I'm tempted to ask everyone who has been affected by PayPal's "security measures" (a frozen account) to write a post and submit it to a blog. -But I don't want to waste anyone's time. Anyways. Aye. I have been affected.
where paypal falls on its face (in my humble & biased opinion) is that they are pretty inflexible and unaccomodating with customer service. this turns a frustrating situation into an "evil" one.
disclaimer: i cofounded wepay.com, which competes with paypal (in a few limited ways)
Okay. Now for the "ness" which makes this post not spam.
"they are pretty inflexible and unaccomodating with customer service"
Yes. That is a problem. Another problem is that they freeze accounts almost to the point of "seemingly randomly". In my opinion. It's not uncommon either. It's not rare enough to be forgiven as a mistake. Paypal has problems with (I guess?) flagging "spam". If the problem is viewed as originating because of the ease of access (easy to sign up), then Paypal should make it harder to sign up.
However, if you build a fence, you must consider the consequences for when it falls down. Anyone who has personally been affected by Paypal is also at fault for not considering it might happen and planning ahead. That statement is my opinion and I stand by it. There is a reason why I don't have a Paypal account with ten thousand dollars in it. The reason is that I will need those ten thousand dollars and I expect Paypal to take it away from me. My paranoia, however, is founded from experience.
Okay. I ranted. I apologize =/
Short version: Client of mine (legit business, bricks and mortar store, been around for years) had their PayPal merchant account suspended. No warning, no explanation and no appeal. It really is an evil way to treat your customers.
Result: They've switched to eWay http://www.eway.com.au/ who have so far been brilliant
I'm tempted to ask everyone who has _not_ been affected to do the same. Except that there are millions upon millions of them. I've used PayPal for years. I remember using eBay before PayPal. A morass of checks waiting to clear the bank and other nasty confusion was horrible.
To the original article: if you're running a business, just like with your computers, never have _any_ single point of failure. Including payment processors.