
WePay Drops 600lbs of ice in front of PayPal Conference - sophmonroe
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/26/wepay-ice-paypal/
======
bobf
The funny part, as TC mentions, is that PayPal pulled a similar guerrilla
marketing stunt in its early days by paying people to wear PayPal t-shirts at
an eBay conference. Could we say... revenge is a dish _best served cold_?

~~~
mlinsey
I think you mean PayPal pulled a similar _guerilla_ marketing stunt, unless
the people wearing the t-shirts were trained monkeys. ;)

~~~
hugh3
If you want to be nitpicky, gorillas aren't monkeys.

edit: Really, people? You modded me up to 17 for making a nitpick about simian
taxonomy?

~~~
kragen
Yes. If you look at my recent comment history, you'll see that, by far, the
most effective strategy I've found for getting comments with lots of upvotes
is to find a factual error in somebody else's comment and correct it in a
clear and unambiguous fashion; and within that constraint, the shorter the
better. You'll see that I got a comment consisting entirely of "[citation
needed]" voted up to 7.

Long comments have essentially no chance of being voted up significantly.
Other things that have very little chance: speculations about the implications
of something, wild and surprising analogies, speculation on others' motives,
advocacy of norms. This is really unfortunate, because those are the comments
I most value reading. I really get no value, beyond a little humor, from
reading that gorillas aren't monkeys, since I already know that.

~~~
mlinsey
Depends on who you are. If you look at _my_ comment history, you'll find
several very long comments with many, many upvotes. On the other hand, when I
tried to do the "quick one line correction" thing in this thread, it didn't
turn out too well! (though at least it was a nice setup for hugh3)

------
jacquesm
What a funny way to grab a ton of free press.

They must have planned this for some time given the logistics involved and the
time it takes to freeze quantity of water that size and get a nice and clear
chunk.

My own paypal saga isn't over yet, though there have been some surprising
developments.

I sincerely hope that someone will one of these days replace paypal with a
better way of doing peer-to-peer payments, but online fraud being what it is
the question is if it actually can be done without in the long run incurring
the same kind of penalties that paypal use has now.

After all, when you're just starting out with a payment service most or even
all of your transactions are legitimate. But once the service gets more
popular there will be an inevitable influx of scammers, whitewashers, identity
thieves,phishers and other less desirable elements. To get rid of the one
without hurting the other is a very difficult problem.

~~~
zaidf
I hope I don't jinx myself but I have been using PayPal for better part of the
decade. So far there have been very few issues. No random account locks.

More recently, I had two payment disputes by scumbags. In both instances, I
called up paypal and less than 2 minutes of conversation later, I had my money
back in my account. Blew me away. I honestly had written those disputes off
going by what I'd heard.

I remain in two minds about attacking paypal for account blocks. Almost every
company that dares go after this space will have to do their fair share of
blocks _or_ risk losing money to fraud. Obviously when you do blocks, innocent
bystanders may get caught. I don't think that is a paypal problem as much as
it is an industry reality. PayPal's just at a scale where you hear a lot more
stories.

Until there is a competitor with some sort of scale that does not need to do
account blocks, I'm not sold on attacking PP.

~~~
netcan
In Australia, businesses usually go through banks for online payment via
credit cards. The banks are under similar constraints and chargeback fraud is
a serious problem. Just because you delivered a product & have a signature
doesn't mean the customer can't call the CC company, lie and get their money
back. That doesn't even touch on stolen numbers and such.

However, when you deal with your bank, you usually have a business banker with
a name, a phone number and an office. You are never in a hopeless support
ticket black hole. That makes a big difference.

~~~
zaidf
It's not as hopeless with PayPal as it was in earlier years. Now you can get
someone on the phone within a few minutes.

~~~
aiurtourist
This kind of sentiment is important. Can WePay survive if PayPal decides to
improve customer service and cater to small groups?

~~~
kirvyteo
You mean like 3 years later? But seriously, I started using Paypal recently to
collect money and so far, everything is fine. I did get some checks but it was
resolved after a few calls and some faxes. Not a lot of money was involved so
it was not a life or death situation. I understand they do need to check for
fraud but some of the cases I read do send chills up my spine.

------
citricsquid
I don't get it? Wepay and Paypal are _different_. Paypal markets itself as a
sort of online bank account, whereas Wepay markets themselves as a place to
get money from your room mates. Their comparison page includes DonorsChoose,
why would I (assuming I'm an online retailer looking to accept payments) care
for DonorsChoose?

They need to change their product and/or marketing direction if they want to
compete with Paypal... Paypal are not a place to pay your room mates.

They should have somewhere I can compare them and Paypal like for like,
feature to feature.

edit: oh and it gets worse, they ONLY allow US payments. Seriously who thought
they're anything like Paypal or are suitable as a replacement?
<https://www.wepay.com/about/faq#thirteen>

~~~
lsc
but paypal /is/ a way to pay your roommates. The draw of paypal is that it's a
merchant account that is so easy to set up that anyone can have one.

They are actually doing a big marketing push in that direction right now.
"paid out of pocket for tickets?" the paypal screen said earlier today,
"Collect via paypal"

hell, I've paid employees, and yes, even roommates via paypal in the past. So
yeah, while paypal seems to have a superset of the features and capabilities
of WePay, there is a lot of overlap.

~~~
citricsquid
Wepay is to Paypal what Hackernews is to reddit. It has a small subset of
features, but not _everything_ and it's _everything_ that makes Paypal so
appealing. Sure Wepay and Hackernews work for _some_ people, but the majority
they do not.

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marcamillion
I don't understand what's the deal with so many negative comments, from what
is supposed to be a community of hackers.

These guys found a clever way of hacking the PR loop, while slamming their
major competitor, and did a damn well good job of it.

Rather than being douchebags and saying "what was the purpose? They aren't
direct competitors." We - the collective we, being the community of hackers -
should relish at the thought that one of our kind has sent a direct message to
Paypal that we are tired of their bullshit.

Plus they got a ton of free press over it. Stop whining because they came up
with a brilliant stunt and you didn't.

If you play nice, when you launch your company/product and come up with a
similarly ingenious PR ploy we will upvote your submission too.

Until then, give props where props are due.

Kudos Bill & the WePay team.

 _Edit: I am not a member of the YC network or anything like that, so don't
even reply with any smart comments of that nature. Just sick and tired of the
constant bitching from people who would benefit from the experiments done
here, but chose to whine about them instead._

~~~
andreyf
Why so zealous? PayPal has been focused on competing for small business
accounts with Chase, and WePay is attacking them with UX formerly focused on
p2p payments, and moving into developer mindshare. PayPal is moving (slowly)
to defend (but their UX is not there yet). My prediction is that WePay will
convert enough people quickly enough to survive. With what I see from
ebay/paypal product quality, I imagine there's a huge opportunity to creep
into their markets one by one.

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ahi
For my purposes WePay is close to being a perfect solution, but just falls
short:

"Who owns the money in a Group Account? Groups make it easy to track finances
and share information, but the Group Administrator owns the money in the Group
Account and is the sole cardholder on the WePay Prepaid Visa® Card."

From the group perspective, it shouldn't be too hard to make a group
administrator sign an agreement in regards to how they may spend group funds.
The problem is that group funds are vulnerable to third parties. e.g. The
fraternity president goes on a bender and runs someone over. The victim will
be able to go after "group" funds due to the personal liability of the group
administrator. I don't have a solution for this, though I imagine a lawyer
could work one up. Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the paper
work and legal fees for setting something up (trust? nonprofit?) are
completely out of proportion to the assets trying to be protected.

As far as I can tell, WePay essentially provides a personal bank account with
methods of billing and sharing information with other people. Useful, but
handwaving about "groups" doesn't carry a lot of weight with the IRS or
courts.

~~~
ahi
arg, from the WePay site. "(1)Depositing the money into your personal bank
account is a bad idea, but (2)applying for an EIN and waiting in line at the
bank to open an account just for your class reunion is a huge hassle."

Depositing the money into your personal bank account is precisely what you are
doing with WePay. WePay should be solving problem (2) but instead has tried to
just obscure problem (1).

~~~
billclerico
I disagree with you here.

As you stated earlier, the amount of funds being protected is usually out of
proportion to the amount of effort required to register an organization,
obtain an EIN and open a bank account.

For groups that want the additional protection, we encourage them to setup a
full fledged bank account. In the future, we are exploring ways to have our
accounts in the name of organization tax IDs as well.

For the most part, we are replacing cash and checks in personal bank accounts
with a simple & transparent solution. We are a far better solution here, and
are not trying to "obfuscate" anything.

------
camz
I love WePays brass balls in pulling this stunt. Shows that they know how to
hustle and get attention without spending butt loads in marketing haha.

They've got moxy.

~~~
jtheory
I'm not sure what they're actually risking here, besides a stern talking-to by
a security guard, and maybe some sour looks from PayPal execs. Does that take
brass balls, really? [Now if the block of ice mysteriously slid out onto the
stage during the keynote....]

I personally have been soured on the idea of "stunt" marketing since
businesses started having the "moxy" to pay someone to tattoo the company logo
on their head, or to run a "shockingly" racy or edgy ad during the superbowl.
Etc..

This isn't among the worst by a long shot, of course, but... well, it's a big
block of ice used to make a bad pun about an actually fairly nuanced topic,
and doing stunts for press does set them in a fairly dubious crowd.

Kudos to WePay if it does work out for the better, but I hope we don't see
more of these.

------
TallGuyShort
There are hundreds of dollars below the ice, and they chased down the pallet-
mover? Why didn't they just get some ice picks?

~~~
hugh3
This is starting to sound like an adventure game puzzle.

You are a security guard at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. There are
hundreds of dollars inside a six hundred pound block of ice. You cannot leave
your station. How do you get at it?

Using an ice pick? Why would a security guard have an ice pick? Maybe if it
were Chicago, but this is San Francisco.

Use another tool to chip away at it? I dunno, that's a _lot_ of ice.

Melt the ice somehow? Nice idea, but how?

~~~
SandB0x
> Melt the ice somehow? Nice idea, but how?

Wait.

~~~
iron_ball
Time passes.

>

~~~
iuguy
Pee on ice block.

~~~
mdonahoe
I successfully used this technique to unfreeze a shovel that was stuck in a
mound of snow.

------
scythe
Whenever people whine about PayPal, I usually mention AlertPay, and get maybe
one upvote and otherwise I'm ignored.

What's wrong with AlertPay? They seem like a pretty honest business and I've
never had any trouble with them, though I've only ever bought things, not sold
them.

~~~
swombat
AlertPay is often used by MLM sites. I'm surprised they're still running,
considering how much fraud those sites have, actually.

Other than that, it's a pretty solid service.

------
raheemm
This is what PG meant by naughty.

------
mcav
When companies pull pranks like this, what's the risk of legal ramifications?
I'm all for ingenuity in harmless pranks like this, but I've not heard much on
what they're risking legally by doing so. Trespassing?

~~~
jacquesm
I can imagine that suing them for trespassing after dumping a chunk of ice
with a 'paypal freezes your accounts, join wepay' message embedded in it (as
well as a few hundred bucks) would help wepay more than it would hurt them.

More free press! And a much longer running story.

~~~
mcav
True, though I would think Moscone would be the one with a claim against WePay
for trespassing rather than Paypal.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, but the press headline will read "WePay sued for trespassing on PayPal
conference" or something to that effect.

~~~
eru
No, it won't. The press doesn't care about random suing of small companies,
because people don't care.

People like to read about a stunt, though.

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johns
I went looking for them over lunch and only found this
<http://yfrog.com/5trdfij>

------
wizard_2
What's the major difference between wepay and someone else like Square? I've
recently received my square reader and I'm liking their service well enough.

------
johnrob
Someone should start a PR firm that focuses only on stunts! If the press is
willing to write articles about stunts, that legitimizes the method in my
book. Think how much people pay to get press, and think about how cheap these
gags are.

~~~
AlexBlom
That's what the good PR firms do. They exist.

~~~
johnrob
I was under the impression that good PR firms cost 10k/mo or more, which is
much more than one should be paying for stuff like this.

~~~
netcan
How much should one be paying for stuff like this?

~~~
johnrob
The 10K/mo fee buys access to press connections that PR firms have spent years
cultivating. Bringing a large block of ice to Moscone does not require any
previous experience, just effort.

------
csomar
but WePay isn't PayPal. Why are they doing so? They won't solve my problem and
I already know PayPal sucks.

~~~
noodle
indeed. if wepay would provide a very basic, simple method for
sending/receiving payments and provide something like paypal's IPN, i'd be all
over it. the focus on groups is good for carving out a niche for the service,
but its not something i need.

~~~
jasonlotito
Providing PayPal's IPN is technically easy. PayPal succeeds because it can do
what it does and still operate. PayPal is protected in so many ways, it's not
even funny. I have no idea how someone would disrupt their model.

~~~
noodle
provide the same basic functionality (perhaps make it easier to use), and
improve customer service.

i'd be willing to pay somewhat more for the same service if i have more of an
assurance that my funds won't get frozen/confiscated/etc., and/or if the
product were easier to work with.

edit: hell, if wepay is partnering with a bank, if they can set things up so
that i can get a debit card associated with that account and accept transfers,
i'd use it as my primary business account for at least my smaller online
business stuff.

~~~
jasonlotito
None of that would disrupt PayPal. You can't just provide the same basic
functionality of PayPal. If you could, I'd have done it a long time ago. The
problem is with the credit card companies.

As for debit cards, those are easy to get. Incredibly easy, and easy to
integrate with as well. Again, it's nothing special. I've been there, I've
done it. A complete system where you could transfer money into your account
tied to a debit card, send money, receive money, automated API, etc.

It sounds great on paper, but really, none of this is disruptive.

~~~
jimbokun
"As for debit cards, those are easy to get. Incredibly easy, and easy to
integrate with as well. Again, it's nothing special. I've been there, I've
done it. A complete system where you could transfer money into your account
tied to a debit card, send money, receive money, automated API, etc."

So...what's left, then, to lock people into PayPal? Are you saying that if you
can just get people to use debit instead of credit, it's easy to provide all
the same services as PayPal?

Certainly sounds like the necessary infrastructure is in place for whoever
wants to take a shot at being a PayPal disruptor at least.

~~~
jasonlotito
No, no, I'm not saying that. Sure, anyone can get debit cards for their
company, but you still have to have people deposit money into that account.
And why are they going to do that? You'd have to have merchants. Credit cards
work because they are widely accepted. If no merchants accepted credit cards,
they wouldn't be as useful.

> Certainly sounds like the necessary infrastructure is in place for whoever
> wants to take a shot at being a PayPal disruptor at least.

The infrastructure is there. That hasn't been the problem for a long time now.

------
kez
Hm, I am not sure WePay is ready to be making these kind of gestures. I
thought I would take a quick look to see if it would be a viable option to
receive payments in the UK.

Their FAQ page (<https://www.wepay.com/about/faq>) features a nice little
graphic of questions being asked from all over the world. Great, I thought -
one thing PayPal was a bit rubbish at to start with was international payments
- WePay must have cracked it.

Down we go to question 13 (<https://www.wepay.com/about/faq#thirteen>) and we
see that no, WePay doesn't accept international payments!

I would rather try and unfreeze my money than not receive any at all.

------
iamelgringo
I've been saying this since I first met the WePay guys at Hackers and Founders
almost 2 years ago. If there was ever a company that I'd love to have %0.1 of,
it would be WePay.

------
bretthellman
very creative. A great way to declare war and get free press.

------
paraschopra
Is it just me or anyone else also thinks it is bit too naïve. Organizations
who handle finances need to have a serious no-BS attitude because they are
playing with money. Of course, it doesn't mean that a organization has to be
excessively serious but such real world trolling tells a lot about company's
(mischievous) culture. Personally, I wouldn't do business with an organization
that doesn't respect its competitors.

~~~
csallen
>> _Personally, I wouldn't do business with an organization that doesn't
respect its competitors._

It seems every month someone is posting about their money being held hostage
or outright stolen by PayPal. Most of these complaints are from well-known
bloggers/engineers/HN members, so I can only imagine how many people _without_
a voice online are getting screwed. When you're dealing with people's money,
you have a _strong obligation_ to handle issues like this with speed and
clarity, because money affects people's lives in serious ways. Yet Paypal's
customer service doesn't seem to care, and they often take months to reply.

Why should WePay have respect for a competitor that doesn't respect its own
customers?

~~~
paraschopra
> Why should WePay have respect for a competitor that doesn't respect its own
> customers?

A company has to have its own culture of respect irrespective of what culture
its competitors have. No where in my comment did I say that I admire Paypal's
practices. I just said I found what WePay did a bit naive and a cheap trick.
It has nothing to do with Paypal

HNers: just because you disagree with a comment doesn't mean that you should
downvote it. It is a personal opinion and in no way frivolous or off-topic.

~~~
billclerico
we here at wepay have a tremendous amount of respect for paypal. they have
built a huge business, growing at 27% per year, with large margins and nearly
a hundred billion dollars in annual payment volume.

however - we do vehemently disagree with the way they treat their customers
and won't pull punches when we express ourselves about a topic we care dearly
about

------
fmw
It always leaves a foul taste in my mouth when people are promoting themselves
by attacking their competitors instead of playing to their own strength. That
being said, it made me laugh, even if PayPal is an easy target. So I suppose
that makes me neutral about the stunt, instead of as annoyed as I normally am
about negative advertising.

~~~
galisevych
Seems that time takes new turn, and old stunt of paypal on e-bay conference
repeats with paypal conference and wepay. I think it is just creative way to
get known and sell themselves for wepay.

------
burgerbrain
Anyone else wondering how it was legal for the security guys to steal the mans
pallet mover? Sure dumping a big piece of ice on private property probably
wasn't exactly legal, but that doesn't make chasing down the man in public for
2 and half blocks to take his pallet mover ok. Doesn't really matter that they
gave it back either...

------
TheSaaSGuy
I think the story would have been funnier if they used a 800 lbs ice block to
attack the 800 pound gorilla !

------
melissamiranda
They deserve it! PP froze my account with over $1k in just for logging in when
I was in London. There was no contact number available, and it took me days to
figure out how to call and get them to unlock my account. Jerks.

------
marcamillion
I think the only way WePay could have one-upped themselves on this stunt is if
they also provided a handful of (say 5 - 10) battery powered handheld hair
blow dryers.

THAT would have been even more Epic!

------
philfreo
Anyone know any of the logistics behind how this was done?

------
helwr
Salesforce tactics

------
dennisgorelik
Does WePay support subscriptions?

------
hubb
anyone have pics of the ice?

------
lhnn
When I read about PayPal shutting down peoples' paypals asking for their IRS
charity status, I couldn't believe it.

Fraud should not have to be Paypal's business. If someone says they're a
charity and they're not, and you give them money, it's your fault. PayPal
should not be involved in that kind of trickery; PayPal should only assist the
law in settling those issues.

Just like Craigslist only advises people on wire fraud, but doesn't get too
involved, so should Paypal. They're simply a middleman.

~~~
brc
Actually, if you read the 'Founders at Work' interview, PayPal sees itself as
a fraud detection company who happens to process payments.

It is _all_ about detecting fraud. PayPal lived while others died because they
figured fraud out, and came up with working solutions to limit it to the point
where the fraudsters choose easier targets.

~~~
lhnn
Actually, if you read my assertion, you would know I didn't read Founders at
Work.

"Actually, in the 'Founders at Work' interview, ..." would have been less
aggressive in tone.

------
kingkawn
Water is so incredibly dense.

~~~
kingkawn
No really think about it; that block of ice is 600 lbs. its tiny. there are
~3.01 * 10^25 molecules in 1 liter of water, so there are 8.19 * 10^27
molecules in that block. its amazing.

------
TheSaaSGuy
This is really cool. I wish I was there to see it.

------
sagarun
This made my day! LOL. Very creative :-). Cmon paypal unfreeze my account!

