Important - Please Do Not Send Me Money Via Paypal

[kingpaul]

I'd rather not go into it. But I will suggest that you go to Google, type in "paypal" and check out some of the sites that come up. It has been a very expensive New Year for me...

While I respect your right to not get into it, all I got out of the Google search was the standard "I hate PayPal" sites that I've seen for months now. However, since PayPal is owned by eBay, and eBay is an American company, you could file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. eBay HQ is located at:

eBay Inc.
2145 Hamilton Avenue
San Jose, California 95125

Hope that helps.

 

[Hand of Evil]

To keep people from going "what happened" here is a link...

http://www.paypalwarning.com/

 

[Witchking of Angmar]

Thanks for the info. I haven't liked PayPal since the first time I tried to sign up and it told me my card was in use by another user. It was, sort of. My wife already had an account and when I tried to set mine up it froze both of them. I never heard from them and couldn't get a phone number. Now I know why. All things considered, I guess it was a bit of a blessing.

 

[carpedavid]

I, too, sent a contribution for a Community Supporter account via PayPal in mid-december. If you are not able to retrieve the money via PayPal, please let me know, and I will happily arrange to re-send it to you via some alternate method.

-DMG

 

[Sialia]

Just looked over the Paypalwarning.com website. This is very scary and disturbing.

Morrus, please accept a long distace hug. I'm sorry I can't send you anything more useful, but I want you to know that you have my sympathy and support. I have always appreciated all your hard work for us, and I think it's a damn shame that anything should make that job unpleasant or unrewarding for you.

Piratecat, please at least look over the wall of shame posts if you are going to continue doing business with them.

 

[tarchon]

To keep people from going "what happened" here is a link...
http://www.paypalwarning.com/

I dunno - a lot of these complaints listed sound like single sides of complicated stories, as is usually the case in the genre of [insert company]sucks.com sites. I don't doubt that there are true cases of people honestly having problems, but many of the complaints I see listed leave open quite plausible and often likely explanations for the events that would leave PayPal blameless (for instance, the possibility of funds disappearing through embezzlement within the complainant's organization) .
You also have to consider that many of these guys complaining that PayPal froze their accounts may have had their accounts frozen for good reasons. People who play scams often squeal pretty loudly when they get slapped, partly out of spite and partly because many fraudsters live under the delusion that what they're doing is perfectly legitimate business. If Paypal owes them so much money that they're legitimately entitled to, they have legal remedies. Are they not pursuing those because they know that a court of law would look even less kindly on their business transactions than PayPal did? We don't know. We just have Joe Schmoe's say-so.
Because of that, I have to consider the author of the site to be undiscriminating in the way he treats evidence and therefore suspect in the quality of his opinions.
Sure, be wary of PayPal, but be wary of net.axegrinders too.

 

[DanMcS]

The net.whiners aren't the ones asking for your money and personal information, though. Before I would trust some .com with my money, I'd want to know that they were darn trustworthy, and paypal doesn't do that for me, never has. I see people complain about the slashdot moderators, but it doesn't really matter, it's just a news/discussion site. Paypal is trying to be an unlicensed, unregulated bank, and warrants more distrust. The sheer number of complaints is enough to give me pause. If you discount a large fraction of them, that still leaves a lot of legitimate complaints.

 

[dcollins]

I guess that I, too, would be interested in an overview explanation of what's happened with the ENWorld-PayPal relationship. I've heard a number of complaints in the past but so far haven't heard any that were persuasive for me to stop using it.

I guess the biggest problem sounds like if fraud or chargebacks occur, PayPal is quick to disable an account, and slow to re-enable them. They also sound understaffed in the resolution contact area. Perhaps Morrus can at least give a "yes/no" if something like this disabled ENWorld's account on PayPal's initiative, or if it was some completely distinct problem?

 

[Morrus]

There is, to my knowledge, no such reason for the problems. There has been no explanation or information forthcoming from PayPal at all, other than a suddenly frozen account (with a few thousand dollars in it) and various bills which need paying and which can't be paid.

Even if I manage to get the account unfrozen fairly quickly (and I'm not holding out on much hope right now), I can't use a service which suddenly and without notice freezes an account and unfreezes it at their leisure. That makes it impossible to conduct the necessary business side of EN World which is needed to keep it running.

The fact that there is no regulatory body makes the whole thing even more precarious. The only avenue for complaint in such a situation is via the courts - and that is a lengthy and expensive endeavour, one which I shouldn't even need to comtemplate using just to be able to use my own money.

Don't get me wrong - I'll muddle through this one, even if I lose that money. I'm operating, for the moment, on the assumption that I won't ever see it. But it could have been worse - and what if it were, next time? What if I one day find myself unable to pay for the server for a couple of months in a row?

 

[Dr Midnight]

Dammit, I just did this like a week ago, and emailed Morrus about it a few hours earlier, wondering if it worked. My wonderful luck that I should wait until the brief time between the account freezing and Morrus warning people not to do it.

Crappedy crap crap crap.