Tips, Tricks, Rants and Raves of Using Paypal

This is is a thread for:

Why you hate paypal

Why you love paypal

How you use paypal for a business

Avoiding problems with paypal

How you use paypal for non-buisness stuff

etc.

I'm a novice at paypal, and I figure many other are, too. So, if you've got knowledge, share it!

I hate Paypal! They are an evil mega-corp that is using their power to crush our right to free speech among other things.They shouldn't even have an opinion on these matters but they DO which means their investors and executives have an agenda that goes way beyond simply running a business for profit.

Patreon is also turning into a monster, I have supported a couple of youtube creators on patreon but that will stop too (feel bad for the recipients but if enough people drop Patreon a fair platform will rise to replace them).

Lucretia

Based on your many posts, I say you're pretty sharp and sensible, so... How about explain that violent horror response in detail? <g>

My own thought, based on investigation I did 15 years ago before getting a PayPal ID, is that they are very hard to separate from. That is, they retain access to any account you provide them, forever. So just provide them with one, preferably dedicated, account which is the _only_ account you hold with that particular bank. IOW, PayPal should live in what the IT security guys call a sandbox - an isolation chamber not connected with any other part of your life. Ideally make cash deposits when needed and withdraw in cash.

Separating accounts by bank, from what I've  gleaned from casual reading, is not a silver bullet, but it can help prevent some entity accessing easily your other assets.


Rufus

Rufus, how does one make cash withdrawls from paypal?

Nicole Alderman wrote:Rufus, how does one make cash withdrawls from paypal?

ATM using PayPal debit card.

Cash Back at a grocery store.

Oooooooh!

I don't have a Paypal debit card. That's a good thing to look into. Thank you!

> cash ...  from PayPal

When I signed on they wanted to link to a bank account. Funds can be moved from PayPal to that account and withdrawn in cash like any other bank account. In practice, for the last 10 years or so I've maintained a zero balance in PayPal because they automatically and immediately access the bank account to complete any outgoing transactions.

A slight digression, a heads up, hopefully not too far off track, regarding financial privacy:

One thing everyone who cares about their financial privacy should know about are the laws and regulations governing required reports by the financial institutions of any kind to the U.S. government. The Patriot Act expanded and made serious all sorts of automatic reporting as well as requiring businesses to try to probe for personal details at least once a year. There are triggers (size of transaction, repeated transactions, destination of transaction, many more) which cause the bank or other biz to be required to report it to the government. Not wait for a "request" but proactively send in the information w/in a certain time frame. Also, businesses are required to have a documented procedure in place to try to verify the identity, location, contact info of all their customers. IIRC the Feds required two out of a list of 6(?) possible documents for a credible ID.

FICA (I believe), one of the bodies regulating stock brokers now requires the broker to make "every attempt" to determine the suitability of an investment for it's customer. What this means in practice is that the broker will _insist_ on knowing all your income, financial holdings, accounts, CC's, debts, real assets, liabilities (like child support) - everything. The biz always points to the Patriot Act as requiring this. In fact, no law or regulation requires them to obtain this info. The Feds  _do_ require the broker to attempt to get this information and to attempt to update it fully at least once a year. They leave the details to the individual brokers and businesses and most happily bully and strong arm all customers into giving over their whole personal financial life. Wonderful  marketing resource...

Accurate or specific law and regulatory info is not found on the business websites - at all. It is documented, fairly well, in the  FICA, SEC, and other federal sites and many legal site have extensive explanation and commentary. It's a long read that I haven't had to look at for a while and so I beg off on the details. For people serious about their privacy, the info is out there, at present, and not that hard to find.

Rufus

We accept Paypal for online store transactions -- the fees are fairly steep, but this is true for any credit card transaction too.

One nice thing about Paypal as opposed to a bank account is that we can keep multiple currencies on hand and then spend in tat currency without exchange fees back and forth.  

One downside like most online payment services - they see CBD oil sales as a policy violation and will pull your account if they find it.

We have been using PayPal for at least 15 years or more. At first I used them for non-tangible affiliate marketing sales, and if someone decided to charge back, even after I sent them their product, PayPal deducted that amount since I could not prove delivery. I don't like them for non tangible, downloaded sales, and they are not partial to businesses they deem risky. That is their right, and anyone who complains about that will find most merchant accounts are similar.

For the past 12 years we have been using them for one of our payment options on our hard goods website (in my sig), and have never had a problem. If someone chooses to checkout with PayPal on our website, the money is instantly credited to our PayPal account, and I simply transfer the money from PayPal to my business bank account; the funds are in my business bank account within 24 hours, often sooner. This is faster than most other merchant accounts which can take a few days to deposit funds into our bank account. I also use their card reader at craft shows and for some wholesale deliveries/pick ups. Same thing, money is in my business bank account the next day. Someone mentioned their fees are high, but they are actually less than many merchant accounts used on websites. Their fee is .029% + $0.30 per transaction. (I believe, but am not positive, that fee can be less if you do higher sales volumes.) We also use Stripe for our credit card provider on our website, and their fee is the same as PayPal's. When using the card reader, the fee is even less. (All merchant accounts charge a higher fee when a card is not present for a sale [i.e. online or when the merchant has to physically input the credit card info as is the case with a phone sale] as opposed to when the buyer presents the physical credit card for swiping.) You can withdraw funds to your bank account or to a PayPal debit card, but there is a fee if you have the funds transferred to the debit card. We don't have a PayPal debit card.

I also have a personal PayPal account that I sometimes use for online purchases where a merchant only accepts PayPal. When paying, I have the choice of having the funds drawn from my personal checking account or my credit card. It couldn't be easier.

Their customer service was horrendous when I first signed on 15+ years ago...almost impossible to contact, but I have found this has changed, and would rate their customer service just as good as, if not better than, other merchant accounts I have used in the past.

I have been using PayPal for about 18 years.  I started using it as an Ebay seller.  I have never had any problems with using it.  

I have purchased items from online stores and have gotten refunds with no problems.  

I also use the friends sending money and transferring to my bank account a lot, like every month.

Since I an satisfied with PayPal I have not investigated other options.

Rufus Laggren wrote:Lucretia

Based on your many posts, I say you're pretty sharp and sensible, so... How about explain that violent horror response in detail? <g>

Paypal is the largest payment processor on the web, their decisions to suspend or ban users should be dictated by their legal and or accounting team. If the lawyers worry about getting sued, or the accountants say they are getting too many charge backs from unscrupulous users/vendors, then that is a legit reason to suspend accounts.

That would be the reasonable and ethical thing for a huge payment processor to do, but instead they apparently have a team that focuses strictly on political/social "virtues" and runs around banning people that hold opinions they find undesirable. They have banned MANY individuals and even platforms/companies that while never doing anything illegal or fraudulent, have the audacity to either speak out on topics that Paypal disapproves of OR just provide a platform for others to speak out. A short list of folks that have been banned include Tommy Robinson (A UK activist that campaigns against child rape), Alex Jones (his store sells supplements), Bitchute (a competitor to Youtube), Gab (a competitor to Twitter) etc...

It has an even more horrible effect on others since they make it clear "If you don't want to lose your paypal account, which you may heavily depend on for your business/livelihood, you better not share any opinions that we disapprove of".

Plus some huge Paypal stock holders ALSO hold a huge number of shares in companies who's direct competitor's have been squashed by Paypal (Bitchute is the only direct competitor to Youtube, and one very vocal/influential billionaire owns a whole lot of stock in both Youtube and Paypal). I ain't no lawyer but that sounds less than legal to me. Course these days a whole lot of people are ABOVE the law so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

It is not only Paypal that is disabling accounts owned by people with different perspectives than theirs. Facebook, YouTube, & Linked In are notable others. Still looking for a specific link that has detailed documentation. I apparently lost it in cyberspace.

Cash.

Mike Barkley wrote:It is not only Paypal that is disabling accounts owned by people with different perspectives than theirs. Facebook, YouTube, & Linked In are notable others. Still looking for a specific link that has detailed documentation. I apparently lost it in cyberspace.

Cash.

Yeah most all of the big players in Silicon Valley are doing it (and very often obviously having MEETINGS so they can agree who to ban at the same time).

IMO it is especially aggregious with Paypal because they don't host content at ALL. They just process payments and they wouldn't even KNOW what opinions people shared if they didn't hunt around investigating their high profile users, whereas at least youtube, facebook etc...actually host content so they can claim they don't want it on their servers -- however the problem is they don't have a clear set of rules which means they only ban people who's opinions they don't like. :)

Then when smaller providers start up to offer a platform for ALL legal views in response to the censorship companies like Paypal swoop down to cut off their funding and drive them off the web.

When the mega-corporations control virtually ALL of the news and other data on the interwebs it will be a very sad day indeed especially for anyone interested in anything even slightly alternative.

> PayPal [locking accounts for it's own benefit]

I can see where this could well be the case. But it may be a little more complex than simply killing off competition. PayPal and similar really doesn't give a big or little damn about this account or that account, this competitor or that competitor. Financially, it's that big. However, any company almost by definition will destroy it's competition; so I'm sure PayPal, ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL would happily eliminate competition. But the emphasis matters - for them the payback has to be pretty high before they take the risk and bear the costs of anything the SEC would look at. They are powerful, but they are also a very big target with deep pockets.

There are other reasons to kill an account. Youtube gets very narrow minded about any content that stridently addresses _current_ hot topic political issues. This is a direct response to attack vids posted by all sides. There is some very nasty stuff that they quash as well as a lot of collateral damage to innocent bystanders. They get very specific about this in their user agreements but, like here, they don't spend much time explaining the situation to those they cut short. "Policy violation" is the short and long of their notifications and explanations. This can be very upsetting but there is a certain amount of sense to it.

Another source of account death may be the Feds. As I alluded to in a prior post, The Feds are now glorying in very great powers in the financial world. They can require companies to shut down and penalize any/all financial accounts in the name of anti-drug/terrorism/money-laundering. They by and large don't need to get a judge to OK their actions and they are not subject to legal review or even discovery; AND the financial entity providing an account they wish to monitor, freeze or whatever is often prohibited from providing any information at all to the customer. _Some_ of the account activity (cancellations) Lucretia refers to may be initiated not by the financial account provider but by government agencies; some may be simply prophylactic "cleansing" by the companies because _any_ bureaucratic contact brought on by this or that type of account bleeds their bottom line directly. Government "interest" is a pure cost, no upside or recovery, and companies really try to avoid that. If it comes to ditching a few hot button customers... A no-brainer.

I'm not trying to defend PayPal. They may well be red-lining. But it's worth being thoughtful and check twice when placing blame because it doesn't help to attribute bad behavior incorrectly - that makes it much harder to predict, avoid and counter it. Another issue is that when entities become as large as PayPal and a few other tech providers the structure and processes w/in the company become much more causal. Read bureaucracy. Maybe not to the extent of being more important than the aims and plans of particular executives or the board, but enough that company behavior cannot be seen purely as the result of high level planning. And then there's the algorithms. Think there might, maybe, be a few bugs executing in big companies?

Rufus