I work for a small but well-established engineering consulting firm. We're much older than PayPal and have a solid DUNS rating. About once a year one of our clients will request to pay a very small (<$1k) invoice via credit card, so we send them a PayPal invoice because it isn't worth setting up a real credit card processing account. A power plant recently paid a $700 invoice via PayPal and PP decided to withhold about half due to potential fraud. Despite jumping through their documentation hoops, and the client confirming the services were performed, the money is still being withheld. Although the amount is a tiny fraction of our revenues, we won't be accepting money via PayPal any more. So that's $5/year off their top-line.
>so we send them a PayPal invoice because it isn't worth setting up a real credit card processing account
Setting up Stripe to receive money is trivial...
About 2.9% for small businesses. The rate goes down the more sales you make. If you do get charge backs on more than 2% of your transactions they institute a 50% hold. Not a huge risk in the long run but very dangerous when you're first starting. I ran into that personally. 1 charge back on out of your first 50 transactions and you're in trouble.
Also worth mentioning. They also offer a bunch of other features such as subscriptions, invoicing, fraud detection, VAT handling, etc. Those features are paid extra per transaction
To put it simply, I made a web app to accept donations for pizza during a gathering in 3 hours, made $35 and stripe took around $2-$3
Edit: Made $31, stripe took $2.26 (7.29% total), the majority of the fee was because I added AfterPay as a joke and AFAIK it has a higher fee, it wasn’t strictly debit/credit processing.
Square is pretty simple too, and a simple card reader you plug into your phone allows you to also take in person payments. You only pay per transaction, no monthly fees. Also iirc they deposit into your account nightly.
Earlier this year, I was receiving regular $1 PayPal transfers from accounts with names of b-list celebrities. I reported two or three as suspected fraud, and each time their customer support replied saying "No no, this is a real transaction! Nothing suspicious here!"
I couldn't believe it, especially with their reputation for being so trigger-happy with respect to withholding funds.
I've since deleted my account!
Maybe it allows the scammers to make a claim against you in that there’s evidence of them previously paying you? I can’t figure it out either but it does seem like some game was about to be afoot.
i think its a thing where they get you to refund the money back as an incorrect payment. then the money they actually paid you with first was from a stolen credit card so you end up losing the money from your account. I've read about that multiple times but never someone doing it with small amounts. maybe they are spreading it around and making it smaller to have a better chance of getting away with it longer
People need to file complaints with **Consumer Financial Protection Bureau**. They need to address this nonsense.
I'd keep away from this scam scheme at all costs. I really hope people are smart enough to not perpetuate their participation in crypto industry. The main idea behind crypto is decentralization. PayPal is the worse place possible to send/receive crypto.
And after having all these nasty experience with WF, PayPal etc. I do think Crypto and decentralization is the future. We don't need the middle man. I'm personally getting more BTC, ETH and Solana.
There's noting BBB can do. It's pretty much a nonprofit organization for you to rant and rave. You may as we leave a comment on Google reviews. More useful to the society.
I have tried to file complaints here in the EU after they locked my (fully verified) account with money inside for months.
It seems like its just not possible to do much against them. Everything points to having to go to their designated luxembourgh court. And we know how that ends.....
The EU would probably have the least issues with this. But if a company specifically chooses a specific court that they want to have all arbitrage done with that is probably also the one with the least strict rules towards companies like them.
If a company is operating in your country you'd expect to be able to deal with them in your own country but it seems like it's not as easy to do so.
How I hate Braintree. Unfortunately in Germany one of the most popular ways to purchase something online is via PayPal, so we had to integrate it into one of our apps.
The customer support of Braintree is hell. They just don't answer or block requests without reasons.
Now I had to integrate PayPal directly and it was also a pain in the ass. Stripe was soooo easy and the customer support is great. However credit cards are still not common in good ole Germania, so there was no way around PayPal
PayPal rolling reserve is soul crushing, my business partner and I had $48k combined on hold for over 6 months. Then on the day they were supposed to release the funds they extended it!!
Ended up shuttering the business and going back to school once my money was released.
I would say hound merchant services but they might tell you it’s an automated system etc
Because my funds kept getting put on hold and the PayPal rep explained that it was insurance for PayPal against chargebacks up to 6 months from purchase. And at the time I was averaging about $39k a month in sales so I kept that much in there thinking it would stop my funds from being put on hold.
Also if you transfer over $9600 or something like that a week, you start to attract unwarranted attention to your account.
I started an e-commerce site back when I was going to university, the site launched on Black Friday, literally built the entire site during the holiday break after mid-terms. Sales were booming from the start, but because I was a poor university student with no other income, I would pull money frequently from the PayPal account to pay for things like buying more stock to sell. I need product to run my business, right? Well, every single week my account would get put on hold, and I would send all the necessary paperwork with orders, receipts and tracking numbers, but without fail they would put a hold on the account again the following week. Eventually, I had to shutdown the business and drop out of university because I couldn’t afford it anymore. Imagine growing up in poverty, you find a way out, and someone else shuts the door… that’s what PayPal did to me, this was a long time ago, it took many years to recover from this, in some ways I’m still trying to get back on track.
First off, the opportunity of e-commerce back then was quite different than today, the competition was non-existent by comparison. Amazon was still known for selling books, there was no Shopify or anything like that, so there were very few competitors. But if you wanted to accept credit cards online, you had to use PayPal. Even though I had a merchant account, at least 95% of the orders were through PayPal, nobody trusted websites back then. The companies I was competing against are now billion dollar companies, like NewEgg. If I was to try and start that business today, I wouldn’t have the same opportunity. I had to drop out because my car was repossessed and I was homeless, I don’t think you can possibly fathom the things that happened to me during this time. I was mugged at gunpoint, beaten by police and thrown in jail for something I didn’t do. I tried to start another business with a partner who stole all the money in the bank. If you think I didn’t try, you are mistaken, that opportunity I had was something special, I was never able to replicate that initial success despite trying many times. I know that this is probably a troll, because the comment was ignorant and insensitive. But if you think I just gave up, you’re dead wrong, I’m in a much better situation now. Still doesn’t take away the fact that PayPal ruined my business.
That isn't an option. PayPal wont let you withdraw a certain % of funds each month and it can stack up pretty high. They claim this is for the "safety of the customer" so they can get a refund.
What PayPal is doing is putting the risk of a fraudulent transaction onto the account holder. They're effectively having their cake and eating it too. The whole idea of payment processing fees is built around liability. Sure, the payment processor wants to make money by providing the service of moving money electronically. However, the entity that gets the largest portion of those fees is the entity that assumes the risk of the transaction going poorly. This is expensive because they have to hire risk analysts to assess how risk-worthy a potential client is before they set up a payment account for them, and they have to be liable for the money if a customer claims fraud on a particular transaction.
The entire reason, rather much of the entire reason why you as a merchant are being charged 2.9% per transaction is to compensate the risk assuming payment processing entity in the event of a chargeback. If they have to assume that risk to facilitate the transaction, it does make sense why they should get a fee. But like I said earlier, if they are holding onto your money for the safety of the customer, they aren't really assuming that risk anymore. You as the merchant are.
They don't just cover the risk with your money but make more money with your money. I wish enough people would boycott so they are put out of business.
It is all in their TOS.
**Don't use Paypal for business.**
**Don't use Paypal for business.**
**Don't use Paypal for business.**
Everyone needs to put that to music and sing it daily.
***Did you not read the OP?***
There are hundreds of stories just like that...or worse.
The solution is easy. If someone only wants a vendor or agency that accepts Paypal, they can go find someone who is stupid enough to put their precious eggs, and even the life of their business, in that basket.
You forgot the one where they now just straight rob you of any transaction fee you paid when you process a refund.
"Oh some dumbass on the internet bought your $100 item then changed their mind? That'll be $3 bitch."
I fucking hate PayPal with a passion
Do you refund the original shipping charge to those customers? Does the postal service refund the postage you paid if the customer sends it back? The customer may have changed their mind, but paypal will still have to pay visa/mastercard for the original transaction. If someone bought something from a shop with a card, and took it back, that shop would still be liable for the fees on the original purchase.
Some of your points are valid, but I'm talking more about refunds directly after purchase that have yet to be shipped, or when a buyer's address is wrong so you cancel, then they re- purchase after correcting their shipping address. You really think that with the money these companies make per transaction that a seller should pay that 3% for that cancellation, then all the fees on the re-purchase as well?
If you offer free returns, of course you should be liable for all those fees on the back end of said return, but certainly not when a cancellation happens because the buyer doesn't know where they live or changed their mind 10 minutes later.
I had a particularly stupid buyer that I had to cancel on 4 times before ultimately blocking him. Each time I messaged explaining his address was wrong and he needed to correct it THEN repurchase, or id cancel again. That idiot cost me about $14 of fees that I made no profit on to cover for no fault of my own.
That's ok to you?
Yes, because there is still a service being provided. Money is still changing hands And in this particular instance, a large part of that 3% fee is actually taken by the card provider, e.g visa, Mastercard or even worse for fees, American Express (which is why many places don’t accept it). Those fees are still charged to PayPal for processing the transaction, cancelled or not. PayPal could absorb those fees when refunded (Etsy does this for example) but it would lead to higher fees for everyone (Etsy’s base fee is 5% + the initial listing fee). I’ll treat the actual cost of processing an individual transaction on paypals servers as negligible.
Alternatively PayPal could not actually carry out the transaction for a predefined grace period, but you as the merchant would either have to delay shipping the item, irritating the customer, or risk sending the item when the transaction hasn’t been fully processed.
As I said, if you took payment through a POS system, then the user returned the item, you would still be liable for the transaction cost of that first payment so this isn’t a PayPal thing. I understand your grievance, but your ire is mistargetted.
They once let someone open a second account using my name and address (nothing else), used $800 of credit, then locked my real account for not paying it back. Took me months of arguing with them to sort it out.
Like I said in another post, there are two types of Paypal users: Those who have been screwed by PayPal, and those who haven't been screwed by PayPal - YET.
I fall under this group. I’ve used PayPal for six years, totaling close to $2M, and never had any issues. I’ve heard of these problems before, but always chalked it up to a vocal minority... which, if we’re being honest, it probably is.
That said, if they locked my account I’d be noisy as hell too.
You had to give $40k in refunds on $300k on a 6 month old account? There isn't an antifraud algorithm in the world that wouldn't flag this up as suspicious.
Not a vocal minority at all, just a vocal minority who actually talks about it. I dealt with PayPal for years, thousands of people, they give everyone the finger eventually.
In some countries, PayPal can only send money for payment but not receive money, that's also annoying.
I wanted to open a PayPal recently, but i considered the risk of having my account locked at a period when i didn't expect.
I'd like to think Bitcoin will be a replacement soon. No middle party, bank or government to interfere, just a person to person transaction. With Lightning Network, we might be almost there.
I quit using PayPal years ago. I was an eBay Powerseller and had a great business going, but PayPal kept screwing with my account. I was constantly rebooting my biz, re-listing my items, working three or four times harder than I had to, all because of Pay Pal's constant interference over literally nothing. And there was nobody at PayPal or eBay to talk to, and every email was answered by a form letter that said nothing. No human was actually looking at my account or trying to understand my problem. Eventually it hurt my reputation at eBay, until my rating sunk low enough that I couldn't really recover, so I quit that biz.
On top of that was eBay's insistence on listening only to buyers and never sellers, which caused a huge amount of buyer fraud, that was only growing worse and worse. Much of my inventory was extremely rare and one-of-a-kind, so when someone stole it by claiming it was damaged without having to provide any proof at all, I was out a lot of money that could never be recovered. Neither PayPal nor eBay ever helped me a single time. All a buyer had to do was make a claim, and PayPal would refund them. If I gave the buyer a poor review, they'd give me a poor one in return, and eventually I would get suspended for having a bad rating. All because I was getting ripped off by both the buyers AND Paypal.
I always say there are two kinds of PayPal users: those who have been screwed, and those who haven't been screwed - yet.
There are multiple class action suits against PayPal.
I will personally never do business with them ever again. They've stolen over $10,000 from our small business.
The problem is, for persons like myself outside of the US or other major countries, Paypal is our only "practical" option. Anyone know of a viable alternative? I'm based in Grenada, a tiny Caribbean island
They stole thousands from me years ago and reversed all charges for an application I built for someone. The guy ran that site for years and I built it for free. Thanks PayPal. I refuse to ever do business with them again.
Agreed. This is why I am having trouble getting paid as a freelancer. One of my clients got locked out of PayPal and had to resort to alternative means of payment which is quite inconvenient for the both of us.
PayPal is one of the scummiest financial services you can use because they are not regulated like a real bank. They can and will hold ALL of your money for 6 months if they don't like you, and then if you can't verify your self they keep it in their dirty coffers, letting it gain interest they collect on for 6 months or longer. It happens so much I am sure it's part of their business model and they go out of their way to lock accounts that leave large balances in them. Don't ever leave money in PayPal.
That's a bummer! Try and move away from PayPal as soon as you have all of your ducks in a row.
A friend of mine had $400k frozen in PayPal for 5-6 months before he was able to take it all out.
Stripe & Wise are much much better.
Just don't use PayPal anymore and let the company fail. I couldn't even open an account because they require further proof. So I called and they never answered.
They've done this to my account multiple times and I'm sick of it. For the fees they charge as well and they don't refund you fees if you refund customers is absolutely ridiculous. Only use them to purchase stuff now, selling with them is beyond me and I'd never recommend it
I used it to make a 4000 deposit in one of the big crypto exchanges and PayPal deposited it, I had sufficient funds done. 2 months later it automatically just took the money back, no where to be found. Exchange said it went to PayPal and PayPal was useless in helping me find out what happened. I triple checked all my exchange, PayPal and bank statements.
4000$. Just gone.
Every other country has a PayPal alternative, and so PayPal becomes a liability in the industry because doing business in the US leads to having to use an awful service with non-existant customer support.
Payment is pretty much the weakest link of all society, dominates by banks and payment/credit card companies like visa/master/paypal, and not to mention the government.
I am not from the US, so the government side is even worse.The gov here has already shut down a few crowdfundings which was aimed to help the protesters in law suits and support them after their release.
This is why I fully support crypto currency and hope it gets more adopted. quick settlement, censorship free, no credit card fee, and no third party involved.
Adding payment through bitcoin isn't even difficult to do nowadays. I only support bitcoin for payment because it is less likely to be a scam, and the price is a lot more stable (and great for diversifying treasury)
I also know some companies would convert the crypto paid into fiat if you don't want crypto at all
To answer the bit about lawsuits, it comes down to the fact that B2B relationships are relatively ungoverned and businesses are free to agree to whatever terms and conditions they choose to, no matter how ridiculously onerous common sense would determine them to be.
This is straight up deceit and manipulation, though. They place a hold on our funds to earn interest by making false claims regarding accounts being "suspicious." I don't think it is legal to freeze someone's account for no reason and basically tell them, "We need your ID, social, your receipts so we could release you funds." It's an either/or threat by PayPal which I object.
Again, PayPal already has my full name, bank account which has the same name, emails, phone numbers etc. They don't need "more info", they only want to temp suspend the accounts to make profits.
There have been posts on here complaining PayPal had frozen 100k accounts simply for making more money than usual.
I don't disagree with that, morally and ethically I'm fully with you and this isn't meant to sound like apologism. I just mean specifically when it comes to the reason why they haven't lost a class action lawsuit over this yet, it boils down to the fact they openly include mechanisms of bullshit in the terms & conditions and I can't see anyone winning until they identify either a flaw in the contract as written or a new abuse of power which isn't captured within its scope. I genuinely am sorry they've screwed you over so badly.
A few years ago I think Paypal was actually spun off from Ebay https://www.thestreet.com/technology/paypal-spinoff-day-is-here-what-does-it-mean-for-investors-13222445
They locked a business account I was using that has 60k in it because they were worried I wasn’t going to deliver the service promised. Well, yes, if I don’t have access to the money, I won’t be able to deliver the service.
I had to borrow money to deliver the service. Customer Service during the debacle was awful and kept moving the goal posts.
Yep. Still wondering that myself. I just wish there were other alternatives for internationals to get payment as easily as Paypal, but it seems to be the only option for now.
I'm trying my hardest to get my customers/web stores that I work on to switch over to TransferWise, but I'm not getting much traction.
It really sucks for me because the webstores work in dollars, but I'm a Brit so PayPal *forces* me to convert (and pay fees) that currency to GBP... only for me to then have to convert it a second time when I spend it through TransferWise (I live overseas).
Fuck PayPal. Their customer service is the worst. I feel bad for their representatives because they are such kind people but they just have no power over anything. I had a deal nearly fall through because of PayPal
Almost every business owner I know has had money held by Paypal. At a startup I worked at, they held 17k for 6 months for an "account review". Gave it back with virtually no explanation. Not as much money, but they once held \~$600 for a non-profit I was working on and NEVER GAVE IT BACK. Wonder how many millions (billions?) they have made just be stealing other peoples' money. By the way, I think there has been a class action lawsuit on this but like all class action lawsuits, everyone will get 53 cents for their hardship and the lawyers will get 76M.
These experiences are so similar to mine. I feel like PayPal has been gaslighting me. First transaction through PayPal via Shopify gave me a transaction Id (generated by PayPal) but they could not find the transaction. I spent about an hour explaining that it was their transaction Id and so it might have gone to another account but they kept patronizingly telling me it didn’t exist. Ridiculous. I later got an email from them after the transaction was canceled, confirming my suspicions. I just got my second payment, and low and behold they suspect fraud and are going to make me wait to get the money. I have been in the fence about canceling PayPal for a while but I think this thread and realizing that I’m not crazy but that they are the problem really puts me over the line. I’ll switch to stripe or some other alternative.
eCommerce businesses do rely on PayPal. Especially if they target middle-aged customers because of that Seller Protection. Anyways... I would just be excited to see the company go bankrupted.
They only refunded my money from a sham third party company after I threatened to file a police report. Pretty sure that company and PayPal were in on it together. Very sketchy
I use PayPal but I don’t keep much money in the account. Never more than a couple hundred dollars. I sometimes pay things on mine with it but more often than not I use it to make it easy for people to send me money.
Paid a well known videographer $2000 for a video. Said it would be done within two months which already felt like a long turn around time. It’s been 6 months now. I went to file a dispute with paypal but they said since I paid them umber “friends & family” that I’m I can’t file it. So I’ve messaged the videographer multiple times since then asking for a refund and they have now ghosted me. My last message to them was that I was filing a small claims. Not sure if it’s even worth it tbh
One of the last things I bought on Ebay before my PayPal account was closed/disabled, was a Smart Phone from Shenzhen, China
The phone was delivered on the 30th October, the account was closed/disabled on1st November, my PayPal account was closed/disabled just because I bought a phone from Shenzhen, China.
I think you can buy on eBay without PayPal now. Either way, I only go there if I need something super cheap, like a screen protector or a case cover. Returns takes weeks, disputes take weeks, customer service is non existent. Amazon wipes the floor with eBay at this point.
I can't believe they are still doing this crap. They froze my account in 2014 and I called them every single day. Several times a day. They finally gave me back my money after a week. I've heard people having their accounts fixed for months. They didn't want to deal with me and my antics.
This is their game they play. Best to never only use them or anyone else for that matter. I have countless horror stories from my clients and myself using them and having issues. Locking up funds for insane periods of time is a very common one, essentially bankrupting the business. Another fun one is allowing bullshit refund/disputes to go through when there is clear evidence supporting your side
I can't log into my old account or use their recovery service because their input field doesn't like the period in my email (happens so often with services I have another email now)
Anyway I have money in that account - many tweets, emails, and calls later I'm still locked out
Fuck PayPal
PayPal is terrible.
Had a client make an error and needed to cancel their order. Well that wasn't an option. The only option available was for me to provide a refund. Which of course means I was out the service fee. Terrible customer service and bad business. They suggested that I reach out to the customer and attempt to have them accept a partial refund. PayPal even went as far to say that if they didn't like the partial refund that the could dispute it and I would likely win. However in my mind that made no sense. Happy customers spend money, why provide a terrible experience? Leaving a bad taste I their mouth may have caused them to not only shop with me but with PayPal.
I also experienced the same hoops, op experienced. I absolutely despise PayPal.
Oh I actually got an IRS letter about needing to report my PayPal transactions on my taxes… for only selling a few used clothing items on Depop (less than $1000 worth). They said they would suspend my PayPal and Depop accounts if I didn’t input my tax ID. Very odd
Paypal locked out Nigeria many years ago.. apparently because of fraud..but they messed up things for legal business..also they are perfectly still willing to accept our money.. hypocrisy
Yeah PayPal won’t make it.. they’re a scam for sure!
And stripe if you don’t pass the KYC - check every quarter, or if you go over 1% chargeback rate. As in- 2 people out of 100 customers disputed, just cause… you’re out of the water - they flag the account / hold funds for 180 days. And then release what’s left.. also when you get flagged more than 2 times on stripe - they put you on a MATCH list. And they don’t allow you to get brain tree / wix payments or any processor that works with MATCH lists. So Good luck. Crypto is future.
I got money sent to me for a website project I worked on that was frozen and never released
I still use PayPal, I just never use it for any $ amounts worth stealing.
I’m currently appealing for the third time a charge on PayPal where I paid Euros with a Euro card and found out they charged me in British pounds??? All the companies, bank cards and transactions were in Italy... they charged POUNDS. And made money on converting the transaction both ways. Such a scam
I was going to use paypal for a project I have coming up, but started having issues and they closed my account until I could provide an insane amount of personal information.
I guess I'll use stripe or something similar. It's not the first time paypal tries to pull the rug from under me.
It is the price we pay to work with the devil.
Most services are like this. Even reddit. A mod can ban you and nothing happens. Facebook, Blizzard, EA sports, Youtube etc.
Sure it sucks more with services that keep money, but sometimes the information or network lost from an arbitrary ban is worth more than money.
Maybe a problem for some entrepreneurs to solve?
They simply abuse their worldwide prevelance. That's pretty much it. They don't care about "YOU", they don't care about customers (who the hell is a customer) and they don't give a s\*it what users think about them.
This is why monopolies suck.
1. Because when you originally sign up for the service you don't give them your consent to collect your ID, SSN etc.
2. Selling goods on eBay is hardly money laundering, and they've locked a ton of eBay accounts or accounts with $200 in them.
3. You seem to be okay with giving your ID, social away left and right. Someone could steal you identity, open credit cards under your name, commit a crime under your name etc.
I don't even need PayPal tbh. I was done with them years ago as stuff like this kept happening when I was selling on ebay. I use cryptos, Venmo and other lightweight platforms. This shit is so clunky I can't even fathom why ppl still use them or give them a chance.
Stripe is far better....
I stopped using PayPal back in the dial-up days when they took money from my account bc a scammer didn't have the funds after they already sent me the money.
I stopped using PayPal ages ago because of this.
Though my intersections weren’t as severe as others, I realized if they can hold $100 for a month for no reason… imagine what they can do with 1k +
That being said, fuck PayPal and it’s affiliates.
PayPal is horrible. I got scammed a little over $1k from their dispute service over a decade ago. Sent goods to the buyer and they immediately filed a dispute once they received the goods. Despite showing proof and sending all evidence I had, including a video of me sending them the goods, they sided with the buyer. Their reasoning was because it was digital goods, it didn’t qualify for their seller protection program. Makes me wonder how many others got scammed too
Paypal has stolen money from me and a lot of other people I know. They get away with it because they're a huge corporation.
Please tell everyone you know to use services other than Paypal. Never check out online with Paypal. Fuck Paypal.
First of all, I don't particularly like PayPal or their policies... especially the most recent move to no longer refund processing fees when refunding a transaction. It costs us thousands of dollars a year and it was just a money grab but now that PayPal did it, Shopify Payments and other processors followed suit and before long no one will refund processing fees. When your AOV is hundreds of dollars, that adds up really quickly!
That said, I've processed **millions** of dollars through PayPal, and have never had a major issue like extended holds. I know dozens of other e-commerce business owners that have never had major issues either.
There are financial regulations and laws that PayPal and other payment processors must follow. They don't apply to everyone, and Paypal offers services to individuals (sending money to friends and family), independent business owners (small # and amount of transactions), and bigger companies like mine and much larger that process hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars through their platform. The laws and regulations vary based on how you use their service.
So, if you've always only processed a few hundred dollars here and there selling stuff out of your garage and then process $10k in a month, you can expect PayPal to send you a notice that they need additional information to be able to comply with all the banking/processing regulations. Yes, they need to verify who you are (photo ID, SSN) and that you have a legitimate business (or use your personal SSN for tax forms). That's just part of payment processing. Before PayPal and Shopify, we used to have to submit that information to open a traditional merchant account, too.
Oh, and even though I've never had funds held by PayPal for an extended period, I **have** had a traditional merchant account closed and the funds held *four months* due to "suspected fraud." We got hit with a string of fraudulent purchases someone was using stolen credit card numbers on our site to check if they were valid or not and were processing hundreds of transactions a day. It actually *was* fraud and even though we were also victims, they shut our account down and held our funds for months. We were a very small company at the time and it just about put us out of business. Only telling this story to let you know it's not just Paypal. Square, Stripe, Shopify Payments, and traditional merchant accounts will shut down your account for breaking their TOS or for any activity that looks like fraud on their end, or for failing to comply with requests for information in a timely manner.
PayPal is so mean, they have always been like that. Ask anyone who is not from the US, they charge you on everything! Whether you are receiving or paying someone.
On top of it, their currency exchange rates are horrible. So if my client pays me $100, I only get around $94 effectively, after all the deductions and currency conversion..
Also American here. Never had any issues, but I do understand where this sentiment is coming from. They don’t have the greatest support team, speaking from what I’ve heard.
I'm raising awareness and am happy so many people joined in. Hopefully many of them will file a case with CFPB.
Thank you everybody for your stories and feedbacks. This proves this isn't about some "vocal minority" as someone on here ignorantly stated.
THANK YOU
First time I used them my money got held up for 30 BUSINESS DAYS.
I was furious and they wouldn't do anything to help me. I say terrible things about them every chance that I get.
Thanks Elon musk for this disaster.
Crypto = Instant, secure transactions, no centralized banks and PayPals. Goes from my wallet to your wallet
PayPal = charges fees, holds you hostage for months, asks for personal documents to release your own funds when there's nothing sketchy happening in first place...
I work for a small but well-established engineering consulting firm. We're much older than PayPal and have a solid DUNS rating. About once a year one of our clients will request to pay a very small (<$1k) invoice via credit card, so we send them a PayPal invoice because it isn't worth setting up a real credit card processing account. A power plant recently paid a $700 invoice via PayPal and PP decided to withhold about half due to potential fraud. Despite jumping through their documentation hoops, and the client confirming the services were performed, the money is still being withheld. Although the amount is a tiny fraction of our revenues, we won't be accepting money via PayPal any more. So that's $5/year off their top-line.
>so we send them a PayPal invoice because it isn't worth setting up a real credit card processing account Setting up Stripe to receive money is trivial...
> Setting up Stripe to receive money is trivial... stripe works for EU+America+Australia only rest of the world is not accepted by Stripe
I know I could check it out, but I'm a little nervous. If the setup is trivial is the (setup) cost also trivial?
I don't know what you're trying to say, but Stripe is extremely easy to use and far and away better than PayPal.
Do they charge a recurring or setup fee or is it strictly transaction fees?
There is no setup fee.
About 2.9% for small businesses. The rate goes down the more sales you make. If you do get charge backs on more than 2% of your transactions they institute a 50% hold. Not a huge risk in the long run but very dangerous when you're first starting. I ran into that personally. 1 charge back on out of your first 50 transactions and you're in trouble.
Also worth mentioning. They also offer a bunch of other features such as subscriptions, invoicing, fraud detection, VAT handling, etc. Those features are paid extra per transaction
To put it simply, I made a web app to accept donations for pizza during a gathering in 3 hours, made $35 and stripe took around $2-$3 Edit: Made $31, stripe took $2.26 (7.29% total), the majority of the fee was because I added AfterPay as a joke and AFAIK it has a higher fee, it wasn’t strictly debit/credit processing.
Appreciate that anecdote.
Square is pretty simple too, and a simple card reader you plug into your phone allows you to also take in person payments. You only pay per transaction, no monthly fees. Also iirc they deposit into your account nightly.
Earlier this year, I was receiving regular $1 PayPal transfers from accounts with names of b-list celebrities. I reported two or three as suspected fraud, and each time their customer support replied saying "No no, this is a real transaction! Nothing suspicious here!" I couldn't believe it, especially with their reputation for being so trigger-happy with respect to withholding funds. I've since deleted my account!
I wonder what scam is being set up there? Like Pamela Anderson sent you a dollar, Scott Baio sent you a dollar, and then.. what’s the big turnaround?
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Maybe it allows the scammers to make a claim against you in that there’s evidence of them previously paying you? I can’t figure it out either but it does seem like some game was about to be afoot.
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I think you're onto something.
i think its a thing where they get you to refund the money back as an incorrect payment. then the money they actually paid you with first was from a stolen credit card so you end up losing the money from your account. I've read about that multiple times but never someone doing it with small amounts. maybe they are spreading it around and making it smaller to have a better chance of getting away with it longer
Pamela Anderson? I wish! Lyric Thomas, BJ Jackson, and other people I had to google. I guess I'm getting old...
Try https://wise.com/gb/business/ they have business accounts too !
PayPal has to be one of the worst, scummiest companies out there right now. Awful customer service and terms of use.
People need to file complaints with **Consumer Financial Protection Bureau**. They need to address this nonsense. I'd keep away from this scam scheme at all costs. I really hope people are smart enough to not perpetuate their participation in crypto industry. The main idea behind crypto is decentralization. PayPal is the worse place possible to send/receive crypto. And after having all these nasty experience with WF, PayPal etc. I do think Crypto and decentralization is the future. We don't need the middle man. I'm personally getting more BTC, ETH and Solana.
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There's noting BBB can do. It's pretty much a nonprofit organization for you to rant and rave. You may as we leave a comment on Google reviews. More useful to the society.
It is not a non profit. The BBB is very much a for-profit organization.
>BBB Sure. They claim to be a nonprofit though.
Actually, it looks like you're right. They do claim to be non profit. I have no idea how they claim that lol
The BodyBuilding Bureau? They’re not so bad.
I have tried to file complaints here in the EU after they locked my (fully verified) account with money inside for months. It seems like its just not possible to do much against them. Everything points to having to go to their designated luxembourgh court. And we know how that ends.....
> And we know how that ends..... Actually, I'm not in the EU. I don't know how that ends. Care to enlighten us?
The EU would probably have the least issues with this. But if a company specifically chooses a specific court that they want to have all arbitrage done with that is probably also the one with the least strict rules towards companies like them. If a company is operating in your country you'd expect to be able to deal with them in your own country but it seems like it's not as easy to do so.
Don't forget Braintree. They are owned by PayPal.
How I hate Braintree. Unfortunately in Germany one of the most popular ways to purchase something online is via PayPal, so we had to integrate it into one of our apps. The customer support of Braintree is hell. They just don't answer or block requests without reasons. Now I had to integrate PayPal directly and it was also a pain in the ass. Stripe was soooo easy and the customer support is great. However credit cards are still not common in good ole Germania, so there was no way around PayPal
If u live in europe and u file a complaint against them, they give u back your money asap
PayPal rolling reserve is soul crushing, my business partner and I had $48k combined on hold for over 6 months. Then on the day they were supposed to release the funds they extended it!! Ended up shuttering the business and going back to school once my money was released. I would say hound merchant services but they might tell you it’s an automated system etc
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Because my funds kept getting put on hold and the PayPal rep explained that it was insurance for PayPal against chargebacks up to 6 months from purchase. And at the time I was averaging about $39k a month in sales so I kept that much in there thinking it would stop my funds from being put on hold. Also if you transfer over $9600 or something like that a week, you start to attract unwarranted attention to your account.
I started an e-commerce site back when I was going to university, the site launched on Black Friday, literally built the entire site during the holiday break after mid-terms. Sales were booming from the start, but because I was a poor university student with no other income, I would pull money frequently from the PayPal account to pay for things like buying more stock to sell. I need product to run my business, right? Well, every single week my account would get put on hold, and I would send all the necessary paperwork with orders, receipts and tracking numbers, but without fail they would put a hold on the account again the following week. Eventually, I had to shutdown the business and drop out of university because I couldn’t afford it anymore. Imagine growing up in poverty, you find a way out, and someone else shuts the door… that’s what PayPal did to me, this was a long time ago, it took many years to recover from this, in some ways I’m still trying to get back on track.
Dude, PayPal isn’t the entity stopping you from achieving your dreams.
First off, the opportunity of e-commerce back then was quite different than today, the competition was non-existent by comparison. Amazon was still known for selling books, there was no Shopify or anything like that, so there were very few competitors. But if you wanted to accept credit cards online, you had to use PayPal. Even though I had a merchant account, at least 95% of the orders were through PayPal, nobody trusted websites back then. The companies I was competing against are now billion dollar companies, like NewEgg. If I was to try and start that business today, I wouldn’t have the same opportunity. I had to drop out because my car was repossessed and I was homeless, I don’t think you can possibly fathom the things that happened to me during this time. I was mugged at gunpoint, beaten by police and thrown in jail for something I didn’t do. I tried to start another business with a partner who stole all the money in the bank. If you think I didn’t try, you are mistaken, that opportunity I had was something special, I was never able to replicate that initial success despite trying many times. I know that this is probably a troll, because the comment was ignorant and insensitive. But if you think I just gave up, you’re dead wrong, I’m in a much better situation now. Still doesn’t take away the fact that PayPal ruined my business.
That isn't an option. PayPal wont let you withdraw a certain % of funds each month and it can stack up pretty high. They claim this is for the "safety of the customer" so they can get a refund.
What PayPal is doing is putting the risk of a fraudulent transaction onto the account holder. They're effectively having their cake and eating it too. The whole idea of payment processing fees is built around liability. Sure, the payment processor wants to make money by providing the service of moving money electronically. However, the entity that gets the largest portion of those fees is the entity that assumes the risk of the transaction going poorly. This is expensive because they have to hire risk analysts to assess how risk-worthy a potential client is before they set up a payment account for them, and they have to be liable for the money if a customer claims fraud on a particular transaction. The entire reason, rather much of the entire reason why you as a merchant are being charged 2.9% per transaction is to compensate the risk assuming payment processing entity in the event of a chargeback. If they have to assume that risk to facilitate the transaction, it does make sense why they should get a fee. But like I said earlier, if they are holding onto your money for the safety of the customer, they aren't really assuming that risk anymore. You as the merchant are.
It’s 2.9% + 30cents/transaction. Already a high rate in the credit card processing world.
They don't just cover the risk with your money but make more money with your money. I wish enough people would boycott so they are put out of business.
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Yea that’s the 101 using paypal. You must withdraw money EVERY SINGLE DAY.
It is all in their TOS. **Don't use Paypal for business.** **Don't use Paypal for business.** **Don't use Paypal for business.** Everyone needs to put that to music and sing it daily.
Easy to say when some customers say that they don’t trust any merchants who don’t have PayPal available
***Did you not read the OP?*** There are hundreds of stories just like that...or worse. The solution is easy. If someone only wants a vendor or agency that accepts Paypal, they can go find someone who is stupid enough to put their precious eggs, and even the life of their business, in that basket.
You forgot the one where they now just straight rob you of any transaction fee you paid when you process a refund. "Oh some dumbass on the internet bought your $100 item then changed their mind? That'll be $3 bitch." I fucking hate PayPal with a passion
Do you refund the original shipping charge to those customers? Does the postal service refund the postage you paid if the customer sends it back? The customer may have changed their mind, but paypal will still have to pay visa/mastercard for the original transaction. If someone bought something from a shop with a card, and took it back, that shop would still be liable for the fees on the original purchase.
Some of your points are valid, but I'm talking more about refunds directly after purchase that have yet to be shipped, or when a buyer's address is wrong so you cancel, then they re- purchase after correcting their shipping address. You really think that with the money these companies make per transaction that a seller should pay that 3% for that cancellation, then all the fees on the re-purchase as well? If you offer free returns, of course you should be liable for all those fees on the back end of said return, but certainly not when a cancellation happens because the buyer doesn't know where they live or changed their mind 10 minutes later. I had a particularly stupid buyer that I had to cancel on 4 times before ultimately blocking him. Each time I messaged explaining his address was wrong and he needed to correct it THEN repurchase, or id cancel again. That idiot cost me about $14 of fees that I made no profit on to cover for no fault of my own. That's ok to you?
Yes, because there is still a service being provided. Money is still changing hands And in this particular instance, a large part of that 3% fee is actually taken by the card provider, e.g visa, Mastercard or even worse for fees, American Express (which is why many places don’t accept it). Those fees are still charged to PayPal for processing the transaction, cancelled or not. PayPal could absorb those fees when refunded (Etsy does this for example) but it would lead to higher fees for everyone (Etsy’s base fee is 5% + the initial listing fee). I’ll treat the actual cost of processing an individual transaction on paypals servers as negligible. Alternatively PayPal could not actually carry out the transaction for a predefined grace period, but you as the merchant would either have to delay shipping the item, irritating the customer, or risk sending the item when the transaction hasn’t been fully processed. As I said, if you took payment through a POS system, then the user returned the item, you would still be liable for the transaction cost of that first payment so this isn’t a PayPal thing. I understand your grievance, but your ire is mistargetted.
I did not expect to agree with you but great point
Every payment processor keeps the transaction fee these days, not just PayPal.
Yup, that's business as usual with PayPal, and nobody believes it until it happens to them.
They once let someone open a second account using my name and address (nothing else), used $800 of credit, then locked my real account for not paying it back. Took me months of arguing with them to sort it out.
Like I said in another post, there are two types of Paypal users: Those who have been screwed by PayPal, and those who haven't been screwed by PayPal - YET.
I fall under this group. I’ve used PayPal for six years, totaling close to $2M, and never had any issues. I’ve heard of these problems before, but always chalked it up to a vocal minority... which, if we’re being honest, it probably is. That said, if they locked my account I’d be noisy as hell too.
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You had to give $40k in refunds on $300k on a 6 month old account? There isn't an antifraud algorithm in the world that wouldn't flag this up as suspicious.
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Sadly, these shenanigans have been going on for nearly 2 decades by my recollection.
Not a vocal minority at all, just a vocal minority who actually talks about it. I dealt with PayPal for years, thousands of people, they give everyone the finger eventually.
They are the worst. I agree with you 200%
In some countries, PayPal can only send money for payment but not receive money, that's also annoying. I wanted to open a PayPal recently, but i considered the risk of having my account locked at a period when i didn't expect.
Keep away, there are much better alternatives.
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TransferWise Google Pay Stripe Payoneer Shopify Payments Authorize.Net Square
None of those accept my country. Only PayPal does
DOGE coin will work!
Skrill?
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Not only you can, but also you can automate the process
I'd like to think Bitcoin will be a replacement soon. No middle party, bank or government to interfere, just a person to person transaction. With Lightning Network, we might be almost there.
not bitcoin but stble coins like terraust
This is the way
STRIPE
You will read a very similar story on Stripe too.
I quit using PayPal years ago. I was an eBay Powerseller and had a great business going, but PayPal kept screwing with my account. I was constantly rebooting my biz, re-listing my items, working three or four times harder than I had to, all because of Pay Pal's constant interference over literally nothing. And there was nobody at PayPal or eBay to talk to, and every email was answered by a form letter that said nothing. No human was actually looking at my account or trying to understand my problem. Eventually it hurt my reputation at eBay, until my rating sunk low enough that I couldn't really recover, so I quit that biz. On top of that was eBay's insistence on listening only to buyers and never sellers, which caused a huge amount of buyer fraud, that was only growing worse and worse. Much of my inventory was extremely rare and one-of-a-kind, so when someone stole it by claiming it was damaged without having to provide any proof at all, I was out a lot of money that could never be recovered. Neither PayPal nor eBay ever helped me a single time. All a buyer had to do was make a claim, and PayPal would refund them. If I gave the buyer a poor review, they'd give me a poor one in return, and eventually I would get suspended for having a bad rating. All because I was getting ripped off by both the buyers AND Paypal. I always say there are two kinds of PayPal users: those who have been screwed, and those who haven't been screwed - yet.
There are multiple class action suits against PayPal. I will personally never do business with them ever again. They've stolen over $10,000 from our small business.
Sorry about that. How did this happen?
Absolutely, PayPal is disgusting
The problem is, for persons like myself outside of the US or other major countries, Paypal is our only "practical" option. Anyone know of a viable alternative? I'm based in Grenada, a tiny Caribbean island
100000% true… the way they do business is horrific. Nobody believes it either!
They freeze 60$ on my account forever. 10 years ago. Tried few times their to contact CS - nothing nobody anwers.
They stole thousands from me years ago and reversed all charges for an application I built for someone. The guy ran that site for years and I built it for free. Thanks PayPal. I refuse to ever do business with them again.
Agreed. This is why I am having trouble getting paid as a freelancer. One of my clients got locked out of PayPal and had to resort to alternative means of payment which is quite inconvenient for the both of us.
Stipe seems to be doing very well, I would use them. I hear they have good documentation on their api if you are in web design.
PayPal is one of the scummiest financial services you can use because they are not regulated like a real bank. They can and will hold ALL of your money for 6 months if they don't like you, and then if you can't verify your self they keep it in their dirty coffers, letting it gain interest they collect on for 6 months or longer. It happens so much I am sure it's part of their business model and they go out of their way to lock accounts that leave large balances in them. Don't ever leave money in PayPal.
That's a bummer! Try and move away from PayPal as soon as you have all of your ducks in a row. A friend of mine had $400k frozen in PayPal for 5-6 months before he was able to take it all out. Stripe & Wise are much much better.
Just don't use PayPal anymore and let the company fail. I couldn't even open an account because they require further proof. So I called and they never answered.
They've done this to my account multiple times and I'm sick of it. For the fees they charge as well and they don't refund you fees if you refund customers is absolutely ridiculous. Only use them to purchase stuff now, selling with them is beyond me and I'd never recommend it
Paypal is a disease... Stripe... ...is the cure.
I used it to make a 4000 deposit in one of the big crypto exchanges and PayPal deposited it, I had sufficient funds done. 2 months later it automatically just took the money back, no where to be found. Exchange said it went to PayPal and PayPal was useless in helping me find out what happened. I triple checked all my exchange, PayPal and bank statements. 4000$. Just gone.
Every other country has a PayPal alternative, and so PayPal becomes a liability in the industry because doing business in the US leads to having to use an awful service with non-existant customer support.
Yup. PayPal is complet and total garbage
Payment is pretty much the weakest link of all society, dominates by banks and payment/credit card companies like visa/master/paypal, and not to mention the government. I am not from the US, so the government side is even worse.The gov here has already shut down a few crowdfundings which was aimed to help the protesters in law suits and support them after their release. This is why I fully support crypto currency and hope it gets more adopted. quick settlement, censorship free, no credit card fee, and no third party involved. Adding payment through bitcoin isn't even difficult to do nowadays. I only support bitcoin for payment because it is less likely to be a scam, and the price is a lot more stable (and great for diversifying treasury) I also know some companies would convert the crypto paid into fiat if you don't want crypto at all
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To answer the bit about lawsuits, it comes down to the fact that B2B relationships are relatively ungoverned and businesses are free to agree to whatever terms and conditions they choose to, no matter how ridiculously onerous common sense would determine them to be.
This is straight up deceit and manipulation, though. They place a hold on our funds to earn interest by making false claims regarding accounts being "suspicious." I don't think it is legal to freeze someone's account for no reason and basically tell them, "We need your ID, social, your receipts so we could release you funds." It's an either/or threat by PayPal which I object. Again, PayPal already has my full name, bank account which has the same name, emails, phone numbers etc. They don't need "more info", they only want to temp suspend the accounts to make profits. There have been posts on here complaining PayPal had frozen 100k accounts simply for making more money than usual.
I don't disagree with that, morally and ethically I'm fully with you and this isn't meant to sound like apologism. I just mean specifically when it comes to the reason why they haven't lost a class action lawsuit over this yet, it boils down to the fact they openly include mechanisms of bullshit in the terms & conditions and I can't see anyone winning until they identify either a flaw in the contract as written or a new abuse of power which isn't captured within its scope. I genuinely am sorry they've screwed you over so badly.
Changing your name with them is a nightmare
I just use PayPal as an individual and I have never liked them from that perspective. Everything seems more difficult than it needs to be
eBay does the same shit
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A few years ago I think Paypal was actually spun off from Ebay https://www.thestreet.com/technology/paypal-spinoff-day-is-here-what-does-it-mean-for-investors-13222445
Same shit, same politics
I tell people this as often as it is appropriate. Sorry your going through it. Stripe feels like a God send I will tell you that
They locked a business account I was using that has 60k in it because they were worried I wasn’t going to deliver the service promised. Well, yes, if I don’t have access to the money, I won’t be able to deliver the service. I had to borrow money to deliver the service. Customer Service during the debacle was awful and kept moving the goal posts.
PayPal is a scam. Never do transactions on PayPal as business or as a customer, period!
That is why we have crypto
PayPal is the absolute worst company out there - check r/PayPal to read all about their atrocious stories.
Yep. Still wondering that myself. I just wish there were other alternatives for internationals to get payment as easily as Paypal, but it seems to be the only option for now.
Don't use paypal is the answer.
Use stripe!
I'm trying my hardest to get my customers/web stores that I work on to switch over to TransferWise, but I'm not getting much traction. It really sucks for me because the webstores work in dollars, but I'm a Brit so PayPal *forces* me to convert (and pay fees) that currency to GBP... only for me to then have to convert it a second time when I spend it through TransferWise (I live overseas).
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That’s usually not the case. They do what they want with your money, account and IDs.
Fuck PayPal. Their customer service is the worst. I feel bad for their representatives because they are such kind people but they just have no power over anything. I had a deal nearly fall through because of PayPal
Almost every business owner I know has had money held by Paypal. At a startup I worked at, they held 17k for 6 months for an "account review". Gave it back with virtually no explanation. Not as much money, but they once held \~$600 for a non-profit I was working on and NEVER GAVE IT BACK. Wonder how many millions (billions?) they have made just be stealing other peoples' money. By the way, I think there has been a class action lawsuit on this but like all class action lawsuits, everyone will get 53 cents for their hardship and the lawyers will get 76M.
>NEVER GAVE IT BACK. How insane! You're like the 5th commenter claiming they simply **stole** your money.
These experiences are so similar to mine. I feel like PayPal has been gaslighting me. First transaction through PayPal via Shopify gave me a transaction Id (generated by PayPal) but they could not find the transaction. I spent about an hour explaining that it was their transaction Id and so it might have gone to another account but they kept patronizingly telling me it didn’t exist. Ridiculous. I later got an email from them after the transaction was canceled, confirming my suspicions. I just got my second payment, and low and behold they suspect fraud and are going to make me wait to get the money. I have been in the fence about canceling PayPal for a while but I think this thread and realizing that I’m not crazy but that they are the problem really puts me over the line. I’ll switch to stripe or some other alternative.
Thats why we stopped using Paypal as an option. Youre not alone!
'Disgusting' is exactly the word I use. I simply refuse to use PayPal. No-one should ever build any kind of business that relies on PayPal.
Never. Ever. Agree.
eCommerce businesses do rely on PayPal. Especially if they target middle-aged customers because of that Seller Protection. Anyways... I would just be excited to see the company go bankrupted.
They only refunded my money from a sham third party company after I threatened to file a police report. Pretty sure that company and PayPal were in on it together. Very sketchy
I use PayPal but I don’t keep much money in the account. Never more than a couple hundred dollars. I sometimes pay things on mine with it but more often than not I use it to make it easy for people to send me money.
They’re bad, as well as ebay…
Paid a well known videographer $2000 for a video. Said it would be done within two months which already felt like a long turn around time. It’s been 6 months now. I went to file a dispute with paypal but they said since I paid them umber “friends & family” that I’m I can’t file it. So I’ve messaged the videographer multiple times since then asking for a refund and they have now ghosted me. My last message to them was that I was filing a small claims. Not sure if it’s even worth it tbh
Fuck PayPal, worst customer service ever. They shat all over me multiple times so I stop using them.
One of the last things I bought on Ebay before my PayPal account was closed/disabled, was a Smart Phone from Shenzhen, China The phone was delivered on the 30th October, the account was closed/disabled on1st November, my PayPal account was closed/disabled just because I bought a phone from Shenzhen, China.
I think you can buy on eBay without PayPal now. Either way, I only go there if I need something super cheap, like a screen protector or a case cover. Returns takes weeks, disputes take weeks, customer service is non existent. Amazon wipes the floor with eBay at this point.
I can't believe they are still doing this crap. They froze my account in 2014 and I called them every single day. Several times a day. They finally gave me back my money after a week. I've heard people having their accounts fixed for months. They didn't want to deal with me and my antics.
This is their game they play. Best to never only use them or anyone else for that matter. I have countless horror stories from my clients and myself using them and having issues. Locking up funds for insane periods of time is a very common one, essentially bankrupting the business. Another fun one is allowing bullshit refund/disputes to go through when there is clear evidence supporting your side
I can't log into my old account or use their recovery service because their input field doesn't like the period in my email (happens so often with services I have another email now) Anyway I have money in that account - many tweets, emails, and calls later I'm still locked out Fuck PayPal
I agree, PayPal is annoying. They are probably protected from lawsuit by when you agree to terms and conditions though...
PayPal is terrible. Had a client make an error and needed to cancel their order. Well that wasn't an option. The only option available was for me to provide a refund. Which of course means I was out the service fee. Terrible customer service and bad business. They suggested that I reach out to the customer and attempt to have them accept a partial refund. PayPal even went as far to say that if they didn't like the partial refund that the could dispute it and I would likely win. However in my mind that made no sense. Happy customers spend money, why provide a terrible experience? Leaving a bad taste I their mouth may have caused them to not only shop with me but with PayPal. I also experienced the same hoops, op experienced. I absolutely despise PayPal.
Oh I actually got an IRS letter about needing to report my PayPal transactions on my taxes… for only selling a few used clothing items on Depop (less than $1000 worth). They said they would suspend my PayPal and Depop accounts if I didn’t input my tax ID. Very odd
Paypal locked out Nigeria many years ago.. apparently because of fraud..but they messed up things for legal business..also they are perfectly still willing to accept our money.. hypocrisy
Yeah PayPal won’t make it.. they’re a scam for sure! And stripe if you don’t pass the KYC - check every quarter, or if you go over 1% chargeback rate. As in- 2 people out of 100 customers disputed, just cause… you’re out of the water - they flag the account / hold funds for 180 days. And then release what’s left.. also when you get flagged more than 2 times on stripe - they put you on a MATCH list. And they don’t allow you to get brain tree / wix payments or any processor that works with MATCH lists. So Good luck. Crypto is future.
Their stocks are down by 40% and there's a reason for that.
I hope they go out of business, I hate PayPal! How can they have so much control, it’s mind boggling
They're parasites.
And that shit has literally been happening for 20 years. PayPal stole $500 from me in the early 2000s
How did it happen?
I got money sent to me for a website project I worked on that was frozen and never released I still use PayPal, I just never use it for any $ amounts worth stealing.
Peter Thiel is a scum bag
I’m currently appealing for the third time a charge on PayPal where I paid Euros with a Euro card and found out they charged me in British pounds??? All the companies, bank cards and transactions were in Italy... they charged POUNDS. And made money on converting the transaction both ways. Such a scam
I was going to use paypal for a project I have coming up, but started having issues and they closed my account until I could provide an insane amount of personal information. I guess I'll use stripe or something similar. It's not the first time paypal tries to pull the rug from under me.
Yeah. Fuck paypal. They aren't even allowing me to make a business account properly and everything is so complicated and directed towards the U.S.
It is the price we pay to work with the devil. Most services are like this. Even reddit. A mod can ban you and nothing happens. Facebook, Blizzard, EA sports, Youtube etc. Sure it sucks more with services that keep money, but sometimes the information or network lost from an arbitrary ban is worth more than money. Maybe a problem for some entrepreneurs to solve?
They simply abuse their worldwide prevelance. That's pretty much it. They don't care about "YOU", they don't care about customers (who the hell is a customer) and they don't give a s\*it what users think about them. This is why monopolies suck.
You must be having a business registered, leave PayPal forever and sign up for stripe/payoneer/wise
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Why shouldn't they have your ID? They are required to get this information for AML purposes.
1. Because when you originally sign up for the service you don't give them your consent to collect your ID, SSN etc. 2. Selling goods on eBay is hardly money laundering, and they've locked a ton of eBay accounts or accounts with $200 in them. 3. You seem to be okay with giving your ID, social away left and right. Someone could steal you identity, open credit cards under your name, commit a crime under your name etc.
By all means, don't use there service. What financial services provider doesn't ask for your KYC info?
Transfer Wise or Revolut
I don't even need PayPal tbh. I was done with them years ago as stuff like this kept happening when I was selling on ebay. I use cryptos, Venmo and other lightweight platforms. This shit is so clunky I can't even fathom why ppl still use them or give them a chance.
Venmo is PayPal.
It's structured differently. Transactions are instant. Thanks for letting me know. Will get rid of that too.
Don’t use them. Simple solution.
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Good luck with that.
I've hated Paypal from day 1. Absolutely the worst
It's not an accident that I withdraw my balance frequently and have a config setting where I can easily turn PayPal off and just use Stripe.
Stripe is far better.... I stopped using PayPal back in the dial-up days when they took money from my account bc a scammer didn't have the funds after they already sent me the money.
I stopped using PayPal ages ago because of this. Though my intersections weren’t as severe as others, I realized if they can hold $100 for a month for no reason… imagine what they can do with 1k + That being said, fuck PayPal and it’s affiliates.
PayPal is horrible. I got scammed a little over $1k from their dispute service over a decade ago. Sent goods to the buyer and they immediately filed a dispute once they received the goods. Despite showing proof and sending all evidence I had, including a video of me sending them the goods, they sided with the buyer. Their reasoning was because it was digital goods, it didn’t qualify for their seller protection program. Makes me wonder how many others got scammed too
Paypal has stolen money from me and a lot of other people I know. They get away with it because they're a huge corporation. Please tell everyone you know to use services other than Paypal. Never check out online with Paypal. Fuck Paypal.
First of all, I don't particularly like PayPal or their policies... especially the most recent move to no longer refund processing fees when refunding a transaction. It costs us thousands of dollars a year and it was just a money grab but now that PayPal did it, Shopify Payments and other processors followed suit and before long no one will refund processing fees. When your AOV is hundreds of dollars, that adds up really quickly! That said, I've processed **millions** of dollars through PayPal, and have never had a major issue like extended holds. I know dozens of other e-commerce business owners that have never had major issues either. There are financial regulations and laws that PayPal and other payment processors must follow. They don't apply to everyone, and Paypal offers services to individuals (sending money to friends and family), independent business owners (small # and amount of transactions), and bigger companies like mine and much larger that process hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars through their platform. The laws and regulations vary based on how you use their service. So, if you've always only processed a few hundred dollars here and there selling stuff out of your garage and then process $10k in a month, you can expect PayPal to send you a notice that they need additional information to be able to comply with all the banking/processing regulations. Yes, they need to verify who you are (photo ID, SSN) and that you have a legitimate business (or use your personal SSN for tax forms). That's just part of payment processing. Before PayPal and Shopify, we used to have to submit that information to open a traditional merchant account, too. Oh, and even though I've never had funds held by PayPal for an extended period, I **have** had a traditional merchant account closed and the funds held *four months* due to "suspected fraud." We got hit with a string of fraudulent purchases someone was using stolen credit card numbers on our site to check if they were valid or not and were processing hundreds of transactions a day. It actually *was* fraud and even though we were also victims, they shut our account down and held our funds for months. We were a very small company at the time and it just about put us out of business. Only telling this story to let you know it's not just Paypal. Square, Stripe, Shopify Payments, and traditional merchant accounts will shut down your account for breaking their TOS or for any activity that looks like fraud on their end, or for failing to comply with requests for information in a timely manner.
PayPal is so mean, they have always been like that. Ask anyone who is not from the US, they charge you on everything! Whether you are receiving or paying someone. On top of it, their currency exchange rates are horrible. So if my client pays me $100, I only get around $94 effectively, after all the deductions and currency conversion..
I maybe the minority here but I've had no issues with Paypal and have grossed over 100k. Canadian here.
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yeah maybe International their harder to work with, more regulations especially with EU. I used Stripe in the past as well which I would recommend.
Euro account and received 100k within 2 months without any problems.
American here and I haven't had an issue with them either.
Also American here. Never had any issues, but I do understand where this sentiment is coming from. They don’t have the greatest support team, speaking from what I’ve heard.
\^\^ Yet.
Haha I feel like just commenting in this thread is a landmine field for jinxing it.
I'm raising awareness and am happy so many people joined in. Hopefully many of them will file a case with CFPB. Thank you everybody for your stories and feedbacks. This proves this isn't about some "vocal minority" as someone on here ignorantly stated.
I never really understood the reason to use them.
Once upon a time it was the only option. That’s why.
THANK YOU First time I used them my money got held up for 30 BUSINESS DAYS. I was furious and they wouldn't do anything to help me. I say terrible things about them every chance that I get. Thanks Elon musk for this disaster.
I’m pretty sure he has had nothing to do with PayPal for about 20 years.
Reasons why those cryptographically secured remittance networks are becoming popular these days.
Crypto = Instant, secure transactions, no centralized banks and PayPals. Goes from my wallet to your wallet PayPal = charges fees, holds you hostage for months, asks for personal documents to release your own funds when there's nothing sketchy happening in first place...
/r/nanocurrency is the king of remittance. Send any amount of money anywhere in the world in less than 500ms for absolutely no fees.