Paypal, safe or not?

[Freak83]

In my NS community we use two forms of payment transfers, Paypal and Snail Mail. Our Security founder thinks Paypal is not safe and posted THIS link to support his claim. I've taken a look at the forums and there are somewhat over 7000 registered users, many offering various complaints and horror stories.

He also gave me this audio link to the phone call that started this site. Now I'm not a great debater but I gathered some points for Paypal and the complaintent out of the audio conversation from the point where he starts speaking to the last guy.

Paypal
- Will refund money after 180 days
- Stated clearly in their user agreement
- Will reverse transactions if asked "More than happy to do that"
- Tell you they're recording their calls
- Not keeping the money for any other reason than to "Save potential lawsuits that may result from those funds"
- Not paying interest on the money being held for him
- Can place a hold on a transaction
- Have objections to having the conversation posted on the webpage
- Repeadetly asks for last names of employees, when he has been informed they are not authorised to give out last names and it is an invasion of their rights to have their name illegally posted on a website




Complaintent
- Paypal can close down an account for any given reason at their discretion
- They can "steal" your money for 180 days
- They record your calls
- Bank does not close your account for 180 days when closing your account
- They will not give money back no matter what in less than 180 days
- Close an acount and go back a day after a transaction occured and reverse it, the user agreement gives them this right
- Their not liking someones content does not give them the right to suspect fraud or abuse
- No transactions in account that have ever been reversed
- Account being closed because Paypal does not like the content of his website
- Have no blemishes on account, and have been with Paypal for 5-6 years, since paypal started
- Why more a risk now as Paypal doesn't like the content of website, than was when was collecting money off the website
- No-one will give him their last name
- Has the right to record and post this conversation as Paypal has the right to do the same with his

There's also THIS lawsuit against Paypal.

Really I'm not a great debater, I realize that this site is a one-sided argument and I'm hoping for some valid oppinioins and thoughts from you guys.

[Tasselfoot]

not going to bother reading all your links.... i'll just tell you my paypal stories.

1. i've used paypal well over 500 times. i buy and sell things ALL the time on ebay. i LOVE paypal. its great. 100x better than any other online payment forum i've used (such as firepay).

2. only once ever have i had an issue. this summer i sent $1200 to a friend of mine over paypal. for personal reasons. paypal but a freeze on my account and held the transaction. neither one of us put in a stop on the transaction... their fraud department did it as a precaution. now, yes... i know this can be a benefit in case of a real theft. but, 1200 isn't that much money. i have worked for banks for over 4 years, so i understand fraud prevention and the hassles that can be related...

so, i go to reactivate my account... and accidentially lock myself out again. so i call them asking to undo it so i can reactivate it the correct way. they won't. so i wait 7 days for a letter to arrive with an activation code. i enter the code and unlock my account. then, both of us spend about 2 hours a day for 5 days on the phone with paypal trying to get this money to go through... (its sitting in limbo for 2 weeks now). FINALLY... they release the funds and send it through.

that was my only beef with them. that and they don't allow their service to be used for porn sales. that pisses me off. god damn conservatives.

[Freak83]

Just to get it straight... I don't have any problem with paypal, I haven't used them for a long time, but I personally figure there's a few people who are going to have problems with everything. So I'm for the Paypal argument.

[lightdarkness]

I've used paypal quite a bit, never had a problem

In fact, they refunded me .92 cents, because there was some type of problem in their system

[QreepyBORIS]

Tass, 1200 dollars is alot when you're missing it with nothing to show.

[Tasselfoot]

ehh. its not that much money. plus, i knew the mistake would be corrected and sent to my friend. worst that happens is they refund it back to me and i have to Western Union it to him.

[tnyhwk900]

Not that much money? Hell, I'll get your $1200 back if I can keep half of it.

[Tasselfoot]

um... it went through after about a week of annoyance.

and, tny... you're 14. i'm 20. you probably get like 5 bucks a week allowance. no offense.

[blahblah18]

haha awesome post.. 1200 is still a decent amoutn to me, and I"m your age.. although I am putting in 2K a year.. damn IRAs haha

[The_Q]

I think the funniest part of this whole thing is that he did not read the agreement that pertains to his money. His money, the same money he was complaining about losing. If he just read the agreement and made sure that he understood it before he went through with this, would he have run into this fix? I don't think so.

Now, let's go over the downsides to sending money via snail mail. I'll start with 2.

2. Someone other than the company can steal it. It is much more likely that someone can take a physical piece of paper that contains money from a truck that can be physically damaged or slowed.

1. It moves more slowly. That's a given, though. We all know that electronic messages travel quite a bit faster than physical ones. This is, of course, assuming that nothing goes wrong in the process of sending the message.

3. Three is here to keep consistancy.

So now I guess we'll have to investigate two other kinds of money transfer organizations. The business and the bank. From the looks of it, this man has confused Paypal with a bank.

Banks make profits off of loans, not off of selling things. This is the sort of thing that happens with Paypal. It doesn't sell anything to you, but it does require you to pay a fee for certain transactions, much like a bank (checking, loans, late fees, etc.) Banks also hold money, which is probably why he related Paypal to a bank.

Businesses put out prices for goods or services, which is also like Paypal who charges for certain services. Now, the man kept relating the "holding money" thing to his bank, which is very wrong. A business has every right to not only close business with a client that they feel will harm business. They also have the right to hold money from a client if they feel that a penelty is in order. The customer has the same rights, but often does not exercise them.

If I were in the jury I would not vote in favor of him.

Q

[evilbutterfly]

That PayPalSucks site is so retarded. If you actually read the parts of the ToS that they post, you see what the problem is.

Originally Posted by PayPal ToS

PayPal encourages all buyer purchase disputes to be filed and resolved through the PayPal dispute resolution process. PayPal reserves the right to terminate or limit account access privileges of buyers in any of the following cases: abuse by a buyer of the reversal process provided by the buyer's issuing bank; filing a chargeback against an unauthorized transaction; consistent failure to pursue PayPal's Buyer Complaint Process before pursuing any alternate reversal process provided by the buyer's issuing bank.

Basically it says that if you have a problem, resolve it through PayPal. Don't go straight to your credit card company and try to get the money back that way, do it through PayPal. That's what PayPal wants, and if you keep doing what they don't want, they limit/terminate your account. So basically, if you follow the rules it's all good. I don't think the problem is PayPal, I think it's dumb people who don't read contracts.

EDIT: Listening to the phone convo now. This guy's a moron. Also, it sounded like he was about to cry at the beginning while asking about his money. He also is so obviously not educated in law.

[alainbryden]

This guy is really retarded. I could hate paypal and be embarrassed by what this guy is doing. His argument is futile, he is childish, he's redundant. Paypal is completely justified in what they do. If someone has sketchy shit posted on their webpage, they do not condone it, and they close the paypal account, and they keep the money for 180 days so that if the guy was ripping someone off or doing something illegal, someone can complain within 180 days and get their money back from the asshole that ripped them off. crap this guys dumb. The last guy he talks to owned him.

This jerk thinks he's so clever because the machine said "This call may be recorded for quality purposes." And so he recorded it himself. The people don't even care, they say 'yeah, you're absolutely allowed to do that' and he still rubs it in their face 5 times like he's some sort of smartass. This guy needs to never have kids.

[The_Q]

It's simply unfair to claim that he is stupid. In fact, I find this man quite intelligent. But like many people who prove their intellectual abilities doing something that will cause them to fall into a pattern of blaming the system, this man is horribly misguided. Sure, he was clever for using the "this call may be recorded for quality purposes" ploy, but I don't recall him ever rubbing it in their faces (then again I listened to but half of the message before I got sick of the redundancies).

I also came up with the number one reason that Paypal should not be stopped or restricted.

FREE TRADE= TEH SEX*

Q

*this caused my dad to chuckle. For those of you who haven't heard about my dad, that's a big thing.

[alainbryden]

Yeah, well the second half is where the guy gets owned, acts dumbest, repeats the same argument over and over even after it's been completely refuted and owned, and starts bragging about is little recording pun.