Comment by contingencies | Hacker News Reader

Comment by contingencies | Hacker News Reader

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Had to use Paypal today to make a payment to a company who can't otherwise find a reasonable way to take credit cards online. I feel their pain, having been in that position. Paypal randomly saw that it was reasonable to demand I answer a phone in another country (though I haven't been based there for perhaps 15 years) if I wanted to log in to my account. I had to work around this by having them send a payment request, then paid about USD$1000. Wish they accepted Bitcoin, I was livid at the experience. Every time I deal with Paypal it's the same. Their PR crap a year or two back about "sorting things out" was obviously empty. Stripe isn't much better: after a reasonable start, last time I wanted to use them I couldn't because my address is in a different country to my card (ANYONE LISTENING?). These abuses are reaching a breaking point, nobody is going to deal with credit cards soon. Here in amusingly progressive mainland China, they are a minor mode of payment and shrinking: good riddance!

Am I misinterpreting something? It sounds like you're upset with PayPal because you tried to make a payment from a country other than the one on record (which trips every fraud detection out there) and that they tried to contact you for verification with the number they had on file which you haven't updated in 15 years. That sounds like reasonable behavior from their end.

... except that I haven't changed my behavior and the 'reasonable' action they took was permanently locking me out of my account. Note that they presented this whole experience to me in a foreign language because obviously my GeoIP is the same as my location because privacy, China and VPNs don't exist. And of course, I had no choice but to leave that number on record because it matches my credit card address. Because of course, there is no such thing as a credit card with an address outside of the issuing country, or someone that lives at many addresses or an address where there is no reliable mail. It's basically a number of bad assumptions layered with bad customer service and algorithms. Every year my credit card company randomly stops my card because they think it's weird a transaction occurred in some country or other. I say "See how I just bought a plane ticket right before that? How is that strange?". Right on my card it says "World Mastercard". I have or have had accounts with this same bank in 5 countries. They know this. But we can't just blame the bank, it's the credit card system. Apparently in every corner of the world, idiots run these algorithms. Finally, note that for this wonderful experience I pay 5% of USD$1000 = USD$50. The US intelligence sponsored monopoly of card companies on payment has to end.

(I'm listening!) I work at Stripe on our fraud protection tools and would love to help. I want to dig into this particular situation -- mind sending me an email at tara@stripe.com?

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