Gregory's Server@pnorman @simon @ianthetechie Paypal is not a bank. Paypal escapes banking regs. Paypal can freeze your acct for countless trivial reasons such as not liking your IP address or being unable to solve a broken CAPTCHA. I got locked out of my account for a long time once because their software had a endless loop bug in the login process. Paypal can suddenly demand docs & lock your acct until you provide them.
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@pnorman @simon @ianthetechie If a bank tries to deny you access to your money for some bullshit reason & they give you no option to remedy it, in the US you can file an FDIC depositor’s insurance claim. Even though the bank is not insolvent, your money is lost from where you sit. The FDIC does not like being pestered with this so they put heavy pressure on the bank to fix it. It’s a hack but works. @ianthetechie @simon @pnorman Since Paypal is not a bank, they have a lot more freedom to deny you access to your money. Banking regulators are useless to consumers trying to get a remedy. The best you can do is sue them like any private business. In most of Europe, that’s broken from the start because there is no small claims courts in most if not all of the EU & court fees are not awarded when you win. @pnorman @simon @ianthetechie So a lawsuit is only worthwhile for disputes over €10k. This makes Paypal a stupid risk to Europeans. Americans have better access to courts & could sue Paypal for small amounts. It’ll cost <$100 in court fees to file & serve but the loser pays that. OTOH, Paypal most likely has an arbitration clause in their ToS which neuders that option. @ianthetechie @simon @pnorman I would love to sue Paypal for ~$150 (what they took from me + court fees), but PP didn’t burn me in the US so I’m stuffed. I have no viable recourse. @pnorman @simon @ianthetechie Consider the bottom line as well- if a US bank does a money grab & that goes public, the loss of trust is crippling as consumers have ~6000+ other banks to choose from. When Paypal does that, PP need not worry because of the monopolistic stranglehold they have. Consider that PP cut off Anonymous & Wikileaks at one point. They got burnt but they continue patronizing PP anyway.  @batalanto @pnorman @ianthetechie pls stop, the reasons why the OSMF offers paypal as one of a number of payment options has already been explained. @simon @ianthetechie @pnorman That’s irrelevant because the payer decides. If Paypal were the only option (as it appeared initially) they’d be getting zero from me. The fact that there are other options is precisely why exposing #Paypal’s wrongdoing is important. @batalanto @mnalis @pnorman @simon @ianthetechie You’re talking nuts & bolts of the CC option under a premise that a payer is trapped with #Paypal processing. Yes paying with CC via PP is much safer than paying with a PP acct. But then you still have PP sharing data from your CC transaction with 600+ corps & you still feed PP financially. So by boycotting PP I don’t just refuse to usa a PP acct, I avoid PP getting my CC info. |
@ianthetechie @simon @pnorman I had no activity on a paypal acct for a while & logins worked fine. Then I got a payment from a family member for <$50. Paypal froze my acct & demanded a copy of my passport. ID is unnecessary because paypal relies on banks to know their customer but PP does a money grab whenever they can. I provided my passport but PP did not unlock the acct. A bank would not get away with that.