If you opened your PayPal account before you were 18, close it
medium.com
medium.com
But whether you prevail in court or not, if you try to go through with that the whole thing is probably going to lose you a lot of time and cause you a shitton of stress, all at the whim of an arbitrary decision made by a company with, relatively speaking, no skin in the game. The power differential is immense. Realistically there's no legal recourse that can ward off the damage to your life that getting into that kind of one-sided slapfight could cause.
Without judgements, this bullshit will continue.
[0] http://www.citizenvox.org/2012/10/15/opt-out-of-paypal%E2%80...
Edited for minor formatting.
Besides 'a criminal record' and 'signed up for a service a bit before you were eligible' are hardly comparable.
It's ridiculous. There has to be an expiry on things like this. And the most ridiculous thing is that they are holding onto those monies.
I'd take them to the small claims court. In the UK we're not going to settle for this shit and if they want to operate here then they need to take their shoes off at the door and show some damn respect. This is a civilised country and we have rules.
Good day to you, sir.
> No, it would be like you're employer sacking you because you have no criminal record for anything serious but you had put 'No criminal record' on your CV/resume when you applied.
Honestly, in many jurisdictions (except for the punishment happy ones) being under certain age, ie. 18 or 17 automatically makes you non-persecutable for a lot of the "soft" offenses. So even if you tried to claim opening a PayPal account is a financial fraud, it would likely never stand up in court.
If the TOS includes the terms (1) you certify that all information provided to us is accurate (2) if you breach the TOS you must stop using the product and (3) you certify that you are over 18.
Then your continued use after age 18 may in fact signify entering a contract, even though you were under 18 when you signed. It also may not. Capacity/consideration/intent to be bound are really tricky in this case.
Easily the service I hold the most disdain for on the 'net.
And users, indeed trust them. It's merchants that have the most reason to complain.
A mix of heavy financial regulation, and low competition, itself largely the result of the massive barrier to entry created by financial regulation.
Google Wallet also works.
There are are probably local debit-card based payment processors available to you as well; iDeal is one such system that is very popular in the Netherlands, it lets you pay with any Dutch debit account just as easily as with PayPal. It's a system in that there are a bunch of companies offering access to it. AFAIK processing costs are around ~€0.10, irrespective of transaction size at least for transactions under €1000.
OP, You can refund the funds to the sender less Paypal's 30¢ cut, I believe. That might be the best way to get the money back to your friend, and then they can re-send it to you with something sane like Google Wallet.
We do business in several countries, and the US is the most backward - by far - for banking services. It's laughable that using a bit of posted paper (even if conveniently generated and sent by your bank) is even an option, let alone the recommended one.
I opened a new account at a bank with a physical branch and walked out with a debit card. I don't plan on using an online bank ever again.
It's actually hidden in the new UI, there was no button that would let me do it, I managed to go back to settings and re-enable the classic UI, then in the view transaction details page I found the missing refund button.
The beauty there is you don't have to win, to win. A £5 dispute costs them more than you, when you get to control the venue.
I can't remember the last time I paid for something with paypal, so I don't know how long it's been like this, but it is certainly annoying that they're forcing people to use their service.
Apparently, that's the sort of thing that happens when you register your 10th credit card for the year. I guess I can understand the reason, even though it's annoying.
Aside from Bitcoin is there actually a real alternative?
It would be very tricky to convince a business to pay your invoice in Bitcoin.
I tried removing my debit account coupling but it refuses citing "a pending transaction" (no specific reference given).
The "close my account" button takes me to an error message. I guess I'm spamming all their email addresses I can enumerate until this is resolved.
complaint-response@paypal.com
service@paypal.com
hostmaster@paypal.com
Definitely for accepting credit card payments for merchants, Stripe is a great way to go.
FTFY. Zero fees, zero megacorps taking their cut, zero social graphs in the US growing a few extra tuples
If you're transferring to another customer in the same bank then they're free but I've never had that luxury.
Were you referring to bank transfers to same bank customers? Because I've never heard of zero fees for bank transfers
Many banks will take a check deposit by scan or phone camera now, so you can just have someone write a paper check and send the image immediately and deposit it that way.
It's still pretty high-friction, not something you'd typically want to do with a customer, but a reasonable alternative to bank transfer if you don't want to pay the $50.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/banking/wire-transfers-what-...
What we've got are Google Wallet, checks, and a variety of smaller services (Venmo, etc).
Edit: Yes
Depending on where you are, I think this is not entirely true. IANAL, but I think that in many/most US states, contracts with minors are not presumptively void, they are voidable at the option of the minor (or their guardian, I imagine). Of course, this is a pretty big downside for their counterparties, so it makes contracts with minors pretty unappealing, obviously.
Contracts can't be enforced against children in England. A child is someone under the age of 18.
> Besides which, is signing up for PayPal a contract in the first place?
Yes. Paypal make an offer, the customer accepts that offer. There's mutual obligation: paypal provides a service and the customer pays fees.
Wouldn't it be that you committed financial fraud? Paypal initially allowed you to send/receive payments purely based on the fact that you stated you were an age you were not.
The Paypal signup form does not let you signup unless the DOB given, shows you're over the age of 18.
This guy lied about his age and then had the audacity to write a blog post about how bad Paypal is.
He shows he's willing to lie and also willing to commit financial fraud (as that is what it's considered.) - I for one, am very glad someone like him HAS been banned from Paypal.
All this aside, I've now sorted my personal accounts, I've had a ton of messages now from people that are closing up theirs for good, or at least restarting their accounts to protect themselves - so I'm glad I've been banned too.
IE; if you're 17 and put your DOB into the Paypal signup process, it literally stops you from signing up.
This person lied to get an account.
If you're knowingly lying to gain access something, you don't need a EULA/TOS to know you shouldn't be doing it.
However: After calling them, they told me to create a new account and verify it with the CC and bankaccount (that were in old acc). And as soon everything was verified they trasfered the money to the new account.
So apparently it seems not to be that difficult to get your money.
I'm trying to get $1,500 out of PayPal and I haven't found a way to talk to somebody at PayPal who was able/willing to help me with that (account got blocked, I uploaded all the paperwork, got told that they will hold the money for 180 days but that was more than 1 year ago).
I know I can always log into Paypal and just cancel the recurring charge.
I suppose I also use it because it can be easier than finding my wallet for payment, too. But I do avoid receiving payments from PP.
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure an account is even necessary for my use-case. Maybe I can get away with just deleting it.
I never really worried about credit card fraud. It's so easy to dispute a charge.
1. Never use Paypal. For ANY reason.
2. Never. Use. Paypal. For. Any. Reason.
3. See rule #1.
Square Cash is not available in the UK for example. The US has a much larger choice. Unsure about other countries, sorry.
You can't beat it.
Xoom is PayPal now.
Yeah, no.
This is very true, but I like to think of how predominant MySpace and Hotmail were at one time. Someone will come along and do it better. Stripe, PaymentSpring, heck even Bitcoin are all potential disruptors here.
I think the days of PayPal's dominance are numbered.
Indeed, I found PayPal simple to use as a merchant outside USA but now there are more alternatives.
http://www.screw-paypal.com/tos_exposed_section/tos_june_200...
It looks like their ToS changed in February 2003 to enforce an 18-only model.
They stopped "doing business" with me out of the blue.
I call them up and asked why and they said I need a subpoena to get the reason.
I call them back saying I have a retainer so what do I do to get the reason with my retainer on hand?
Seeing I was serious, the operator told me the reason as if he's letting me on a secret. The reason being I'm associated to somebody that owe them money.
Yeah seriously. Their reason for not doing business with me was that I know somebody that owe them money but they won't tell me who.
I asked if they can remove all my info. The dude told me it's secured because paypal use SSL. I wanted to to tell him that SSL is for connection encryption not data encryption but at this point I'm done with this bullshit ordeal.
2 months later paypal got hacked.
I only use paypal to buy chinese clothing over ebay since I'm a small guy and it's hard to get clothing in USA with my size.
In some cases they fine financial institutions who don't resolve quickly enough.
They don't even cost money - the charges levied cover the costs I believe.
One of the reasons I like paypal is that it provides a great amount of control over who I pay and when and how much. I can login and reasonably easy see all of my MRC subscriptions, and cancel them as appropriate. Technically possible with credit cards directly, but not as nice.
Best of both worlds right now is privacy.com for me, they generate credit card #s on the fly and provide that same level of vision and control into where the money is going with exactly 100% less bullshit and 100% less scumbag tactics.
If you're moving payments away from paypal (and you should) I would suggest considering moving them to privacy.com instead of directly.
Thanks for sharing, anyway. I'll definitely give a try on their service. Hope it works for non-US cards too, but I find it unlikely. But $3 per month for virtual cards seems too good to be true. I'll take a closer read on the tos once I get to a desktop (unrelated, but am I the only one who can't stand to do a thing on mobile devices?)
Privacy is free, I assumed they were getting a small % back from their card issuer to cover costs.
Privacy looks like a useful service if you can use it.
Interestingly Paypal had the same one time CC service some 10 years ago but it only lasted a few years.
Thing with alternatives to Paypal is that eventually they run into same fraud problems Paypal experienced 15 years ago and stumble.
I try to stay away from Paypal but often they are the only option.
Don't use paypal.
Can anyone recommend a service like PayPal that would be good for online transactions between individuals, but that also allows for credit card use? Fees are to be expected, it's just that I have t been able to find another service that will allow CC. I'm really hopeful that Google wallet will begin to allow CC use sometime soon.
I'm not a fan, but maybe Bitcoin? What about mailed checks, as a backup?
I even get paid for many contracts via this method, but it can be annoying that some banks have lower daily limit, and even more surprisingly my personal daily limit is like twice as high as a business bank account's limit (for certain banks), but it's like $1.50 to send the money and people just do it over the course of 2 days if it's over the limit. Wire transfers are too crazy expensive in Canada as well.
Also easiest way to send money to yourself if your business account is at a different bank and you don't have cheques or want to get robbed carrying cash!
PayPal seems to manage this, but on the other hand they don't hesitate to block the accounts for whatever reason. Sometimes I wonder if this behavior is the reason they have survived in this business.
When I say to my manager that this thing won't work etc he imlies that I'm smartsass jerk. Thus I no longer argue with him. I don't suggest anything to him anymore. I do exactly what he says. Probably this is the same case with PayPal too.
It'll be interesting to see if there's a follow up.
As a partial update, after spending 30 minutes clicking every page of the dashboard, it was obvious that money was stuck, and my friend couldn't dispute it as it was sent as a gift, as it wasn't payment for work. Luckily, if you head back to your settings and flick back to the old web UI whilst it's still available, the refund button shows up in the view transaction details page, and it let me refund it. I lost the £20 or so in fees, but at least I can pay some unexpected bills more easily now.
If they're saying you can't agree to the ToS when you're under 18, should they be able to hold on to the monies for 180 days because that's what the ToS said when you agreed to them?
I'd say there are at least 3, don't even need to read the article.
If we really want to search all regulations. We should be about to find at dozens to justify the action, without too much issue.
I have learnt 3 things from my time on the other side:
1) When you dig deeper, for 90% of complaints, the actions were justified.
2) A percentage of these, ranging from little to quite sizeable depending on the issue, is assimilable to complete fraud.
3) There are tons of regulations in finance. From annoying rules per good/country to anti-money laundering, including plain theft and anti-terrorism supporting scheme.
4) Companies do what they do because of regulations, the regulations themselves are there because the world is a mess.
PayPal could and should find a better way to handle transitioning people who, out of necessity, lied about their age when they first signed up. Was signing up under false pretenses a form of fraud? Probably, but it's a form of fraud that's essentially benign and is so pervasive, online and off, that it's just stupid to treat it as such.
You signed the contract when you started your account. Which, is why they want you to start a new account so that you will sign a new contract with them.
Usually in the US, minors can form contracts just fine, but such contracts are, prior to execution, generally voidable at will by the minor. As a result, people prefer not to enter into contracts with minors except in situations where voidability doesn't create a significant risk for the other party.
OTOH, there is not a lot of reason for a the fact that the other party was a minor when entering the contract to be a problem after the party reaches majority, so while it may be a technical past ToS violation, it doesn't make sense to make a big deal about it if you didn't catch it while they were a minor. It's just creating bad customer (and public) relations to no benefit.
It seems like PayPal went bananas applying a peculiar policy. They want to be a bank, but you can be 12 and still have a bank account.
Perhaps PayPal should/could just ask the OP to get a signed permission slip from the parents to cover this. :-)
However, it's likely that minors are not allowed to have "adult" bank accounts like PayPal.
If so, registering is committing fraud and paypal is forced to shut down the account.
Typical case of a children going against the law and the laws fights back and the child doesn't like it.
PayPal is unfortunately still pretty central to eBay & I'm a payment geek so I've made a new account. Glad I didn't have any funds frozen though, that must suck.
Did you miss the following? It was toward the bottom, but it was in BOLD:
My only hope is that within 6 months, I will get a mystery email from PayPal letting me know that they might be willing to let me have my money.
Or is the submitter also the author? In which case, yes, he does post elsewhere here that he reversed the payment into his account. (Less fees, of course!) If so, it's unfortunate he didn't update the article itself with this new information.
I'm actually surprised that people are just discovering how much PayPal sucks as a service this late in the game. They have had verifiable horror stories of seizing people's money and property for well over a decade.
I've skipped purchasing things that I really wanted when the only option for payment was PayPal. I always send a nice message to the seller to let them know exactly why I decided not to purchase their product / service. Surprisingly few respond, so I guess they're doing great with their current setup.
I also find this interesting. Musk's startup history is often cited as evidence of his serial success, but it's hardly mentioned that the startup that earned his fortune is widely detested as a "necessary evil".
Seriously? Wtaf? BACS and Faster Payments (through your banks) are free. You're literally pelting the Devil with your money for getting in the way.
Call your local PayPal support hotline and explain to them what happened, I was immediately escalated to higher level support who had me provide details of why the money was in my account, which they verified and then unlocked the withdrawal and bank accounts. Still had to make a new account, but that's a small price to pay!
That's the most polite synonym for "flamewar" I've ever heard. I'm going to use that.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22overheated%20discussion%22%...
So yes, it is some black hole of support.
Until then, I'll believe it when I see it (extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence).
This works pretty well for me ever since my first account had been locked for bullshit reasons when I needed it most, of course with the money locked inside. Thankfully it was almost nothing, but thank you PP for reminding me to never keep anything of value in there.
Granted, I only use PP when I absolutely must, which is no more than maybe once a year, so setting and tearing down these accounts is no big deal. I traditionally select "poor customer service" and "worry about security" as the reason I quit :)
Shame we don't have anything like Square Cash :(
And as for zero purchase protection, you can use escrow services for significant purchases.
And that gets us back to paypal (which started up as an escrow for ebay afterall) or some equivalent. Bitcoin offers no help here.
In any case, even if you could secure the wallet, it still doesn't address the fact that once the funds are sent, they're not recoverable; I think it's unreasonable to expect a payment system with no rollback mechanism to go mainstream.
The only thing that can end Bitcoin is breaking sec256k1 elliptic curve, and this is unlikely to happen soon.
I might one day soon lodge complaint with data ombudsman if PayPal refuse to handover data stored on me
If they have a pile of similar money (likely, by the stories we hear), then they earn interest, and may (IANAA) be able to point to that cash as an "asset" in situations where they need to show assets.
Update: It looks like you can get some day/month number if you check your account limits at https://www.paypal.com/de/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_lift-limits if you still have any, and combine them with the year it actually displays in the account settings. Makes me feel better at least.
I'm still worried that they might want to block me though, because I have more than one account. PayPal accounts must be linked to a bank account in the same country. So I now have different PayPal accounts in the UK, US, New Zealand, Korea, and Taiwan.
If you are mostly buyer, then online payment is already easy (few clicks and 1 SMS password away).
If you are seller, setting up your website to support credit card payments takes maybe two hours.
I really don't see the use case for PayPal, especially given the constant complaints.
As in, you should factor in from the day one that they might stop working with you at any random moment. They never contributed towards any other image.
(I wonder if you can sue them in locales where they're legally a bank)
As such they sent my first pay cheque via Paypal. As it was a large amount my account was limited, but after uploading the documents and a quick phone call (their phone support are a lot better than their email and chat support), my funds were unfrozen.
currency in bank account of person 1 --> bitcoin --> currency in bank account of person 2
or
credit card of person 1 --> bitcoin --> currency in bank account of person 2
Both users need to trust that company, so they don't gain anything by the use of bitcoin. They in fact lose money because of the extra transaction fee, and possibly more in conversion fees/inefficiencies.
Oh and there's privacy loss too from putting it on the blockchain.
The only 'benefit' is that there's a sticker saying "now with bitcoin!". No party involved gains anything.
person1 --> company --> bitcoin --> company --> person2
At that point, you may as well cut out the middle man:
person1 --> company --> person2
So I shot them a support ticket to sort things out.
Like over a month ago.
I don't see how it's possible to manage your company so incompetently.
[1] https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full
Of course like others I use it for eBay but never, ever, for anything important.
We have all read the horror stories and, if you're still using them, you've got no one else to blame but yourself. At which point you will write your own horror story with the faint hope that it goes viral and forces PayPal to make things right.
This is specially true for someone who, like OP, immediately liquidises the asset. Pick a digital currency, any currency.
Sure, cryptocurrency is not stable in value yet... but its getting better -- fast.
It also means they have a lot of legacy APIs, complicated overlapping features. However one thing they should be fixing, but they aren't, is their terrible customer service. Their product should work for all their customers, and if it doesn't, they should be bearing the cost of making it work with decent customer service.
they are excellent for foreign exchange, however.
I've spent my entire Saturday so far logging in to things and updating them to use credit cards. Unfortunately there is one thing so far I'm struggling to use without PayPal, but I've contacted them and will hopefully resolve that one.
What's even more annoying is I could use the PayPal account of my other half for now, but she thinks she opened hers around 16/17 too so I'm not taking that risk.
How many more times must this happen to people?
It doesn't help them. If it were possible they would complete every transaction with minimal fuss.
The reason transferring money is so difficult is due to governments who wish to prevent capital flight, "laundering", etc. Paypal fought against this intensely early on.