[Pat]

A guy from the Warrior Forum had his PayPal account banned and has posted a recording of his phone conversation with them online:



I think it's pretty interesting to listen to and you get a general idea of what PayPal thinks of all of the "how to make money" ebooks in the WSO section there.

Whilst I do think sometimes people are unlucky in that they are seemingly not doing anything wrong but from listening to that I think I now have a pretty good idea of why a lot of people selling ebooks in the WSO section are losing their accounts.

A high percentage of us use PayPal so just thought some might also be interested in hearing it..

[Rainmak3r]

The Paypal guy's argument has loads of holes in it, but I think this would take legal power to resolve.
Paypal seem to be disabling accounts based on sentiments, and not fact.

The fact that a product is being sold from one location, ie the warrior forum, has no bearing on how Paypal views one's account, in short, it is NONE of THEIR BUSINESS.

Is the transaction legal? check
Did the vendor break any TOS? No
Was there fraud involved? Nope...

Does the History of the vendor show any inconsistencies in terms of revenue generated against chargebacks? From the conversation, I'd say not.

Honestly, this should shed a light on Paypal and also find alternatives... probably one developed by credible IMers.

Pretty sad... so in essence, if you want to sell products in volume online, beware, Paypal (if your payment processor) might just close your account.

Edited by Rainmak3r, 09 February 2012 - 19:55.

[sparkplug]

Paypal is quite arrogant. I stopped selling items on ebay because paypal put a new policy in place to hold seller funds for 21 days until they made sure the buyer received the items. I called them and complained since I had a 100% rating with no complaints. They told me there was nothing to they could do for me. There was no way I was going to sell something and wait 21 days to get paid. This is insane. And they screw you twice anyway because Ebay, who owns paypal, screws you with their high priced seller fees, then when you get paid by paypal, they screw you again by taking a cut of the payment you receive. In my opinion, the buyer should pay the paypal fees. This is what happens when these outfits get too big for their britches. They get arrogant, greedy, and condescending towards the very people who have made them successful companies. Kind of reminds you of another company, who happens to be a major search engine, doesn't it?

[Blah Blah Blah]

That's messed up. They should have at least given him some warning to slow down or that there was some kind of problem. At first I thought he must have processed some crazy amount of money but at the end when they said 12K I almost fell on the floor as I've processed well over 4 times that in the last year. Luckily I have other clients that pay via check as well so I don't have to depend solely on PayPal. Then again I'm providing a service and not an e-book or the kind of crap that's all over WF

[Wednesday41]

I think he's saying $12k in paypal fees were generated, not the amount of payments processed. Either way, what a bunch of crap.

[Blah Blah Blah]

I think he's saying $12k in paypal fees were generated, not the amount of payments processed. Either way, what a bunch of crap.

Yeah the the guy getting screwed said "revenue for you guys" but the PayPal guys just refers to "lifetime revenue" so it's confusing. But yeah either way that guy got screwed.

[Charybdis]

A lot of sellers provide only Paypal as a payment option, no wonder they are in monopoly. Just take a look at the classifieds section.

[_Richard]

You do have alternatives they are not even close to a monopoly, once you get away from the ebay and IM crowd most people do not use Paypal. While I do use paypal I also have a regular merchant account as I deal with people on an a regular basis that do not have a clue about who or what paypal is.

Not sure what his exact product is but it sounded like some type of "info product" and a lot of the payment processors are backing away from those not just paypal. While those types of products only represent a small portion of the revenue for a payment processor they generally represent a fairly large portion of their support issues so a lot of them have just stopped dealing with that type of product.

[m00j99]

Is there a reason, that no one uses https://payments.amazon.com ?

[MattW]

I had a very poor experience with Paypal when buying a domain. Essentially the seller just went silent after I had made payment and after some deeper enquiries it turned out he didn't even own the domain. The seller had also ripped off 4 other people I spoke to who also put similar complaints into PayPal.

I had a whole stack of evidence to support my case and PayPal said there is nothing they can do about it as domains arent covered in the buyer proection scheme which I thought was fair enough. What I didn't agree with though is their fraud department was already investigating the seller and even if they deemed the transactions to be fraudulent they would just close his account and NOT return any money to buyers due to domains not been covered in the buyer protection scheme.

So if paypal catches someone commiting fraud, instead of returning the money to people they just keep hold of it themselves.

In the end I resolved the issue by speaking to Visa, even though I had used a debit card for the payment I was able to reverse the transaction with them.

[chaoslinks]

Cool. It is very nice thing that this guy recorded this thing and inform us on what's happening. Well Paypal nowadays becomes ***** with regards to their services. Especially their 10% account balance bla bla. That's annoying though.

[Pat]

Not sure what his exact product is but it sounded like some type of "info product" and a lot of the payment processors are backing away from those not just paypal. While those types of products only represent a small portion of the revenue for a payment processor they generally represent a fairly large portion of their support issues so a lot of them have just stopped dealing with that type of product.

Yeah from listening to it I have no doubt the problem is the "make money online" info products.

Even though the way the PP guy explained it wasn't entirely accurate they seem to perceive them as Ponzi schemes of some sort. He basically described it as all of the buyers end up selling the same things and it's just one big circle.

I don't think anyone offering SEO type services would ever be in trouble, though, except for all of the other usual reasons like high refund rate/claims etc.

I have no interest what so ever in doing so, but if I was ever going to sell a "make money" guide there is no way I would ever be using PayPal to do so.

I have no idea how Mike Lantz' (WSO Pro) account is still active, too, now that I think about it..

[TruWebPro]

This situation will just keep getting worse until there is a viable competitor out there. PayPal does a lot of what they do to try and cut down on some of the pervasive online fraud that in fact does occur, but this kind of bullying is way out of line.

[Rhetoric]

I was delighted when Google introduced Google wallet. But that wasn't so dynamic enough to beat with Paypal.

[NatashaNixon]

Damn, that guy was cool as a cucumber through the whole conversation with paypal, I would have been a raging lunatic on that guys ass lol I need anger management

[raven]

a friend of mine who got into amazon by way of a friend who doesnt even know what IM is got her account frozen for too many transactions in a tme period even tho the account had been open since she was a teenager.

[ahmedbd]

I feel really sorry for the person,it again shows how some companies like paypal in online doing monopoly business by their ridiculous rules.

[_Richard]

I feel really sorry for the person,it again shows how some companies like paypal in online doing monopoly business by their ridiculous rules.

While I agree that Paypal has some crazy rules and regulations they are not by any means a monopoly. There are a huge number of payment processors that you can use, most of which are better. You get outside of ebay and the IM niche and most people do NOT use Paypal.

[scottcwilliams45]

It is quite hard to get in touch with those from Paypal if your Ebay account gets banned, so I don't know what to say about this feature. It really helped me a lot, but it is kind of difficult for the beginners.

[castillomd28]

Well scottcwilliams45, I am going to tell you something: this service is quite good and it helps a lot of Paypal users worldwide.