
Ask HN: Experiences with PayPal? Would you recommend or kill it with fire? - may
Hey HN,<p>I'm gradually working gathering a few diverse income sources (as side-projects), all of which pay me via PayPal.<p>As I'm sure we all have, I've heard all sorts of horror stories about PayPal, but I've only heard the strong negatives -- mainly account freezes due to a sudden spike in income that triggers PayPal's anti-fraud measures.  I've also heard about delays in releasing money or getting the money out of PayPal.<p>So, I ask:<p><pre><code>  * What are your first/second-hand experiences using PayPal?  
  ** And for your larger amounts of money (say, $500-$2000 a month)?
  * Potential problems/things to watch out for?
  * Any viable alternatives? (I know about WePay)</code></pre>
======
jseliger
I used Paypal to accept payment for an editing assignment. As soon as I got
the payment, I transferred it from Paypal to my bank account, figuring that I
was safe. After I completed the work, the client apparently did a chargeback
on his credit card, so Paypal did the logical thing: _withdrew the money from
my account retroactively_.

I wrangled customer support, got nowhere, and had a fat negative balance in my
account, but I figured I was okay -- until six months later, when I got sent
to collections, when I gave collections the money and then sued Paypal in
small claims court (this might not have been the wisest move in the world;
given recent experiences: [http://jseliger.com/2010/08/28/dont-rent-an-
apartment-from-n...](http://jseliger.com/2010/08/28/dont-rent-an-apartment-
from-navid-abedian-in-tucson-arizona-or-how-i-learned-to-be-wary-of-lawsuits/)
, I don't think I'd bother with the same course of action today). Their EULA
says you can't do that, but they offered me half the money to make me go away,
which I did.

The moral of the story: I no longer use Paypal. Ever. For anything.

Moral #2: the horror stories are real.

EDIT: One other thing -- if you are selling virtual services, Paypal will not
back you up. If I'd been smarter, I would've shipped _something_ to the
client's address, with a tracking number, which might've helped me.

~~~
Keyframe
I don't want to sound harsh or anything, but how/why exactly is paypal to
blame here? Client did a chargeback, paypal did what they must do. It's you
and your client at work here, not paypal.

~~~
jseliger
_I don't want to sound harsh or anything, but how/why exactly is paypal to
blame here?_

It's Paypal's fault if the company makes it appear that I have the money
safely in hand... and then it turns out that I don't. If someone sends me a
check, and I deposit it, within a day or two I know the money is mine and
can't be yanked back.

Furthermore, they don't make it obvious that they'll do this. It's yet another
"gotcha." As another commenter noted, Paypal is great, right up to the point
you have a problem, at which point they're terrible to me.

No company is more indicative of the power of Metcalfe's law than this one:
that another, less jerky company hasn't superseded them is amazing.

~~~
qeorge
_If someone sends me a check, and I deposit it, within a day or two I know the
money is mine and can't be yanked back._

Not true. Any and all financial transactions are reversible, per US law.

 _They don't make it obvious that they'll do this_

This is a standard policy for all electronic funds transfers, not specific to
Paypal.

------
ayb
We do a relatively large amount of volume through Paypal, roughly mid to high
five figures per month. Have been using them for more than five years and have
done about mid to high seven figures with them in that time.

Some of that is eBay sales transactions, some is merchant account transactions
for online stores, and some is recurring billing for a subscription site.

We have had our account frozen several times with substantial amounts of money
in it (like a whole month's worth) and had some stressful moments when we were
trying to figure out how to get the cash out of there so we could pay our
American Express bill on time.

Over the past 5 years we have had numerous designated representatives but all
in all they were difficult to connect with and provided little value and I
can't recall a single instance where they were able to go above and beyond to
help us. (The same also goes for the eBay Powerseller representatives we have
had over the years.)

We have had random instances where funds are flagged as being questionable and
Paypal seems to be inconsistent. For example, just 2 days ago we sold 2 items
on eBay totalling about $2500. Paypal/eBay said the transaction was approved
and told us to go ahead and ship it, so we made preparations to do that. The
next day they flagged the transaction and told us that unless we could provide
proof it had already been shipped the funds were going to be pulled. Our
options were to either refund immediately or just wait and see what happened,
which is what we are doing. We just need to be careful because they could
arbitrarily just take the funds in a state like this and we would be out both
the cash and the merchandise.

Ultimately this sort of stuff has driven us to migrate our online stores over
to Braintree.

If you are just doing consulting it shouldn't be too bad, just always remember
that there is no amount of business you could do with them that would cause
them to care about you as a customer.

~~~
may
Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

------
jasonkester
PayPal is great until you have a problem. Then it's a nightmare.

Once you fall afoul of them, which can happen for something so trivial and non
out of the ordinary that it takes a while to even understand what they could
be having a problem with, they'll lock down your account and essentially shut
down your business until you jump through a long series of hoops, each more
difficult and less reasonable than the last.

If you're lucky, after a couple weeks of opaque and contradictory
communication with them, they'll let you continue running your business. If
not, you get to scramble to find another way to collect payment.

My advice is to skip all the above and go straight to the "find another way to
collect payment" step. PayPal would be a great way thing if they were
reasonable, or even rational. But they're not. It's just not worth it.

------
patio11
For the last several years I've done a few thousand dollars of sales a month
through Paypal, and recently I have also been getting a significant portion of
my consulting earnings delivered that way. That resulted in significant spikes
in income (I won't tell you what I make in a month consulting, but you can
infer it is probably more than $1 ~ $2,000).

In four years, I've had one glitch (which I was able to work around) and two
disputed transactions. All issues were addressed with quiet professionalism,
as I would expect from e.g. a bank.

I have no major complaints.

~~~
aerique
Is the above directly through PayPal or via E-junkie? (Or am I asking a non-
sensical question because I'm not familiar with the latter service?)

~~~
patio11
Long story short: they click a button that looks like Paypal on my site, which
links to an e-junkie URL, which 301s them to a Paypal URL, where they pay.
Paypal then calls an e-junkie URL, which does some magic and calls a URL on my
site. Simultaneously with this calling, the user is directed back to my site.

------
epc
If you're more than a casual user you'll have to set up a Merchant account.

When you set up a Paypal button, use the Merchant ID instead of your email
address. Even better, use the public key encryption to encrypt the form.

Don't let money accumulate in your Paypal account. Or any of the alternative
systems for that matter.

See if your bank will allow you to have a separate account for inbound
transfers, separate from your primary checking account. Link this secondary
account to any services you want to use, not your primary account. When you
receive money, transfer it from this secondary account to your primary
account. You still are legally on the hook for legitimately reversed charges,
however this lessens the opportunity to have your primary account drained due
to fraud.

If you're doing frequent transactions (multiple per day) look at utilizing the
Instant Payment Notification (basically a webhook) to get an instant notice
about payment and other activities, rather than rely on email delivery.

Look at Amazon Payments and Google Checkout (may have more country limitations
than Paypal has).

Have a backup plan ready for the day Paypal does decide to freeze your
account, for whatever reason.

------
Anechoic
I've been using PayPal to collect payments for physical goods that I sell on
my site for about two years now. I typically do about $2k in business per
months. I've had a couple of months where I've offered discounted and sales
rose to around $10k with no hiccups at all.

I have an Amazon Payments account as a fallback if I need it, but so far I
haven't (knock on wood).

I know all about the PayPal horror stories, but there is one feature that
makes me stick with them: the PayPal debit card which is linked directly to
the PayPal account. A customer can make a purchase at 10:00am and at 10:01am I
can withdraw the money at an ATM, no waiting a week or so for the bank
transfer. Since I deal with physical items, this quick turnaround has really
helped me with inventory, and no one else offers that kind of access to the
cash (other options will allow you to withdraw the cash immediately via a
direct bank transfer, but as I said, that can take several days).

The moment a bank or another site offers that kind of direct cash access +
easy web form processing is the moment I drop PayPal, but for now, they're the
only game in town.

~~~
StavrosK
Are you in the US? I want one of these cards, but they seem to only be
available for US accounts...

~~~
nenolod
Yes, the PayPal debit cards are US-only. They also had virtual cards, which
was an intriguing product, but it got cancelled when they got rid of the
browser plugin.

------
SteveC
I use the European PayPal which I believe has different regulations (for the
better) than the American one. I've never encountered a problem with getting
funds in 3 years of heavy use.

We have had a few chargebacks which in some cases were decided in our favour.
Afterwards I simply refunded the customer informing them they should have just
asked for a refund :)

Any time I've had to contact their technical support via email, which is rare,
it's been useless.

Their APIs are a mess. Documentation is all over the place and far too
verbose. Many of the APIs overlap leading to further confusion. This isn't
much of a problem if you use a cart or Rails Plugin but if you're coding your
own stuff from scratch prepare to suffer. That said, once you understand it
and get it working it's actually pretty good. You'll find there's little you
can't do using PayPal.

The sandbox does a decent job of allowing you to run tests, but it does have
some frustrations. You have to go through many steps to set things up. They
have an IPN generator but it leaves out some important notification types for
subscriptions. It's also totally separate from your real account, so even if
things work in the sandbox, if a setting differs in your real account it will
break in production (this has happened to me).

Their reports are okay but the website is pretty slow so getting at them is a
pain. I hate going into the website because of the slow page loading.

If you do go ahead with PayPal I would recommend using it for a large volume
of small one-off payments (means a lower risk from chargebacks). I use it for
subscriptions but don't like the fact that if I have a problem with them I'll
have to get those customers to sign up again. Always transfer money from it
once it gets over $100 and create a separate bank account dedicated to PayPal.
Regularly transfer the funds from it into your real account. Always have a
backup payment source so you aren't losing sales if you encounter problems.

------
timbre
Here's a horror story from the other side (the buyer's -- or person-who-
wanted-to-be-a-buyer's) of PayPal.

I'm American, but 7 or so years ago when this happened was living abroad, had
no credit card, and wanted to buy things online. So I created a PayPal account
and transferred $100 in from a bank account. I then tried to make a purchase,
but found that as an outside-the-US user, I would not be able to make payments
until I registered a credit card with them. I couldn't qualify for a credit
card at the time... oh well. So I tried to move the money back to my bank
account. But that transaction was covered by the same policy; I wouldn't be
able to do it until I registered a credit card with them.

Looking through the ToS, I found that this rule was in there; an international
user had to register a credit card in order to disburse any funds from the
account. So the fool in this story is indisputably me. Still, I found it hard
to believe that the system was set up to allow black hole accounts, which
money could enter but never leave. Over a lengthy email exchange, I was
assured that such accounts were indeed possible, and that I had created one.

Eventually I let go of the $100. But I never let go my scorn for PayPal.

------
basicxman
Call me greedy but the fees associated with money transfer systems like PayPal
for amounts of $500+ are just too big for me to bother using PayPal for
anything but small stuff (mind you I do love it for that and online shopping
cart payments). Unfortunately there isn't much else besides old school cheques
or money wiring (which is inconvenient for the client).

Pros of PayPal IMO: ~Handles multiple currencies well (I get paid in CAD, USD,
and EUR). ~Easy for clients, takes care of basic invoices, keeps a history of
everything. ~Payments from other accounts or credit cards are nearly instant
~Decent API for implementing a 3rd party shopping cart quickly (selling goods,
donations).

Cons: ~Bank transfers take 6-8 business days (very inconvenient, I understand
things take time but c'mon, we live in a very automated world now). ~It's
digital money, PayPal could go bankrupt and you'd be, well, screwed over.
~Support emails generally take awhile, from other peoples experiences, this
seems to be a Canadian thing.

~~~
may
Re: FDIC. One is quasi-OK if the bank holding the money fails, but if PayPal
itself goes under, you could be in deep shit.

[https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/travelers-
ou...](https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/travelers-outside)

------
philwelch
PayPal requires no email address verification.

I have the email address pwelch@gmail.com.

Every P. Welch in the world seems to be under the mistaken impression they
have the email address pwelch@gmail.com.

PayPal has no mechanism for the legitimate owner of a given email address to
stop people from registering PayPal accounts on that address, or to fix it
afterwards.

Aside from that annoyance, I haven't had any problems with them.

------
rumpelstiltskin
What are viable alternatives to paypal?

~~~
trustfundbaby
The silence in response to your question speaks volumes.

------
nkurz
No personal problems with them, but I found it unsettling that despite
repeated attempts to report a what I considered a rather severe vulnerability
in one of their services a few years ago, I could get no response from them.

It was more of a privacy problem than a direct monetary one (able to view the
registered address for any user given their email) but this made it clear to
me that they had some serious problems with security.

I continue to use them to make payments as a user, but prefer not to trust
them with access to my full bank account. As a business, I'd avoid them if
there was a reasonable alternative.

~~~
may
That does sound like a serious privacy flaw. Damn.

------
heimidal
PayPal is absolutely horrible. Here's why:

Two years ago, a friend owed me about $200. To pay me back, he sold a camera
he owned on eBay and then promptly sent me the $200.

Another friend was in some trouble trying to pay for textbooks, so I offered
to loan him the money. I sent him that $200 via PayPal and he went to the
school bookstore to purchase books.

A week later, the buyer of the camera made a claim against my friend stating
that he misrepresented the camera. Despite the fact that I had nothing to do
with the transaction, they un-moved the money my friend had sent me, sending
my account negative $200. I've sworn ever since that I will never do business
with PayPal again.

------
psadauskas
Has anyone used Amazon FPS or Google Checkout? Anything to report, or are they
still fringe/niche that the normal customer won't recognize it, and avoid your
site?

------
takrupp
\- We used PayPal for two years running a hookah ecommerce site. We did about
$3000-6000 in revenue per month. We chose paypal because no other payment
processor we knew of would work with a "tobacco" related website. We had no
problems with PayPal. It was easy to implement, 95% reliable, and no problems
getting the money out.

\- With that said here are some tips: Don't ramp up with paypal right away.
Start running a small business out of it, somethings doing a few hundred
dollars a month and ramp it up. If you are going to do an odd amount of
business (like a product launch) than call them up and give them a heads up.
They will make a note in the system.

\- Alternatives: We found another payment processor through a drop shipping
company we use. Because they have a much larger account, they we're able to
get a cheaper payment processor to look the other way in regards to tobacco
sales.

------
Eliezer
FYI: Singularity Institute has been going through Paypal for around 9 years or
so, no problems yet.

------
bryanh
Been using it for BitBuffet.com. Right now, we're not looking at enough volume
to warrant the difficulty in switching over. Unless you are looking at 2k+ a
month, its almost easier to just stick with PayPal.

My rule #1 with PayPal: drain it weekly or after $200 bucks accumulates.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I go one step further: I transfer most of the money in the PayPal bank account
to another account that they don't have access to regularly.

~~~
bryanh
I'm pretty sure they don't have the ability to drain your bank account for a
dispute, but I could be incorrect.

------
pathik
I'm a freelancer from India and Paypal is my primary payment processor as
there are no other viable options.

Everything Paypal does is generally logical, even the chargeback handling and
the occasional freezing due to suspected fraud.

Though I would prefer it if Paypal refrained from trying to handle disputes
and just concentrated on handling payment transfers. Chargebacks are the bane
of a freelancer's life especially when there is no proof of the service
provided.

Paypal payments should be like actual cash transactions, once you pay the
money to someone, it should be gone for good. If you have any disputes, handle
it yourself.

Though I don't know how Paypal could make that work with credit card payments
where buyers have the option to initiate a chargeback.

------
NginUS
Prohibitive address requirements.

My building's mailbox at the apartment complex where I live/work is easily &
frequently compromised by mischievous kids, so receiving mail here isn't an
option.

Instead I use a separate P.O. Box for both business and personal mailing
addresses.

My shipping & receiving is at a local Pack & Ship, except special deliveries
which are scheduled at a gated storage unit. Neither of which can be expected
to receive mail on my behalf.

When I wrote to PayPal after seeing that they disallow the use of P.O. Boxes,
I thought of these horror stories we read about with them and basically
decided not to go ahead using them before they replied.

This decision was reinforced afterward when they eventually did reply, it
wasn't clear if they'd even read what I'd written or if it was scanned by a
bot. I received what seemed a 'canned' response that was worded such that it
was clear they would be 'sticking to their guns/policy' and weren't going to
even try to be helpful.

So, they won't be connecting to my business account.

On the flip side, the one good thing about them is their adoption of the
Verisign cellular keychain token, which changes the multi-factor
authentication code over the air every minute or so.

------
neilk
The main thing to realize is that all payment options suck. So, you should
architect your site such that it's possible to have other options for payment,
and not keep a large amount of money in their systems.

It just occured to me that maybe there is an opportunity for someone to make a
payment-systems abstraction layer. Does that exist yet?

~~~
patio11
<http://e-junkie.com> operates as a payment abstraction layer for a few
services (Paypal, Google Checkout, 2CheckOut, etc). That is my primary use for
them these days, although they do other things, too.

From the perspective of my website, I don't care whether someone pays with
Paypal or Google Checkout. Both transactions are wrapped by e-junkie in a
consistent API, then POSTed to a URL I gave them. Some Rails magic handles it
from there.

~~~
neilk
They are more like what I would call a shopping cart provider, but the effect
is the same for many businesses.

------
happybuy
I've used Paypal in the past for online sales and it worked relatively ok.
However there were issues I found including: \- Bugs in their API \-
Inconsistency in the operation of their forms \- Poor customer support via
email

But the speed of setup, relative low cost fees and ability to gather US dollar
payments from outside of the US meant it was, at the time, the only viable
small scale solution.

In the future for anything larger I'd do more thorough investigations on
looking for alternatives. I also wouldn't want to have my business completely
depend upon the whims of Paypal based upon their lack of good customer
service.

------
pacomerh
Paypal is very flawed, besides the fact that you can get accounts with almost
no verification, and that tech support won't give you reasonable answers to
valid questions, I've been trying to pay for stuff for a long time now. I keep
getting an "insufficient funds" warning, while i have plenty of money on the
account to cover 3 times what i'm paying for. I've talked to them twice and
they keep saying that the system is going through malfunction. It's been like
over three weeks now. So yeah it's not a good system, but what are the
alternatives?

~~~
nenolod
Google Checkout is a good alternative. We clear almost as much money through
Google as we do through PayPal and they strictly concentrate on processing
payments... unlike PayPal which tries to do more than that.

But, it is only available in a few countries so it may not be available to
you.

------
thailandstartup
A layer of abstration away from Paypal is the best solution.

I use Plimus for payment processing, and they accept payment by Paypal. So I
can accept Paypal payments without the possibility of ever having to deal
directly with Paypal.

As as customer, I used to like to use Paypal because it was convenient and
low-risk. I'd never deal directly with them as a merchant. I feel sure that my
relationship with Paypal would become the 'top idea in my mind' at some stage
and might take aways days or weeks of productivity.

------
acabal
I clear about $2000/month through Paypal. My experience has been mixed.

Their name recognition and well-established subscription API is a good choice
for my subscription-based web apps.

However they limit the amount of money you can withdraw per month unless you
"verify" (or something) your account by giving them details like your SSN or
additional bank details. Might be a turnoff for you if you're doing this
strictly small-time.

As far as their anti-fraud measures, I've been stung by them repeatedly. I
don't have a home base; I travel while working. This means I'm constantly
accessing Paypal from different IP's in different countries, some of them
scary-sounding to a bank-like entity (Thailand, Vietnam). Their system
_automatically_ freezes your account if they detect too much access from
foreign IP's.

When your account is frozen, you can continue to receive money but you can't
wire it from PP to your bank. So basically if you're unable to convince them
that you're legit, Paypal has stolen your money and you'll never see it again.

For this reason, I never keep a balance of more than about $300 in my PP
account. I always withdraw immediately as soon as it goes over that balance to
hedge my bets against Paypal freezing my account permanently.

To be fair to PP, every time I've called them I get a very friendly person on
the phone who is obviously US-based (a nice touch these days). They've always
restored my account after asking me some basic personal info questions.
However there's no way to put a permanent note on it saying "this guy travels
a lot, stop freezing it you idiots." In fact I've (no joke) had it re-frozen
right as I was in the middle of talking with a service rep who had un-frozen
my account 30 seconds earlier.

Additionally, the PP website will demand all sorts of scary-sounding
information from you to automatically un-freeze your account (utility bills
from your listed address, scans of checks from your listed bank account,
etc.). Problem for me is that since I have no home base, my listed address is
my parent's house; if I send a utility bill without my name or my company's
name listed, will they believe me? And you can't change your personal details
once your account is frozen, so there's no way to go back and change the
address to something you can fudge into a working solution.

But fortunately in the past I've just called them in person and they've sorted
it out with minimum hassle. Though that's mighty inconvenient for me when I
have to find a Skype-capable internet cafe in a Vietnamese rice-farming
village at 3am. (I've since bought my own mic just for this reason).

And finally, after calling to complain so often, they offered to mail me a
security card to stop this from happening. It's a little debit-card shaped
thing that generates a number when you press a button. You enter that number
when logging in so they know it's you. I haven't had my account frozen since,
but the threat looms constantly and I'm seriously considering switching to a
real merchant account/cc gateway setup instead of using Paypal.

EDIT: Re. chargebacks/returns: I sell subscriptions to my apps so no physical
goods are exchanged. Over the course of my ~3 years in business maybe 3 or 4
people have requested a chargeback via Paypal (had they asked me directly I
would have been happy to oblige but they went straight to a Paypal dispute).
In every case, Paypal has sided with __me __, with almost no action on my part
required. That is I get an email saying a disupte has been filed and PP will
contact me if they need more info from me. A few hours later I get another
email saying the disupte has been resolved in my favor. This has happened
every time.

From what I hear, this is not the usual for Paypal. Maybe the low number of
chargebacks and high transaction volume gives points in my favor. But everyone
else says virtual goods via Paypal are just asking to be hit with chargebacks,
so caveat emptor.

~~~
nso
Get a virtual server (shouldn't cost you more than $10 a month) in the US
which you RDP into when you need to log into Paypal. You could also set it up
with VPN and use any other computer as long as it has VPN software installed.

To clarify: this should prevent your Paypal account from being locked as they
not only see that your IP is in the US, but that it's the same every time.

~~~
acabal
I tried that before with the VPS that runs my app. Problem is they are
granular down to the city. My PP address is in Illionis and I've had it frozen
when accessing it from San Francisco.

------
rfreytag
Kill PayPal with something having a long radioactive half-life.

I bought toys for my 1-year-old's Christmas and they were delivered stinking
of smoke. The ad clearly said - "smoke free." When I complained to eBay they
simply would not help (one person did at first and then flipped to the party
line).

eBay will never get my business again as a consumer or as someone that uses
payment mechanisms for business. Their DNA is defective.

------
gte910h
Paypal is _great_ as a backup payment system. However it's trigger happy
shutdown procedures make it a horrible single point of failure.

You sound like you're at the critical mass where you should be able to use a
payment gateway. You should offer both as a mechanism, then if paypal tosses
you out, you're set.

------
moon_of_moon
If you lose your password, the hoops you have to go through to recover it are
amazing. Pro tip: don't ever lose your password. Or better, as others have
suggested, sweep money out as soon as it arrives.

------
thinkcomp
We're working on an alternative, but it's not quite ready for internet
payments yet. <http://www.thinklink.com>

------
known
I'm a happy customer of <http://www.ccavenue.com/content/comparative.jsp>

------
known
<https://www.gpal.net/?req=useragreement> is an alternative

~~~
what
What an odd collection of people serving as advisors :
<https://www.gpal.net/gp?req=about>

They're all firearm enthusiasts and members of the NRA, probably how they all
met. There's a guy named Ulysses S. Grant. One of them is a hedge fund
manager, orthopedic surgeon and conducts clinical trials.

They also all seem to be affiliated with calguns.net, "The California Firearms
Owner's Home On The Internet". That forum even has a board devoted to GPal,
which is filled with support tickets from people asking for their money:
[http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/forumdisplay.php?s=efe632...](http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/forumdisplay.php?s=efe632f6a653fc9f58347b5ff30a56eb&f=201)

------
chaosmachine
If you want to accept PayPal, but don't want to deal with PayPal directly,
take a look at Fastspring.

------
cabalamat
I only ever use PayPal for anything if there are no other alternatives.

------
lakeeffect
interchange, say what again.

~~~
lakeeffect
furthermore the fraud in the states is the duty of the lender to secure.
Charges get passed to customers as a result of classical economic fundamentals
but that being said, most strong traders, lenders, or interchangers wish to do
business in a timely fashion.

------
pinksoda
PayPal once made me refund every customer in the last 6 months. They said it
was the only way to unfreeze my account. I gave them the thumbs up because I
had no other options at the time, and they said, "you have to manually refund
them one-by-one yourself and then call us when it is done". It was really
strange.

They permanently froze my account after I refunded everyone and refused to
talk to me when I called. I wasn't able to get a merchant account and I lost
thousands of PayPal recurring subscriptions. This was the death of my first
start-up.

PayPal is a scam and it's not as uncommon as you think. If you're using
PayPal, your time will come. I didn't think they would do it to me either,
they never bothered me once until all of this went down.

~~~
theli0nheart
Amazing how they can get away with pulling stunts like that. Why did they
freeze your account in the first place?

BTW, I feel like this exact post has been posted before.

Edit: Yep, it has. See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1598227>

~~~
pinksoda
They froze it randomly. They said I was automatically flagged but couldn't
tell me why. When I pushed the issue with someone higher up, they didn't care.
I couldn't find anyone who cared. They bullied me and sent me around in
circles until I gave up. How was I supposed to fix a problem if they cuoldn't
tell me what it was? You can read a lot of stories like my own on
www.paypalsucks.com - a lot of the stories are similar to mine, where the
customer is left in the dark or bullied around until they give up.

------
alnayyir
Infinite fire, too touchy/important to be worth chancing it. Get someone well
reviewed/recommended with data portability built into the contract.

------
lakeeffect
Utilize Odesk.

