Paypal Won't Release Funds To Slain Soldier's Family 337
robustyoungsoul writes "Popular sports blog Deadspin established the Adam Knox Fund for the purpose of raising money in honor of the fallen soldier who was killed in Iraq. They took the donations through a PayPal account.
Turns out now, however, PayPal will not release the money due to the way the account was set up on their end."
Yea, Paypal Sucks, but this is a bit dramatic. (Score:5, Insightful)
That isn't quite true, they are holding the funds until mid April, probably due to somebody screwing up. I'm not convinced that it was Paypal's mistake to begin with.
"Paypal Doesn't Want Slain Soldiers' Families To Receive Aid"
Come on now, yea, there may have been a mistake made, but it has nothing to do with the money going to a Slain Soldiers' Family.
Why the need for so much drama?
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Why, because then no here will read it! Who wants to read about a story regarding Paypal if it doesn't shed Paypal in a bad light?
Re:Yea, Paypal Sucks, but this is a bit dramatic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yea, Paypal Sucks, but this is a bit dramatic. (Score:4, Insightful)
To me, even this fairly factual description is still pretty angering. I think that hyperbole often cripples the arguments of people who have truly good points, because everyone just thinks "Oh, they're just exaggerating!". In this case, the actual situation is fucked up enough that there's no need to inflate it with unsupportable claims.
Say it plain, and let the Slashdot trolls take care of the hyperbole
Any good stories about Paypal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm, are there stories that show Paypal in a good light? I haven't heard / read any...
Re:Any good stories about Paypal? (Score:5, Informative)
My account was usable again a week later, but that was mainly my fault for cancelling the direct debits and cards linked to the paypal account the morning I discovered the activity, so I had to reset up the paypal - bank account conduits.
Funny thing is, I actually made money from all this
All in all, I have had excellent customer support from Paypal and all the other anecdotal websites around dont match my experiences.
Re:Any good stories about Paypal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Any good stories about Paypal? (Score:5, Interesting)
They wouldn't refund it and told me not to contact my credit card company (Mastercard) and sent me a cookie cutter response saying they would ban me from using Pay Pal if I reported the problem to Mastercard (as Mastercard policy explicitly said I should, given the nature of the transaction). Which is an 'interesting' way of doing business to say the least. As the only way to actually get a refund, I did tell Mastercard, I told them about everything Pay Pal had sent me, and told Pay Pal of this and instructed them to close my PP account.
Even after I had closed my account I kept getting junkmail from them (which I couldn't unsubscribe from, as I'd closed my account - which in turn prevented me from unsubscribing). Slick.
This has, to my surprise as much as anyone, been the sort of story (along with mysteriosly delayed releases of funds) that I've heard more of from people that success stories. I've met quite a few people who no longer use Pay Pal for their business because it's been such a hassle to deal with. It's ridiculous that they are not subject to stricter regulation.
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What was the reason money was missing? Was it a sale you made, a purchase you didn't? a purchase gone bad?
It wasn't a result of a purchase I'd made (I'd only used it once and the vendor sent me the item with no issues) or a sale (I've never sold anything via PP or tried to collect any money via PP for any reason). They just choose to take money out of my account without authorisation (and credit themselves with it).
They said they would not refund it, but they did say they would subtract the amount they'd taken from my *next* Pay Pal purchase. Once bitten twice shy however - I have no desire to do business with
Re:Any good stories about Paypal? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yea, Paypal Sucks, but this is a bit dramatic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yea, Paypal Sucks, but this is a bit dramatic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yea, Paypal Sucks, but this is a bit dramatic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yea, Paypal Sucks, but this is a bit dramatic. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yea, Paypal Sucks, but this is a bit dramatic. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most (ie all) payment processors hold onto your money anyway, they have a rolling period before releasing your cash in case of chargebacks and the like. Paypal is very good in this regard, just try getting yourself a real merchant account, and tell them its a charity. Expect many many hoops to jump through.
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Ad revenues?
Re: Yea, Paypal Sucks...and that's on a good day (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Yea, Paypal Sucks...and that's on a good day (Score:5, Funny)
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I sugest that you read the post again. He is saying "PayPal is evil" not "Evil is PayPal". There is a difference you know.
Re: Yea, Paypal Sucks...and that's on a good day (Score:5, Funny)
Not to Yoda.
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Evil, Palpal is.
The verb is either at the front of the sentance, or at the end (or both), depending on whether it includes the "to be" verb.
"away put your weapon"
"Begun, the clone wars have"
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Re: Yea, Paypal Sucks...and that's on a good day (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Yea, Paypal Sucks...and that's on a good day (Score:4, Insightful)
The constitutions of big business (anything with widely held shares) pretty much says that they're out to make money. They are their balance sheet, and anything that the CEO says will help the balance sheet is what gets done. If you've seen the corporation, you'll understand this.
Small businesses, on the other hand, are often there because the owner likes what (s)he is doing and they get to make a living doing it.
I, for example, love solving people's problems. Many of the jobs I've had, I'd do for free, if I had the money from an independent source. Other friends of mine are completely mercenary about their jobs.
I guess that what I'm saying is that small businesses are an expression of their owners .... larger businesses too, but shareholders tend to be only interested in the profits.
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Most non-profits have to prove they are before they can get that status, not afterward or once money is to be given to them.
release the funds... (yet) (Score:5, Informative)
A more accurate summary should have indicated the money is frozen by policy for 180 days. So, paypal is not saying they won't release the money, they won't release it until April 13.
It probably sucks for the people who raised this money, but it also sucks for paypal that too many people set up these kinds of things with intent to defraud.
Hopefully with the noise raised and ruckus caused by sites such as slashdot, the resolution will become before April 13.
FTA:
Hopefully Adam's family and platoon isn't so depleted to not be able to function until April 13. Hopefully if this is so, paypal will figure out a way to disburse earlier.
Meantime, deepest regrets and best wishes to Adam's family for their loss.
Re:release the funds... (yet) (Score:5, Interesting)
180 days from today is July 9th.
180 days before April 13th is October 15th.
And (just for completeness) April 13th is 93 days from now.
Is someone's math wrong at paypal? Or is this being reported months after the fact? Or what?
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A more accurate summary wouldn't have angried up my blood enough!
It may be a necessary policy (meet some kind of legal/tax obligation), it may be a practical policy (they need time to deal with all the database changes and paperwork). The lag seems exceptional and it might just be an asshole policy (you screwed up! Guess we'll collect interest on your money for a nice long time. Hey man, what can you do, we have "policies.")
Re:release the funds... (yet) (Score:4, Insightful)
A problem, I think we all agree, but not PayPal's place to fix it.
PayPal doesn't handle the taxation aspects of charity. They don't guarantee legitimacy. They balk at giving the very refunds they claim they've held the money to cover.
So what exactly does "charity" status mean, other than a flag on an account that effectively translates into "Thanks for the 180 day interest-free loan" (or "less than going MM rate" if they used a PayPal MM account)?
Nice try, but PayPal should not have done this. I know their terms give them basically the right to tell you to take a hike and keep your money for any reason, but this will hurt them. Their long history of ripping people off traditionally hasn't received enough press to harm them. Ripping off a charity for a dead soldier's family? This could (and hopefully will) make the cover of the NYT (on a slow news day), and dozens of other major newspapers.
Time for PayPal to go under. They've played games long enough.
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You have to opt into their "stock" account which simply means that you accept additional risk that if paypal loses value, you may lose money as well. So far its paying out a constant 5% interest for the year I've had it.
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Re:release the funds... (yet) (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent down--this is not accurate, let alone insightful. PayPal is not a registered financial institution (bank, savings/loan, credit union or any similar) and therefore unable to collect "float" interest on deposited monies.
This works two ways of course--as they are not a bank, the FDIC has less regulatory power over their daily operations than over more traditional financial institutions, hence reduced reporting requirements, transparency, sanction ability, etc. They do work with banks [paypal.com] but are not a primary deposit institution themselves.
They've certainly got a well and truly lousy track record when it comes to funds release and management--but investment float isn't one of the drivers of this. Were it, there'd be a half-dozen regulatory institutions over them very quickly.
(And yes, I do speak from experience in the financial services industry, before the flamers start in...)
Re:release the funds... (yet) (Score:5, Informative)
In the typical case PayPal is not being paid per se when monies are transmitted to it. Rather, it's acting as a very limited management agent--it has no asset claim on those monies. It does, as we all painfully know, have considerable transfer and refund control on your deposits, per their terms of service. But they can't treat them as controlled assets--it's not their money to directly profit from.
Even though not regulated as a bank, their investment cash flows are subject to the same statutory control as anyone else's. About the best they could do would be to offer to invest it for you, return profits to you, then collect a "management" commission on the invested funds. In truth, however, that gets them perilously close to bank-dom and the associated governmental oversight, which they pretty clearly want to avoid.
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Their "genius", if you ca
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Don't believe me? Here's the appropriate language from their terms of service:
lily tomlin predicted this one... (Score:3, Funny)
"Paypal: We don't care. We don't have to."
Re:lily tomlin predicted this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Which won't change as much you might think - banks can, and do, freeze funds, refuse transations, etc... etc... on a regular basis.
A few years back we had a virtually identical case locally. A local families house was burnt out - and a helpful neighbor collected cash and checks (made out to the neighbor) to help them out. Said neighbor took a sackful of checks and cash down to the bank and deposited it - two da
I suspect..... (Score:5, Funny)
No one wants that kind of bad PR.
Seems innocent enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I hate large corporations ripping people off as much as the next guy, I don't think this says anything that bad about PayPal. This is my guess at what happened:
So it doesn't seem the company is trying to rip anybody off or laugh over the graves of the dead. In this case.
Re:Seems innocent enough. (Score:5, Funny)
So it doesn't seem the company is trying to rip anybody off or laugh over the graves of the dead.
It seems like you've never used Paypal before.
Re:Seems innocent enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
PayPal Contact: "It sounds like these are charitable donations. Is this non-profit?"
Deadspin: "We're not making a profit off this, no."
Each party walks away thinking something different. Hijinks ensue.
This is why I'm convinced that corporations ought to be obliged to record all phone conversations with their customers, and produce them on request.
Re:Seems innocent enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
PayPal Contact: "It sounds like these are charitable donations. Is this non-profit?"
Deadspin: "We're not making a profit off this, no."
Each party walks away thinking something different. Hijinks ensue.
This is why I'm convinced that corporations ought to be obliged to record all phone conversations with their customers, and produce them on request.
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PayPal Customer Service Agents are available to help you during the following times:
4:00 AM PST to 10:00 PM PST Monday through Friday
6:00 AM PST to 8:00 PM PST on Saturday and Sunday
Call us at: 1-402-935-2050 (a U.S. telephone number)
This is the first non-toll-free customer service line I've seen in a very long time
Perhaps similar to the Somethingawful Katrina fund (Score:5, Interesting)
After more than $20,000 had been donated in a day, PayPal froze the account. PayPal insisted that they would be unable to donate the money that had accumulted before the freeze to the Red Cross, tho bizarely said they could donate it to the United Way. After finding that the United Way had a reputation for inefficiency, SA finally just threw their hands up in disgust and told PayPall to refund the money to the donaters.
Wikipedia has a brief writeup of the issue in their SA article, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somethingawful [wikipedia.org]
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Yes, it is. The level of payment to executives and executive benefits is higher at the United Way. The percentage of payment that directly helps people is greater with the Red Cross, even if the people helping are rude.
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Yep. That's one of the two reasons I refuse to donate to them. If I'm going to donate to a "charity," they had better be sending as much of that money as possible on to the actual people in need, not lining executives' pockets and sending big contributors on fancy vacations.
The other is their insulting method of "partnering" with big companies to make it seem like you're required as an employee to donate.
Re:Perhaps similar to the Somethingawful Katrina f (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck the United Way. It's inefficient to the point of being a scam. The only thing worse is the people who call my house every three months wanting me to donate to some kind of police officer charity fund. It's for the families of officers killed in the line of duty and obviously that's a good cause. I donate to another organization here in Houston that does the same thing so I don't deal with the people on the phone. It doesn't slow them down in the slightest however. I've actually explained to them why I wasn't going to donate, told them I wasn't interested, hung up on them, and then been called back by the same person who got rude about my hanging up on them. I wouldn't piss in those peoples mouths if their throats were on fire much less give them any money.
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The reason why Paypal does this (Score:5, Informative)
To make things clear, the types of accounts that is:
A) New accounts
B) Unable to provide documents
C) Receiving many funds from many separate individuals
If you can't guess already.... accounts created by phishing scams!
The fact that this person is not a phishing scam is a travesty on the part that they were suspended, but the FACT REMAINS that they have no possible means to prove their innocence.
Yes I said prove their innocence. This is a company, not a trial. Likewise, they haven't been found guilty either. The reason for the 180 suspension is obvious:
If the people who sent them money start to increasingly cancel their money payments, then, bingo, the account is a scam. If they don't after a given time, say... 180 days, then hey the account is legitimate.
Paypal sucks, but not in this particular case.
Re:The reason why Paypal does this (Score:5, Insightful)
BZZZZT! WRONG! (Score:4, Insightful)
No it doesn't. All it means is that the person who created the account CLAIMS it's not a phishing scam. Someone who was running a phishing scam would say EXACTLY THE SAME THING that these people are saying. They would CLAIM that they were running a charity donation drive for a soldier's family, they would CLAIM that they were going to send the money to them, and then when Paypal put the money in their bank account, they would wire it to Russia.
The way you do this RIGHT is you set up a separate, legal, non-profit entity, and in the ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION state that the purpose of the organization is to benefit John Smith's family, and that funds may only be distributed for that purpose, and then you open an account in that organization's name, not in your personal name. Then when you advertise that you're a charity, sign up for a charity paypal account, and people pay you through paypal and paypal says you're a charity, you can actually get your money right away.
Paypal is doing the right thing here. There is simply no other way that paypal can offer a donate to charity function without this policy. Does it suck for this partciular 'charity'? Yes. Is it ENTIRELY their fault? Absolutely.
Re:The reason why Paypal does this (Score:5, Insightful)
So why didn't they outline the fact that these things would be "red flags" when it comes to recovering money from them?
Why would they let someone set up an account in that way when it is obviously going to create problems with the recovery of funds?
Obviously, the account never should have been able to be set up as a charity without documentation identifying it as such if it's going to create these kinds of problems down the line. The problem is clearly of PayPal's own devising by allowing the account to be set up as such a trap in the first place.
To make things clear, the types of accounts that is:
A) New accounts
B) Unable to provide documents
C) Receiving many funds from many separate individuals
If you can't guess already.... accounts created by phishing scams!
Even if the person who set up the account requested the wrong type, PayPal should have either not set the account up in that way without the proper documentation, or outline the ramifications of not being able to produce said documentation when the money is withdrawn. I think it's obvious that they didn't do either of those things from the reaction of the site, and the "ho-hum should've known better" reaction of a lot of users here.
These people can provide a lot of documentation, just cannot prove they are a charitable organization, because they aren't, never were, and never should have ended up with an account of that type, but because of PayPal's corporate policy of setting up interest-traps like this (they obviously want to trap as much money as possible by luring people into setting up PayPal accounts in such a way that they will enter a "suspended" state which they can then collect interest on) they are now unable to collect their funds.
If PayPal were interested in helping people not be ripped off, they would demand all of the information required to draw down from a PayPal account at the establishment of the account, not when someone tries to withdraw their hard-earned (or hard-earned, then donated) cash from PayPal.
Paypal sucks, but not in this particular case.
This particular case highlights exactly why PayPal does suck. Because they encourage their staff to use legal technicalities to bar people from receiving money they have a legitimate right to, because it is more profitable and legally prudent to do so than not to.
PayPal sucks because as a corporate citizen they are psychopath with a pathological money addiction.
The same reason every other large corporation sucks.
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It takes simple paper work but a decent amount of time to become an established 501c(3) charitable organization. Often times a disaster or other circumstance will occur that necessitates setting up a non-profit to try to help raise the funds... These organizations want to raise money while the cause is still fresh in people minds, even if it means that they're not formally
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Dramatic overstatement isn't it? (Score:5, Insightful)
This site was not nonprofit, and was having the funds sent to their own, private account.
Yes it's sad, but ask yourself the following: could you trust a nonprofit paypal donation if you knew that they only had to casually mention that they were nonprofit? That they didn't have to prove it?
There's nothing stopping the people who run that website, other than personal honor, from pocketing the cash and giving the finger to everyone who donated. And THAT is why PayPal has those policies. I'm surprised that they'd even hand over the cash after 180 days in fact.
It's sad, yes: but in the future, they should know to make an actual nonprofit organization with its own account. Doing such a thing isn't that hard: you just have to apply, and make a seperate checking account. My club at High School did it, and the people in that club were a bunch of idiots, especially in High School (myself included).
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If there are any laws prohibiting informal charities, paypal is responsible for pointing t
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The only claim that deadspin is a non-profit comes from paypal.
The only claim that Paypal screwed up comes from deadspin. Why would PayPal arbitrarily make an account a non-profit? I think deadspin messed it up, and is now trying to pin the blame on Paypal. Something smells fishy.
Big surprise... (Score:4, Informative)
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That would cement one's name in net-journalism history: the person who documents a "sketchy" Paypal-United Way connection.
Y'know, a bounty system for "evil doing" leaks about corporate behaviour would be really quite awesome. I'd kick in a few bucks as reward for the fellow who can document to a legal standard, the mis-doings of business. It'd help remove the turds from the pool.
Obviously... (Score:3, Funny)
not the first time (Score:5, Insightful)
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PayPal refused to transfer the money to any charity except United Way (which I personally loathe due to their methods and policies). That's like saying they have an exclusive relationship with Microsoft, and they can't transfer any funds to Apple but they'll send them to Microsoft instead.
The fact that UW and RC are charities i
Just remember.. (Score:5, Funny)
Have the donors tried to retract the donations? (Score:2)
The article has a post by someone who mentions haveing a charity account problem with Paypal in the past where they told PayPal to refund everyone's money. If that's possible then the money could be pul
Mod Story Down (Score:5, Insightful)
PayPal is doing what they have to, giving themselves time to investigate to make sure it isn't a scam. Scams like this are rampant, both with soldier funds and hurricane relief funds.
Considering the guy did NOT set this up as a non-profit, he is going to be in for a rude shock come tax time. Once PayPal releases $20,000 to his PERSONAL BANK ACCOUNT the bank will file a "suspicious transaction report" with the gov't. I wouldn't be surprised it HIS BANK didn't then freeze the funds for 30-90 days.
Assuming it is then released, the IRS is going to count that $20K as INCOME and will want 20-33% tax from this person. All his protestations of "but I gave it to the widow's family as a gift!" won't amount for shit.
Sure, he meant well, but he is going to be a living example of "The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions" because PayPal is only the beginning of his descent.
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God help him if he mentioned anything anywhere about "tax deductible" or even "charity".
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Re:Mod Story Down (Score:4, Informative)
No, no, no!
You can receive any amount of money as a gift, and it is NOT TAXABLE. This is why tips are a special category of income. You might think a tip is a "gift" to your server, but the IRS says it's a tip, not a gift, and thus taxable. There used to be these little cards that you could leave on top of your tip that said "This money is a gift, and not a tip". But I don't think they work :)
When you are the one doing the giving, then YOU are the one who has to pay a "gift tax", unless it's under the annual exclusion which is (this year) $12,000 per person you gift. Anything over the annual exclusion goes into the "lifetime estate exclusion" bucket -- so if you pass your estate on to someone after you die, they get to pay taxes on it if the amount of the estate is (this year) $2,000,000 MINUS the lifetime estate exclusion.
WTF does this all mean? These guys can take in $20k and give it to two people without anyone having to pay any taxes at any time. Which is why you were wrong.
If, on the other hand, he gives the full $20k to one person, then $8k is above the exclusion, which means his eventual estate inheritor can now only inherit $1,992,000 tax-free. So he probably still doesn't have to worry, but he shouldn't make this a habit.
I'm not an accountant, but I play one on the Internet!
--Rob
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Get a loan (Score:2)
My "Screwed By Paypal" Story (Score:4, Informative)
Over the past few years, eBay has been slowly tightening the screws to get people to switch to "Business" accounts (i.e., the ones they get a percentage of every transaction on) as opposed to "Personal" accounts. First they made it so that you couldn't accept credit card payments on your personal account. (OK, fine, credit cards charge fees.) If you received a credit card payment on a personal account, you had the choice of upgrading the account or denying that charge. Then they made it so that you couldn't sell on eBay accepting paypal and NOT take credit cards, which meant you had to get a business account. (Not so fine.)
But what really pissed me off was the fact that, sometime in October 2006, they changed the rules again without bothering to tell anyone. They disabled the Deny button for PayPal payments for eBay auction if you had a personal account designated for that auction, and also made it impossible for the Payee to cancel the transaction! Before I just denied the charge, then sent a bill from the my business Paypal account. But now neither I nor my winning bidders could cancel the transaction! And both eBay and Paypal customer service (the phone support of which has been is a pay call to a call center that's re-routed to India) refused to do anything about it. I finally had to wait until it aged out of the system after 30 days, because I refuse to upgrade with a metaphorical gun to my head.
There was no e-mail or account notice of this on Paypal or eBay, just an update to the Terms of Service buried somewhere on their respective websites.
Thanks a lot, eBay. Way to ensure that GCash has an audience ready and willing to switch from Paypal at the first opportunity thanks to your heavy-handed tactics. Ditto for a GAuction, when it comes...
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I had sympathy. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a 180 day hold, not a flat denial (Score:3, Insightful)
My guess is that they had never set one of these up before and when setting up the Paypal account was asked many questions and they ticked of the wrong box.
This is not unreasonable due to those who tend to set these accounts up as scams. But putting the hold it forces the legit people to justify themselves and the bogus people to jump through hoops.
Now if you really want to be upset at someone it's the bankers who try to pull scams that caused these types of rules in the first place. The banking regulations that were tightened in the 90's. The Sarbanes/Oxley regulations that have caused increased accountability and paperwork.
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The Bombing a few months back (Score:2, Funny)
This doesn't surprise me. (Score:4, Informative)
However, Paypal would not let me associate my bank account with the account he created, since it was already associated with my account. So, we just forwarded the money in my friend's account to my account, where I then moved it to my bank account.
Apparently this set off some red flags for Paypal. They called my friend not once, not twice, but five times, each time asking him to reiterate why he created the account, what the money was for, and why I was putting it in my account. Each time he told them what it was for, why it was set up, linked them to the donation web page, etc., and the next day, they would call him back. Apparently they never made notes of the fact that they called him the previous day.
I'm very glad that I removed the money from my account as soon as possible, Paypal has been known to freeze accounts for various reasons, and it seemed like they were looking for a reason to do so in this case. The thing that I found most odd is that they put you through hoops to speak to a real person over there, but try to do something nice for someone, and they grill you like a criminal in an interrogation room.
If Paypal weren't so ubiquitous, especially among eBayers, I would never touch it again.
Just ponder this for a moment and it makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
1. An account is opened.
2. A LOT of people pay towards this account, within rather little time, accumulating also a LOT of money.
3. The amount should be withdrawn, all at once and also rather shortly after it's been set up.
Where do I know that from... Ah heck, pick your favorite fraud scheme, I'm not teaching scamming 101 here.
It certainly isn't in PPs intention to keep a soldier's family from receiving their money. But I can well understand that they want to make sure that it does INDEED go to the family and not to some con artist.
Or we'll soon see headlines akin to "PayPal helps con artist to pull off scam", and people will get their undies in a knot because PP doesn't do jack against them and doesn't even try to stop these things from happening.
Never use paypal! (Score:2)
If your bank said "we have your money, but we're not going to give it to you for 6 months" you could work your way up the bank chain, or to the appropriate government agency.
Same if your employer said "yeah, we owe you money, but we'll pay it out in June".
Paypal? Nothing. They say no, and you're screwed. And they say no a lot. I think they just hired David Spade, actually...
What tweaks me is that in other cases (the Katrina fund i
Stop and think about it for a moment... (Score:2, Insightful)
Half and half (Score:2)
I feel sorry for Adam Knox, his family, and his platoon.
I don't feel a damned bit sorry for Deadspin. And I hope "The douche" who wrote the story on Deadspin "goes home tonight and is fucking beaten by Jason Kidd's wife" and then "have their entrails dragged through the street".
And I wish Slashdot could learn to not hype stories where there really is no big story, and to check all the facts before they post it. But that's about as likely to happen as i
Paypal sucks! Rabble rabble! (Score:3, Informative)
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Inaccurate title (Score:3, Insightful)
The site author neglects to disclose a few things:
1. Are they paying taxes on the money?
2. How did they disclose their tax status to *both* donors and PayPal?
From the article, they are at fault, not paypal. It sounds like they tried to make some tax-free cash without setting up a non-profit.
So if PayPal just gave them the money, and the IRS stepped in, then PayPal would be blasted for allowing this to happen.
I'm not a fan of PayPal, but this story smells either: bogus, or skewed. Either way it's somewhat inaccurate and shouldn't be taken at face value.
I smell class action lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)
Whether you group those whose funds have been frozen by paypal, or you group those who donated the funds there is definately a class action to be made here. Paypal freezes accounts when they have accumlated large sums and then pockets the interest; they need to be stopped.
Nothing new... (Score:5, Insightful)
On top of that, atleast in one point, even fscking janitors could get to see your account info there!
It does get better tho... Rather than working honestly, in one case i had, i got a fraudulent order, found out about that myself
a day later, e-mailed them about the transaction needs to be reversed. This got to happen due to the fact, that they do not require any authentication at all to deposit more into paypal, as long as you have username & password.
I explained what has happened in detail etc. meanwhile, calming the victim down (who's account was stolen, victim of a phishing attack). I wasn't going to just send the funds to her, then the insane transfer fees would be lost etc. Total amount was approximately 150.
Almost 2 months later, i finally got a word from there... Nope, they hadn't read my e-mails, it seems it was automated message, saying the funds had been refunded etc. but the thing is, who's money it was, never got it. She noticed my Myspace profile 6months later, and she hadn't got STILL got it, while paypal had taken the funds from me.
In effect: Paypal decided to take the funds, without refunding them.
Nevermind the insanely high fraud amounts with them! I dropped them, after using them years and years, guess they calculated the
one time cash was worth to them more than continuing transfer fees.
People, don't use paypal, there is honest companies out there to replace them... That being moneybookers!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
If you are going to start a legitimate charity drive, you need to follow the prescribed procedures, or you WILL encounter hassles like this one. If not from PayPal, then from the IRS.
Re:Thanks, Slashdot! Worst Paypal scam yet! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Thanks, Slashdot! Worst Paypal scam yet! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Paypal has to put these sorts of safeguards in place since, as has been pointed out elsewhere, the way this account was set up looks *exactly* like a phishing scam account.
Re: (Score:2)
The freeze then creates a 90 day delay from now, but 180 sounds more dramatic.
mod parent up!! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Google will never launch any product that directly competes with anything EBAY owns or does. Why? Because EBAY is (judging by the number of sponsored links and such) the largest advertiser on google by a large margin.
Re: (Score:2)
The money is not for the family (Score:3, Insightful)