20 000 reasons to love Paypal

[Bico]

For those of you who may have skipped through Somethingawful.com's pages through the years, you may be surprised to see the website is now more or less kaput after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their servers (which were based in New Orleans).  Setting up a rough website in the aftermath for the purposes of making donations to the American Red Cross, they were less than happy when corporate cocksuckers Paypal froze the donations account after complaints from 'anonymous buyers'.

It would take a far less cynical man than me to ignore that Paypal have been doing this for years, but this strikes me as a particular low.  By sheer chance, the money accrues interest while they hold it elsewhere.  Just thought I'd mention that.  Don't know why.

Link: http://somethingawful.com/" target="_blank">Scum of the Earth

[James]

And here's a reason to hate Paypal.

I came back from a 10 day holiday to find 3 emails from 3 different peaople asking me to deposit money into their account. These emails were followed by more emails thanking me for the transfer.

In total I had $100 taken from my account. I spoke to Paypal and they suspended my account informing me that an investigation would take place and they would contact me between 24-48 hours later. That was on the 12th August. I have spoken to them a few times since and keep getting fobbed off.

Vastards.

[opaque]

They do suck in many ways but you have to admit that they have no way of knowing that the money is going for relief.
Maybe having a link direct to the Red Cross or whoever would have been better, would have meant that Paypal wouldn't have got any money as they would have taken a cut when the money was transferred anyway wouldn't they?

[Wake]

Did you perhaps fall for one of the many PayPal phishing emails which encourage you to enter your email address and password on a fake PayPal website, so that the scammers can then start ripping you off?

Wake

[James]

No way. Although my wife may have...

[The Amstor Computer]

Opaque --

Paying direct to a charity like the Red Cross is preferable, but you've got to weigh that up against the convenience of using PayPal for most peeps online. If you've got an account with them, it's only a couple of clicks to send a donation, whereas it may be a far longer, more involved process to do the same for a charity online (and some may not even be set up for it).

[The Amstor Computer]

..oh, and it's also worth pointing out that PayPal should have had a lot of experience of people using their service to collect donations - blogs do it for running costs, political and semi-political orgs in the US do it for fundraising, and I'm sure there have been a number of charity appeals that have been handled the same way before.

[Bico]

Actually, if you read the Somethingawful.com website (or what's left of it at the moment), the writer mentions that the account was actually registered with Paypal as a donations account, not a sales account.

[Art]

Paypal will do that with absolutely anyone, as part of it;s anti-fraud system. It probably means isn't a very good tool for mass charitible donations, but it's just plain silly to accuse them of villanous schemeing.