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PayPal Hates Children, Cancels X-Mas
ShaenTheBrain
Registered User new member
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I didn't know exactly where to post this, so my apologies if there's a better place. But I created an account specifically to post this. I figured, as creators of a childrens charity in this vein, Gabe & Tycho would want to know about this.
http://www.regretsy.com/2011/12/05/cats-1-kids-0/
PAYPAL: You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people.
You don't usually see this sort of mustache-twirling dog-kicking villainy in real life. The more people who know about this, the better. Spread the word.
http://www.regretsy.com/2011/12/05/cats-1-kids-0/
PAYPAL: You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people.
You don't usually see this sort of mustache-twirling dog-kicking villainy in real life. The more people who know about this, the better. Spread the word.
ShaenTheBrain on
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PAYPAL: I haven’t seen that PDF. And what you’re doing is not a worthy cause, it’s charity.
ME: What’s the difference?
PAYPAL: You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people.
Charity isn't a worthy cause? You can donate to help a sick cat but not poor people? What in Martian Christ?
If this were any other company, this would be my inclination as well, but PayPal has a long and sordid history of doing really messed up stuff like this. Freezing peoples money for years, stealing money from peoples bank accounts, siding with scammers when there is clear evidence brought forth by the scammed. You name it.
cause I wanna close my account
This is a customer service rep talking to a business that had used them for the past 10 years.
The mind boggles.
To my knowledge, there isn't one. PayPal is the only widely accepted e-transaction firm.
There might be other venues in theory, but you won't be able to use them to buy most things.
It's a shame.
google checkout is one of them!
anyway I can just not use it, I think I will survive for a while without it
Ahem.
The former CEO of PayPal (made the CFO after PayPal's aquisition by eBay, I believe), Scott Thompson, is a fanatical Libertarian. The sort of man who preaches (and probably believes) that charity actively harms society, that the government is always coiled and waiting for the right opportunity to spring the 'MWGs' and steal his money, and that the way to a utopian future will be paved by Freedom Ships (curiously, in spite of his massive wealth and the equally massive wealth of his fellow travellers, said ships haven't been commissioned. Pity).
He has totally and completely surrendered himself to an insane paradigm, and as I understand it, there's a well developed cult of personality for him in PayPal.
You're a very classy lady.
*tips hat*
Have you heard of Ted Turner? He is another idiotic rich person.
have a bank account tied to your account? their terms of service say they can empty it for any reason, whenever they want. they do actually do this to people, because of "suspicious activity"
try to charge through your credit card through them, and then deny the charge for legitimate reasons? they dock your account for the amount, and send it straight to collectors without further notice.
I can't believe this comes up both at every christmas, and every natural disaster for the last 5 years or more and noone has caught on that paypal isnt a bank, and doesnt care about you.
It's not that nobody knows or cares, it's just that there aren't any viable alternatives right now. If you want to buy from eBay, Amazon, Steam or, well, nearly any eRetailer, you've got to go through PayPal unless you have a credit card.
Naturally, this gives PayPal something of a God complex.
I looked at Google check-out after SiG brought it up - the platform is great, but I see hardly any support for it. Until it gets widely adopted, we're kind of stuck with the status quo.
YMMV, but I had an absolutely miserable experience with the Pre-Paid MasterCard I had for a couple of months.
Fill it up, go make a couple of purchases. They shave 2 bucks off of each transaction.
"Okay, w/e. I guess they gotta make their money somehow."
End of the month, they ding me a $10.00 service charge I wasn't told about. Oops, I had emptied the card out, because why the fuck wouldn't I? That's why I'm using a pre-paid card. Ding, a $50.00 penalty on top of the service charge, putting me $60.00 into the red on a card that was supposed to be a debt-free, risk-free, no-hassle, pre-paid tool.
Pay off the debt, call MC, cancel the card, throw it in the garbage (yes, I know, I should've recycled).
The little Visa gift cards that my mother buys (non-refillable) are apparently a good deal.
I mean, people buy them so they must work right?
I've never seen issues with using them online? Which is what we're talking about. I have no idea bout swiping them.
eBay.
Well, part of the problem is that eBay owns PayPal - so guess which eCommerce firm handles all of eBay's transactions?
Edit: Beaten.
The one good service PayPal provides is that you can often use them for subscriptions with vendors that do not accept prepaid or debit cards. For some reason, my debit card won't work with Netflix. It's not a prepaid card, but it identifies as one. I have argued with them tirelessly to no avail. I don't have a credit card, so my only option is to subscribe via PayPal.
Unfortunately, just because your debit card has a VISA or Mastercard logo stamped on it doesn't mean it cannot be identified, by a vendor, from other cards with a VISA or Mastercard logo stamped on them. I was kind of flabbergasted when this happened with Netflix. In fact, it almost made me quit Netflix.
if it was they would sued/fined out of existence in a month for all of the scummy shit they do. They know this and know it's only a matter of time before regulations catch up to them.
Debit cards work differently in Canada than they do in the U.S. I can't use it to shop online, over the the phone, etc. The number on it is not directly linked to my checking account.
As I understand it, the regulatory agencies are basically still dinosaurs when it comes to things like eCommerce. They're just not equipped to deal with an entity like PayPal, who has servers all over multiple jurisdictions and is basically (in theory) just facilitating transactions, without actually storing money.
Which basically means that they literally just stole money from the wallets of people under false pretenses. Money that was going to help children. For Christmas.
Jesus christ.
Edit: This whole thing is amazingly fertile grounds for a law-suit against Paypal, actually. I'm surprised they have the balls to try and pull something like this off. Nevermind that this is the sort of thing that gets folks partaking in "internet justice' quite often. Usually of the sort that does quite a bit of damage to the company itself.
Also, Paypal is mostly still popular, and hasn't been run out of business, because it's a subsidiary of Ebay, which uses it as a primary mode of financial transaction. Otherwise the loss of business from shit like this would have sent them under years ago. Most everyone I know knows to avoid them like the plague, since they're prone to doing stuff like this in the hopes of getting a quick cash grab (Also, because the money is probably accruing interest in some bank account somewhere in the mean-time.).
This is also why you should never use Ebay, and switch to Amazon instead.
then I remembered this is paypal we're talking about
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Paypal is like Ticketmaster. Yes there are sometimes alternatives, but a large amount of the time it ends up being you're only option. It makes sense to use paypal if you're a business because of how widespread it is, and saves you from having to support other stuff like amazon/google/bitcoins/etc. They only way to really hurt paypal would be for the merchants to stop using them for transactions.
Yeah, they're the AT&T of corporations.
Or EA, after this all of the recent fiascos with Origin
I don't disagree with any of that - just saying that the regulators have a lot of catching-up to do before they can really deal with eCommerce giants.