
Why I Can't Use PayPal To Buy Your Product - pud
http://pud.com/post/21336152407/why-i-cant-use-paypal-to-buy-your-product
======
jack-r-abbit
While some people may have various business reasons for wanting multiple
PayPal accounts linked to one bank account, I've run into this problem for
another reason that I imagine is even more common: I'm married. My wife and I
both have PayPal accounts. But guess what, PayPal? We have but one bank
account. You know... a joint account... like I'm sure a vast majority of
married people have. What a stupid rule.

~~~
mindstab
You probably had separate bank accounts once too. You merged those, what is
holding you back from merging paypal accounts? Seems like it would be the
easier of the two operations.

~~~
lomegor
I think it's against the terms to have a joint PayPal account. I'm sure I read
that somewhere and it is the standard for most web services (accounts can only
be used by one person).

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pensiveye
There's a great book called 'Founders At Work' that tells Max Levchin's
account of PayPal's early days. Apparently they stopped considering PayPal a
payments company very early on. They moved on to being a fraud prevention
company. In reality, they no longer have to do anything to promote growth or
even sustainability in money moving through the system, so they can just
ignore that part. Almost their entire focus is on preventing fraud. I'm not
saying it's right, I'm just saying.

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robryan
To bad I can't offer stripe as an Australian company. We have one local bank
that will let you accept multiple currency through a merchant account and they
have some pretty major costs.

Until my startup gets a decent userbase I don't see an alternative to PayPal.

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drsim
I've hit this 'can only link bank account to one PayPal account' problem a few
times and it is very frustrating.

The way I operate my business and personal bank and PayPal accounts means I
have to shuffle money around to work with this rule. Why, PayPal?

~~~
johnrob
> Why, PayPal?

To prevent fraud.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Care to elaborate on that? How does it _prevent_ fraud?

~~~
Natsu
Presumably it keeps people from just spam-creating new accounts every time
they get banned.

In this case, however, it's hurting their business by being too strict. They
could, for example, let you have at most two accounts linked to solve the
problem some married people have.

~~~
jeltz
I do not see why they need to stop spam creation of accounts. They can just
ban the bank account in addition to the Paypal account. Without any bank
account or credit card connected to the Paypal account it is not very harmful
to Paypal.

~~~
Natsu
Someone might be able to use the dozens of accounts for fraud before they
could catch them and put a stop to it. If the money is already gone, Paypal
would suffer the losses.

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warp
I've worked around this in the past by changing my e-mail address in my
current paypal account, and then just creating a new account. (and then
deleting my previous, now useless account). The limit is large enough that I
so far have only needed to do this once. (I don't trust paypal enough to link
it to an actual bank account).

~~~
lomegor
This would make sense if your account doesn't have any more money. But it may
happen to you some day that you have more money in your account than your
limit and then you will be stuck as you cannot transfer it to another account.

~~~
warp
I never have any money in the account. I only use it to make credit card
purchases.

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robomartin
Want to experience real pain? PayPal + eBay. Talk about some horror stories.

Here's what's interesting: It's YOUR MONEY. This isn't a credit card. It's a
payment system that allows you to take your money --real cash-- and pay for
things. Why are they placing limits on people's own money? If the account has
enough balance for the purchase in question (and the money has been there for
a while) you should be able to spend it as you wish.

As for linking a bank account. Not a big deal these days. You can open an
account with $100. I don't see this as a problem, particularly if you are
talking about paying thousands for conferences. Yes, it's a pain to keep track
of. That's what Quicken/Quickbooks is for.

~~~
glogla
Quicken?

I have no direct experience with it, but according to wikipedia article it's
very very horrible. For example:

"Quicken contains a sunset provision that stops online features and any QFX
formatted files from working after a certain amount of time,[8][9] requiring
users to first buy a new Quicken license, and then to learn a new, often
confusing interface to the more recent Quicken version." or "To migrate to
Lion, users are required to pay for an updated version of Quicken 2007. It has
no new features." While GnuCash isn't perfect, and probably wouldn't work too
well for business, Quicken would have to have really great features for
someone to put up with this. And QuickBooks seems to be pretty much the same.

~~~
robomartin
I've been using it since the early days (by that I mean IBM PC/DOS). The
paragraph you quote does not represent anything I have ever experienced with
any version of the product.

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dazzla
I'm pretty sure you can go to pay while not logged in to PayPal. Then enter
your credit card directly. They will tell you it's linked to an account and do
you want to login. But there is still an option to go ahead and just use the
card.

~~~
greyfade
I've tried that, and when it complained that the card was linked to an
account, it wouldn't let me proceed until I logged in.

At the time, my account was locked down because I had the audacity to go to a
conference in a town 80 miles away and try to use my Paypal account for
something. They wouldn't let me unlock my account until I gave them a new
landline phone number (which I didn't have) or fax them my ID (which I wasn't
willing to do). It was as if they didn't want me to reactivate my account.

And I still couldn't buy anything until I got a new card.

~~~
ricardobeat
I have an account with a linked credit card, and have used the same card
without logging in on a few occasions without any trouble. Maybe the policy is
different for each country?

~~~
problemspace
I can use my credit card without logging in as long as my PayPal account
status is normal. But when my account was restricted, I couldn't pay using my
linked credit card. I also tried to close my PayPal account - they don't let
you do that either while the account is restricted.

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Posibyte
I've had quite the bad experience with PayPal myself. I used to sell goods on
the internet. Nothing shady, unless you consider Wordpress shady. Anyways, one
day I try to charge against my PayPal account and I find out my account has
been frozen and is pending investigation. I had not a lot of money, but more
than a few dollars.

It's been frozen ever since (about 2 years). I've tried working with PayPal,
but they've yet to help me in any constructive way. If I were to add to this
post, this is the reason I won't allow PayPal payments on my site.

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grecy
Another PITA issue I've hit with PayPal is trying to link Bank Accounts or
Credit Cards from multiple countries to the same account... can't do it.

So even though I'm an Australian living in Canada, I'm stuck charging my
Australian Credit Card and Bank account whenever I use Paypal. _Sigh_

~~~
zerostar07
To be fair that may have to do with regulations. Paypal has to walk through a
complex maze of regulations to work internationally. In the US it's a company,
in the EU it's a bank etc. Their existence may have actually been a motive in
establishing money transfer regulation.

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chris_wot
In Australia, I believe that every PayPal account can also use a credit card -
no matter what the card type. Just today I bought a CD with my Visa card, over
PayPal.

I believe that it's because the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission
stepped in some time ago and told eBay that they couldn't force people to only
use PayPal to pay for their products as this is third-line forcing.

I love strong competition law :-)

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nfm
In a related vein: Try to change your name for your PayPal account. In
Australia (and I assume globally), last I checked you had to fax 100 points of
ID to them. Setting up an account requires nothing. I could wait until my CC
expires and open a new account in my new name, but I've tied my account to my
bank account too.

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leephillips
The screenshot that we are to assume is from paypal says that he's reached his
"sending limit". What is that supposed to mean? In the text, he says he's
reached his "spending limit". Is this just a weird typo from paypal? Or
something stranger?

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joshuaheard
Open business accounts and use one personal account. Problem solved. You can
open a business account with just a ficiticious business statement (a "dba")
which you can get online instantly in some counties, or by mail in about a
week.

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mmuro
This is an outlier issue.

For the average person selling things through PayPal, this is rare. If it's
that important for your business, it shouldn't be a big deal to create a new
bank account for each PayPal and link them to that.

------
grandalf
PayPal is good in some ways (lowers the bar to becoming a merchant) it is
broken and horrible in many other ways. Let's hope the competitors can improve
upon things (Google, Amazon, Square, Facebook, Apple).

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angryasian
its less of a paypal problem and more the websites problem for not offering
several payment options. Just paypal is easier for a majority of the
population. If your particular paypal didn't work then you'd have to manually
enter your credit information, which most people myself included don't like to
do.

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Karunamon
Could anyone summarize this article? Site is blocked as "tasteless" on the
filter (?)

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zem
looks like they're really trying to push people to link their bank accounts to
paypal.

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dlitz
This wouldn't be a problem if you accepted Bitcoin. ;)

~~~
rmc
It would cause numerous numerous other problems.

It's non-trivial to convert bitcoin into a regular currency, you have to use
3rd party sites that have a terrible record with security

It's not understood and accepted by most people.

You can't do chargebacks.

~~~
mrb
> It's non-trivial to convert bitcoin into a regular currency, you have to use
> 3rd party sites that have a terrible record with security

Wrong. There has only ever been _one_ successful attack against MtGox. By
contrast, attacks on banking financial websites are widespread:
<http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/6652> A small security-focused startup like
MtGox can more easily secure their infrastructure & code, compared to the
corporate developers working on humongous code bases behind most banking
websites.

> It's not understood and accepted by most people.

Circular reasoning ("technology X won't get adopted because nobody knows X").

> You can't do chargebacks.

This is actually an advantage for merchants. Credit card chargebacks eat into
their already thin margins. But once they receive bitcoins no one can take
them away from them.

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DannoHung
Paypal forced me to open an account with them so I could buy shit by credit
card through their interface. And so they could try to shove their other
shitty products down my throat.

I want to set every single person who works for PayPal on fire.

~~~
octopus
@DannoHung

 _I want to set every single person who works for PayPal on fire._

While I can understand your frustration, I think you should cool off and think
before posting such extremist views here.

~~~
Karunamon
I completely sympathize with customer "service" induced pyromania. Between
Paypal and my cable company...

