Paypal Agrees to Consumer Protections

davidwr writes "Paypal settled a suit with Maryland and 27 states. Among other things, they'll conspicuously advertise a contact phone number and staff it 14 hours a day and be much more forthcoming about when they will debit your bank account. For those of you who think Paypal Sucks, well, starting soon it sucks just a little less."

Suckage

[internewt]

"For those of you who think Paypal Sucks, well, starting soon it sucks just a little less."

Do people really think that when a corporation gets ordered by a court to behave in a different way, that the organisation will really change? At best, the screwing over and offensive behaviour will become more subtle, or "accepted" (by their customers) screwings from other finance houses will be done by PP but "enhanced". Shit like them taking x days to transfer money about, for example.

But they still suck, I am still not prepared to do business with them. If I need to use the 'bay, then I buy from sellers who take direct bank transfers. Friends can PP for me, but I'd rather not encourage the use of PP in anyway.

Here is why they sucked 4 me.. .

[deviceb]

I sold some information (nothing exotic). It was only $125 and i delivered my end. -a clean deal. A few months go by and i log into my account and see -125 So i say, "WTF why do i have a chargeback & why was i not contacted seeing how you have all my personal info" (acurate info)

They say i did not suppy tracking information when asked. I had 3 days to send this info before my account was jacked by some little twerp. (zabasearch gave me his home address) I did not check this email because it is only used for paypal, & with no business going on.. why check it?

So not only did i loose the data i sold,.. but i ended up paying somebody to take it for me.
So if you sell something as a "service" how are you to provide a tracking number? Any graphic or website payment can be charged back
-another loophole & it seems that paypal does not give a shat about the person who has been using the service from the beginning.

now i have to deal with the twerp & waste more time.

/end rant

Re:PayPal not sucking?

[Aladrin]

This is modded Funny, but he's absolutely serious. Paypal can and will block your account and SEIZE all of the money in it for any reason whatsoever. Not liking your name is a new one for me, but I've seen plenty of hardship on the web. Newzbin.com, a usenet indexing site, regularly lost thousands of dollars at a time to this practice. They would petition and be re-instated, but lose all their money. It was their main payment method, and most of their customers preferred it, so they kept dealing with it... Until it happened like 3 times in 3 months. They finally called it quits and use other payment methods now.

Paypal DOES suck. And they SHOULD be regulated like a bank. I suspect their business model might have issues if they do, though.

Re:Nope, they'll still suck (0800 358 7929)

[Achromatic1978]

My favourite - sending you an email, dated "day 1". Saying that for whatever reason, they'll action a direct debit on your account in "5 working days, so please ensure sufficient funds". The very next day, you get a call from your bank manager. "A direct debit from PayPal has been dishonoured and you've been charged a fee". Wow, that 5 working days went fast. And of course PayPal bills you for the dishonour fee. And when you ask why, when you eventually get an answer, "Well, we could bill it at any time. We send that email as a courtesy. We chose to do so before then, as is our right."

Bleh. Asshats.

I hate when websites advertise paypalsucks.com

[adzoox]

It is run and sponsored by the competition. The webmaster tries to deny that saying he's just advertising alternatives, but the alternatives advertised on paypalsucks.com are FAR WORSE and just fronts for laundering and identity theft.

StormPay
iKobo
YowCow

Re:Nope, they'll still suck (0800 358 7929)

[Achromatic1978]

"This is a notice to inform you we will process a direct debit from your account five days from now, so please ensure there are sufficient funds..."

Re:o (British) bank should let....

[Kijori]

Direct debit - here in Britain - is subject to vigorous protection. It requires you to give permission to your bank, and if you contest any of the charges then your branch is obliged to immediately refund them. To use it to steal money you would have to find someone absolutely acalculic.

Re:o (British) bank should let....

[internewt]

OK, so it follows that the fewer places my bank details are, the less likely a direct debit could be set up to hoover my account. So by not using Paypal, by not even having an account (anymore), I cannot be phished, nor can PP be cracked (tech or social) and my details getting out.

Though my bank details may be visible to other ebay users I buy from, and by extension their accounts could be hacked and my details obtained by a crook, but this is pretty unlikely. But by the sounds of it the DD scheme is very protected and thats the only real "attack vector" if you have my sort code, name and a/c number.

But I found a file on my laptop earlier that I used as a notebook whilst I was constructing my rant to put in the box when closing the Paypal account I had (in error...). I feel I need to share this with the world, and you can give Paypal this amount of abuse and they don't do anything! :) This chunk is over 2000 chars, but the 1000 character limit was enforced with javascript IIRC (can I get a shout out to NoScript [noscript.net]?).

1000 characters is not enough. Why place a limit? Can't Paypal take criticism? Or more likely those beloved shareholders are more important than your customers?

Paypal are greedy cunts, security is BS, you react in knee-jerk ways to sec issues (as long as paypal isn't ripped off, fraud isn't a problem from your point of view. So what if the customer get ripped off, what are they going to do, find another escrow service they can use on ebay?).

But fat-cat execs can't ever see what is wrong with their greed (and that attitude filters throughout an organisation. Do you have wanker middle-mgmt types that will fuck over the peons for personal gain (like bonuses or cars)?). I bet the person who reads this (first, but I doubt even if this gets escalated no-one will give a shit) is paid an insulting salary and hates their job, or at least the office politics etc..

At least in the UK you are regulated by the FSA, but elsewhere I understand you can do what you like, because your not a bank and are so able to avoid any regulation.

PS It's trivial to by pass restrictions on a website, and only a retard would think that a JS limiter would be worth deploying into the production environment. But let me guess, the accountant types make the decisions, not the people who actually understand tech.

(though if there is half a clue anywhere in your organisation, you'll have post submit checks to force the-limits) (Wow, you do on the 3 tick box rule. I also want to tick:

No longer need / one time use
Bank account verification
PayPal's customer service was unprofessional
Fees are too high
Credit card verification
PayPal's products do not meet my needs)

I have entered the following into the "other" box, but it's over a number of characters so your shitty web site is choking:

Spam. I signed up for policy notifs & transaction emails, but I started getting shit about paypal by text, or someother system that is screaming out as a fraud vector, and you added me to a fucking mailing list without my consent.

And what the fuck? I have said to close this account multiple times, and I am repeatedly asked if I want to do something else. No, fucktards, I don't.

Yeah, it turned into a foaming rant :)

I am won of the winners of this lawsuit

[RaigetheFury]

Like many of you we all had issues with Paypal. My story is a bit different in the fact that I was part of every bit of this lawsuit. When i was in college I sold things through ebay and I made a good bit of money doing it. One time I had a particularly large order ($3500) and like each of my orders I require that the mailto address AND phone number matched the paypal information. I would call the number, speak with that person and then begin the order. I would also get confirmation on shipping, tracking and insurance. So not only did they have to sign for it but I knew when and who! What more could paypal need right? I billed them for $3500 and shortly after recieved it via paypal. As usually I immediately move the money to my bank account. Two days later I get an email from paypal stating that this was a disputed order and that the money would be held until it was resolved. I immediately call my bank and put a block on my account for any agency called Paypal or with Paypal in the name to withdraw any money. I even specified the amount it would try to withdraw I email back paypal every possible bit of information they could need, address, phone number, tracking number, when it was signed for, the number to contact UPS about who signed for it etc. They responded "the credit card was illegally charged. You have 7 days to remit the funds". "So let me get this straight" I responded. Not only did the credit card address match the paypal address, that matched the billing address, that matched the mailto address, but the phone number is registered to the card holder AND the package was sighed for by the card holder? Insert canned reply and "remit payment or else". So I consulted a student legal at NCSU (love those guys), and they explained that since Paypal was not technically a bank I was not "technically liable for their fuckups". So I didn't pay. My account was locked of course and it had .14 cents in it! Paypal continued to email me about owed money until I sent them a formal letter explaining in no uncertain terms that it would be a "cold day in hell before they got a penny from me". The emails stopped. However, I'm a very careful person when it comes to money and my credit history. You guessed it, Paypal tried to put an unpaid debt of $4000 on my credit history. I contested it and included all of my information. It took 3 months but it was removed and paypal was fined (undisclosed amount). Then I saw this class action lawsuit happening. I really wanted to make sure I had covered all my bases legally and so I joined. I was contacted directly by the lawyers involved and I was added to the "long form" group. There were 2, a quick settlement group and a "take your chances at getting any money back" group. I heard we won and recieved a package in the mail that included a legal statement I do not owe them a single penny and a check for $395. Paypal is STILL just as bad. It's NOT a bank, it is not subject to the laws of a bank, they can hold your money for ANY reason they want to and screw you out of it. It took me 3 YEARS to get this settlement. THREE YEARS. And you know what happened to paypal? Record profits... Good job legal system.

Re:finally

[MikeFM]

Hell no! PayPal has gotten worse and worse since it's been trying to be more like a bank. I'm constantly being annoyed with calls 'Did you make this purchase - it doesn't fit your profile.' and constantly having to dig up information to prove my account is being accessed by myself and not someone else. This is freaking annoying. I move $120,000+/yr through my account and I'm not stupid enough to lose my card or use a weak password. Leave me the hell alone with your stupid consumer protection schemes. I don't want to spend a couple hours a week (sometimes a lot more) jumping through hoops. Now and then I have to spend a couple days filling out faxes and calling PayPal to get things worked out. On top of that things like cash back bonus have gotten worse since PayPal has been moving to being more bank-like. All downhill since eBay bought it.

If you want a bank then use a bank. Leave PayPal alone for those of us who liked it the way it was.