ill get off the soap box now
correct!!

Also one should use paypal as a secondory payment process for the users who prefer paypal and for every one else get a merchant account. We do so at out site.