

Google, Can Indie Stone Have Their Money? - oewolf
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/26/google-can-indie-stone-have-their-money/

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dexen
Can Google Checkout (or any payment processor, really) be forced not to profit
from transactions they refused to complete? Pass all the money either to the
seller or the buyer, no fees, as they (rightly) refused to serve the
transaction. Without delay, to ensure no revenue from interest either.

If there was no incentives in leaving transaction in such `limbo', the payment
processors would be less hasty to lock up accounts.

~~~
chc
Seems to me it's nothing but an assumption on your part that they _do_ profit
from these transactions. The comments on the OP suggest otherwise.

You'll see two opposite complaints about payment processors:

1\. They let fraud run rampant.

2\. They're too hasty to lock accounts.

In order to have less of one, you have to have more of the other.

As for why customer service is so sketchy: Google's customer service is
infamously bad across the board. It's not specific to Checkout.

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singular
This is vastly disturbing. Surely there is a gap in the market here for a
payment processor that doesn't do shit like this? Are there any startups in
this area?

Or is this just an inevitable result of working with money (having to be
_very_ careful to avoid scammers/criminals)? I really can't believe that's the
case though.

As @dexen said, perhaps there should be some provisions put in place to
disincentivise current processors at least.

Perhaps bitcoin has a role to play to avoid such situations, Or would we just
have the same problems over again? Perhaps somebody more knowledgeable than I
could comment.

~~~
pilif
> This is vastly disturbing. Surely there is a gap in the market here for a
> payment processor that doesn't do shit like this?

While I agree that there is probably a market for a payment processor that
doesn't punish TOS violations, I really doubt that's a market anybody would
want to play in.

Google's TOS disallow the use of the word "donation" unless you are a non-
profit organization. And "donation" is precisely the term used.

For every "benign" TOS violation, I'm sure there must be hundreds of malicious
ones trying to scam google or consumers out of their money. Not making
exceptions at least is fair and users know exactly where they stand.

Still. I think Google should maybe

a) warn users before just banning them (though even this might lead to people
trying to game the system)

b) hand out the money either back to the buyers or to the just banned seller
(after manual investigation which might be what Google doesn't want to do)

c) maybe provide an appeal process, though, again, this might lead to people
gaming that.

~~~
singular
It's the 'frozen without explanation' aspect I don't like. I didn't realise
that this was a legitimate ToS violation, but agreed, they should have at
least warned them first.

I suspect that evil people ruin it for everyone, money is just too tempting
for people with 'flexible morality'.

EDIT: But still, these providers should do better, regardless.

~~~
jws
When google puts robots in charge of enforcing policy without a mechansims for
the affected humans to request human oversight, that is the very definition of
dehumanizing.

I wonder if you could sell hand crafted, polished oak, donation boxes with
google checkout and not be attacked by their robots.

------
spot
<http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/04/happy-days/>

------
ansy
Why doesn't Indie Stone use Kickstarter? They fit the model perfectly,
Kickstarter has no history of withholding money, and 5% is quite reasonable.

~~~
TillE
It's a good question. They've certainly reached the threshold of being a
serious project, given the amount of press coverage they've received in the
past.

The whole mess is an object lesson about the need to take non-development
aspects of business seriously. They're trying to accept payments without
reading the terms they agreed to. They're trying to run a web server while
clearly not being experts on that (there's no need for a VPS or a dedicated
server when their site is a perfect fit for something like Squarespace). If
you can't afford to bring in an expert, you've really got to do the due
diligence yourself, or it's bound to blow up in your face.

------
oewolf
Seems it's been solved now:
<http://projectzomboid.com/blog/index.php/2011/04/happy-days/> :)

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mgkimsal
I don't get it. Google Checkout sweeps money to my account every few days. I
was confused at first about how it was going to work, because I didn't see a
'transfer money' option, but it's done it automatically for me for two years.

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lucraft
Using the word "Donate" to describe a, uh, donation is reasonable. Hiding
strange terms in the TOS no one is going to read and then keeping your
customers money is not reasonable.

~~~
spot
How do you know they kept the money instead of returning it to those who
bought/donated?

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grav1tas
Sometimes I wonder if these payment processing companies behave like this so
they can keep their books straight/solvent.

