Paypal Freeze SA's Red Cross Drive

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2005-09-04 05:59am

http://www.somethingawful.co*/

Further Proof Paypal Sucks

9/03/2005 - 9:36 PM - Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka

Well, after breaking the $20,000 donation mark, Paypal decided to shut down the donation account. No warning, no customer support, no chance to fix anything. Why? Here's their reason!

"We have received more then one report of suspicious behaviour from your buyers."

I AM NOT SELLING A SINGLE THING. What part of "donation" is difficult to understand? I even selected "donation" on Paypal's site when generating a link for this website.

They are asking me to provide a shipping number FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. How they hell am I supposed to comply with this? What do they want? Oh, well you see, here's proof I shipped NOTHING via NO COMPANY to NO ADDRESS. Is this good enough? I can't even enter a fictional shipping number for the fictional item that never shipped to the fictional customer because THERE IS NOTHING THERE TO CLICK.

I guess the nice ladies and gents at Paypal are now using your funds for Project: Paypal Takes Your Money. Sorry your donations can't go to help those in need. Hey Paypal, why don't you head on down to New Orleans and tell people who lost everything that, well, some folks donated TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to you, but hey, you ain't getting it because we don't feel like it.

That's fine. You idiots don't want me to run a charity drive? Fine, that's your decision. But it's not me you're hurting; it's the thousands of goddamn people with no homes, no money, and no hope fleeing a burning, flooded wasteland they used to call "home." I wasn't going to take a single cent of the donations, unlike Paypal, who decides that when people send money to help victims survive a national disaster, their company should still make over 2.35% of everything sent in. I doubt the CEOs of eBay and Paypal give a crap about this crappy little website and our insignificant drive to help out people in a time of crisis, but this drive meant a lot to me, and once again Paypal has completely screwed over another customer bringing in plenty of money in their ridiculous "transaction fees."

If this is some thing where Paypal is dubious of Something Awful, fearful I'll take all the money and buy a luxurious $22,000 house in Beverly Hills, fine, you morons at Paypal can take every cent from my account and manually donate it yourself to the Red Cross. The only reason, and I repeat ONLY reason I used your service, was because I needed a way to get peoples' shipping addresses so I could send them free merchandise for donating. Oh my god, what suspicious activity! Since all our servers are down, I couldn't use our credit card payment system to do it myself, so I had to rely on your lousy company. I guess I learned my lesson here, eh?

Paypal has completely walled themselves off from customer complaints. Oh, you want to dispute something? Fill out these forms and click "SUBMIT" and have no clue who or what is going to read your message.

You guys want to close my account? Fine, close it. I'm done dealing with you. I loathe your wretched, vile, disgusting, bloated waste of a company with every last fibre of my body. You're a grotesque, swollen parasite whose existence hinges solely on the lack of competition. You can close my account and shut me out, but you'd better take every single cent people donated and send it directly to the Red Cross. Folks from around the world trusted you with their money, and you'd better make sure it gets to where it was going, and I'm not talking about your wallets.

I fully expect you refund each and every single person who donated thinking they'd be helping, not padding your wallets. I'd advise any and every one of you using Paypal to stop, but I'll just let their service speak for itself. If you want to support a company who acts like this, then that's your decision.

I'm pissed off and I can't stop writing. You guys were donating nearly $3,500 AN HOUR before Paypal locked the account. Let me repeat that again: $3,500 AN HOUR. You guys were exceedingly awesome. You were going above and beyond being gratuitous. It was amazing, I was wearing socks and they were blown off so hard that they slammed into my sock drawer and all the other socks flew out. Now it's like everything collided head-on with a brick wall, and it's all smoldering mess.

It's bad enough I'm losing money and customers every single minute of every single hour I have no business. All of that is very crappy. But this charity drive, having Paypal step in and shut it down... that just makes me beyond angry. I can't stop writing about this crap, and I'm afraid I'll be here venting my fury at this despicable corporation until my wife saws off my arms. I'm going to stop right now, because I'm just repeating myself at this point.

Here's all I want: you people at Paypal send every single dollar donated to the Red Cross. Then you give me these peoples' mailing addresses so I can reward them for donating by sending them free merchandise, which I pay for out of my own pockets. That's all I ever wanted to do, and I'm sorry you won't allow this.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2005-09-04 06:19am

(shakes head)

Fucking beuracracy.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2005-09-04 12:54pm

Holy crap - some people really hate SA huh? Not just on a opinionated-website fashion, like /. or those penny arcade cock-knockers, but on a deep, personal 'you're a sucessful, happy nerd and I hate you because I'm fat and lost the puncture repair kit' way. It's WIERD.

But neh, paypal does in fact suck. Nothing like a bit of bad publicity!

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2005-09-04 12:58pm

What incredible assholes.

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2005-09-04 01:03pm

Gosh. And here I was considering getting a Patpal account. Guess I won't do so now, eh?

This smells like lawsuit material to me.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2005-09-04 01:28pm

So much for me using a PayPal account.

Singular Quartet · Post by **Singular Quartet** » 2005-09-04 02:26pm

Stark wrote:Holy crap - some people really hate SA huh? Not just on a opinionated-website fashion, like /. or those penny arcade cock-knockers, but on a deep, personal 'you're a sucessful, happy nerd and I hate you because I'm fat and lost the puncture repair kit' way. It's WIERD.

But neh, paypal does in fact suck. Nothing like a bit of bad publicity!

It's not just SA. 4chan was running a donation drive (mostly to keep themselves afloat, rather than for any amenable cause), and Paypal closed the account and took the money.

Same damn thing. It's fucking bullshit, and Paypal should be sued for it.

Setesh · Post by **Setesh** » 2005-09-04 02:43pm

Singular Quartet wrote:
Stark wrote:Holy crap - some people really hate SA huh? Not just on a opinionated-website fashion, like /. or those penny arcade cock-knockers, but on a deep, personal 'you're a sucessful, happy nerd and I hate you because I'm fat and lost the puncture repair kit' way. It's WIERD.

But neh, paypal does in fact suck. Nothing like a bit of bad publicity!
It's not just SA. 4chan was running a donation drive (mostly to keep themselves afloat, rather than for any amenable cause), and Paypal closed the account and took the money.

Same damn thing. It's fucking bullshit, and Paypal should be sued for it.

You can't, the paypal TOS you agree to when you get the account declairs they can close your account and walk off with the money in your account at any time as a 'fine' no matter how much it is. They can also totally drain any bank account attached to the account.

http://www.paypalsucks.com/

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2005-09-04 02:51pm

Hope Google wallet comes out soon at least.
Has Paypal responded to this yet?

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2005-09-04 02:51pm

The only 'safe' way to use Paypal is to use it with a credit (NOT a debit) card, as you can have the CC company simply reverse ('chargeback') any fraudulent charges posted against it, whereas with a debit card you're simply fucked.

Of course then you've violated Paypal's TOS, but at that point who gives a shit.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2005-09-04 03:24pm

And people have asked me why I don't use that fucked up company. I know NoChex is a good alternative here at least.

EDIT: Google News has a few links to it as well.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25915

http://www.macmine.com/more.php?id=159_0_8_0_C

http://ad-rag.com/123707.php

It's probably emotion behind this more than reason, but I'd urge Mike to reconsider using PayPal as a means to electronically send money to this site. If this is what they do in real-life, I'd rather forget they existed.

Stormin · Post by **Stormin** » 2005-09-04 04:02pm

Not that I had ever used it, but I just closed my paypal account after finding out that it was, in fact, still existing after the years I signed up just to check it out. Thankfully I never put in bank account info.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2005-09-04 04:06pm

I wasn't aware that the situation was quite that fucked-up, although I had heard that Paypal had some controversy surrounding it (I always figured that it wasn't a problem because the amounts of money I handle are relatively small). But if somebody has a widely recognized alternate vendor with a clean rep, that would be good to know. Are there any good places to read about issues with suppliers of this kind of service other than Paypal?

Stormin · Post by **Stormin** » 2005-09-04 04:07pm

The paypal sucks site lists some options

http://www.paypalsucks.com/options.shtml

I know I am gonna be a hell of a lot more careful from now on though.

wilfulton · Post by **wilfulton** » 2005-09-04 04:13pm

Alyeska wrote:(shakes head)

Fucking beuracracy.

Hmpf, why am I reminded of Aliens, where Ripley is trying to explain to the board why she blew the drive on the Nostramo, and all they're worried about is their monetary loss and, of course, the paperwork...

Lone_Prodigy · Post by **Lone_Prodigy** » 2005-09-04 06:05pm

That's just unbelievable. The denizens of SA.com were raising $3,000+ per hour, and Paypal decided to just walk off with all $20,000 that was going to go to the Red Cross. If this doesn't utterly fuck Paypal's PR for a long time, nothing will.

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2005-09-04 06:10pm

Just closed my account. Clicked "Other" for the reason and filled in "Heard about Paypal's theft of $20,000 from a disaster relief donation fund." Also checked "User Agreement", since I hadn't realized they could clean out the attached bank account whenever they felt like it.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2005-09-04 06:43pm

Lone_Prodigy wrote:That's just unbelievable. The denizens of SA.com were raising $3,000+ per hour, and Paypal decided to just walk off with all $20,000 that was going to go to the Red Cross. If this doesn't utterly fuck Paypal's PR for a long time, nothing will.

Hopefully SA.com will have enough clout to get the message out about this.

Fuck you, PayPal!

Aaron · Post by **Aaron** » 2005-09-04 07:00pm

I just closed out my account as well. Left a nice message about them ripping off both us and the Red Cross.

Assholes.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2005-09-04 07:01pm

*Starts making leaflets on this to hand out around campus.*

*Also blogs this, not that anyone reads it anyway.*

Damn. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn. Fuck PayPal in the ass with a rusty chainsaw. Repeatedly.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2005-09-04 07:11pm

I was actualy intending on getting a pay-pal account. After reading through Paypalsucks.com, I will never touch them. Its a fucking corrupt system. Guilty until proven innocent. They can lock you out for assinine reasoning (or none) and then force you to prove your innocence when they haven't even remotely proved your guilt.

Daltonator · Post by **Daltonator** » 2005-09-04 07:16pm

Account closed. This must not be allowed to stand.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2005-09-04 07:20pm

Glad I never fully completed my Paypal registration.

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2005-09-04 09:17pm

Singular Quartet wrote: It's not just SA. 4chan was running a donation drive (mostly to keep themselves afloat, rather than for any amenable cause), and Paypal closed the account and took the money.

Same damn thing. It's fucking bullshit, and Paypal should be sued for it.

Not to defend Paypal, but in 4chans case they were in violation of the terms of use. Link
4chan got no sympathy from me as they blatantly violated the ToS, and so were asking for trouble.

With SA on the other hand, unless there's something we're not being told, Paypal should burn.

Kazuaki Shimazaki · Post by **Kazuaki Shimazaki** » 2005-09-04 11:30pm

Just quit my own account. BTW, the one transaction I ever tried with it failed too. At least nobody ate my money (I think).