PayPal restores to its TOS $2,500 charge for any post they don't like
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A decade ago I remember a friend who had a small business selling some niche collectors items. One day, he was scammed. The guy reported that the package was never delivered and, without even investigating, Paypal banned my friend's account and awarded the buyer their money back.
Paypal has always, and will always be a shit company. Charging people $2,500 for wrongthink is simply asinine. They must be betting BIG on either woke politics being mainstream for the long term, unbreakable bonds with their existing customers, or both. I can't even think of someone around me that uses paypal regularly.
I will be interested in reading the technical report on how they plan on implementing this because I'm sure it'll be silicon valley diarrhea. I am currently working out how to pay companies in a similar fashion to Paypal. I'm looking at Privacy.com but something is off about it to me for some reason. Once that is solved I'll get this ape off my back forever.
I wonder what happens if I just say "lol, not paying" to them. Would they put me in collections? It seems infeasible to even enforce this and it strikes me that clicking a button doesn't amount of a legal agreement.
Zelle…was built by the big banks…
That sorta sounds like violating visa tos?
P2P payments between friends came later and wer just another thing Paypal could handle but at that point it was already very popular.
>even today many germans don't have one
Thankfully debit cards are a thing!
You can revoke paypal's ACH authorization to your accounts [0]. I would not want to deal with the headache of them falsely telling creditors that I owe them money, though.
[0] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/how-can-i-stop-a-pa...
Not sure how that would stop it from happening again in the future, if the bank isn't going to make the barest attempt at stopping people from debiting your accounts with just the routing number + account number...
That's not even a requirement here - they just have to continually adjust their principles to be whatever happens to be most fashionable at the moment, just like most everybody else does.
I can go ahead and write a ToS or even a contract that says "if you don't give me a blue M&M on Saturday 29 October 2022, you owe me $1M". I can get a client to sign it, perhaps it's part of my conditions as a freelancer.
I can't realistically see any court enforcing that.
As far as I can tell PayPal can only get away with this nonsense because they hold your money anyway. It's exactly the sort of reason people are fighting against cashless/custodial financial systems.
They take the money and bet on not enough people trying to sue and the terms being ironclad enough if they do that they get away with it in general even if they have to pay out a few times.
And they're not subject to banking regulations in the US. If they were a bank they wouldn't be able to pull this sort of BS.
I may or may not let you have it back depending on my whims.
Since you “gave” me the money, then I can do whatever I want with it.
Oh and I can take whatever money out of your bank account it want. Because I want it
I'm also surprised an activist hasn't attached a TOS to sending payments such as "By accepting my money you agree to pay me $1 Million dollars for any time I spend more that 5 minutes with customer service without my dispute being settled."
I seem to remember a case where someone altered the fine print agreement on a credit card application and the credit card company lost the case with the consumer, but I forget the details.
The San Francisco office was closed. https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/27/paypal-shuttering-its-san-...
top investor class?
Some people were also reporting, that when closing their account, a message stating the measure was not going to be implemented was shown up in the screen (but I didn't see any clear proof that was true).
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/paypal-policy-permits-company-fine-14...
Of course calling it a "mistake" is more likely to be corporate spin and back-pedalling, but you can never be quite sure because the explanation could be true, and that's kind of the point of the spin.
So to even talk to Paypal about these things you would have to spend thousands of dollars and several months.
And when you make a mistake in a way Paypal doesn't like, you'll be obliterated.
Those of us who grew or lived in the third world will recognize the current status of US law under Biden quite clearly: "For my friends, anything. For my enemies? The law!", it's just now extended down to the consumer ToS level.
What does Biden have to do with it? Are you implying this wasn't also true under Trump? He pardoned a bunch of his friends on the way out.
It seems to be this garbage has been the same the whole time.
To my view, there's a world of difference between "You can't use PayPal as a payment processor for gun sales" and "You can't use PayPal to pay pals back for covering your range fees last Saturday."
Yet the AUP seems broad enough to cover both: "You may not use the PayPal service for activities that... relate to transactions involving... ammunition, firearms, or certain firearm parts or accessories...." https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full
Firearms are for absolutely no reason what-so-ever taboo on most payment processors. The AUP is broad enough to cover both because the pearl clutchers don't see a difference. The best part of this is "certain firearm parts or accessories" as if they had a qualified expert anywhere in their company that could identify a bolt from a slide. It's deliberately written to trap you, and now, extort you for $2,500.
> (f) the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory
It's not as if they're looking at your HN posts for violations, only payment transactions.
So it depends on the interpretation of the Acceptable Use Policy and how that policy changes over time.
edit: As the person below me points out, the acceptable use policy is defined at https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full, which includes obscenity and intolerance.
> items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance, or the financial exploitation of a crime
to
> the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory
And otherwise mostly the same as it was in 2011, including the $2,500
"(f) the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory or the financial exploitation of a crime"
This could apply to the French author Michel Houellebecq for his novel Submission (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submission_(novel)#Controversy), along with another novel by the author.
Let's not even entertain the thought of this rule applied to various rap artists in popular culture.
"(g) items that are considered obscene" & "(i) certain sexually oriented materials or services"
This could apply to a number of artists, such as Robert Mapplethorpe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe#Controvers...). His art was considered obscene, and prurient, yet is now exhibited in major museums.
If your enemy were to again power, or an unjust ruler, how might these laws be used against you and the culture? Just because your "side" is winning now doesn't mean that will always be the case. Just because we're now "enlightened" and we would no longer jail Galileo or throw a fuss over Mapplethorpe does not mean that will always be the case. Are the rules just? Why is a finance company policing expression on the internet? Why are we turning to a finance company for moral guidance?
I don't see the difference between the old and the new terms regarding your comment, I'm afraid.
Now is that a dumb role that obviously invites arbitrary enforcement? Sure. But it's not new, those issues were there for at least 11 years.
Fuck Paypal hard.
Of course, we're taking the posters claim that this is what happened at face value...
The problem is that there's also a lot of inertia. For every "shortcut" user, there are hundreds if not thousands of users who don't know about and use sub-par systems (such as PayPal) instead.
Shitty companies like PayPal (or various banks which still charge insane fees for wire/ACH transfers) rely on that.
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For me, PayPal is only a route in, as a fallback for those who really can't use anything else. If you decide to use it to pay me (despite my warnings and alternative suggestions), I make it very clear that you are on the hook for any issues arising from it - PayPal money is only considered paid when it hits my real bank account - if they seize the money beforehand, it's as if you haven't paid me and it will be up to you to help me resolve the situation. That's how people should be using this scum.
Similarly, if I pay a supplier via PayPal and they refuse to deliver the goods, the supplier is getting their ass sued for goods/services non-rendered. The fact they use a crooked payment processor (despite my advice) isn't my fault at the end of the day.
Can you elaborate what shortcuts are you referring to in this context?
For buying stuff online it removes the need to fiddle around with CCs (+ trusting individual websites with CC info) and lets you checkout quickly. It's also great if you get scammed out of your money somehow... Their chargeback system is stupidly easy and is infamous for always siding with the buyer.
It sucks when you're on the other side of the transaction, though. Used to run a Minecraft server as a teenager, and they gave me a huge amount of grief between indisputable chargebacks and locking my account once for KYC purposes.
Websites don't keep CC info, and they haven't ever since PCI DSS has been a thing.
You're right about PayPal helping themselves to bank debits. I have a small eBay business and back when they dealt directly with PayPal, I would have a separate account to receive the funds and as soon as they hit I would transfer the money out. It's just part of the OPSEC that's required when dealing with our new megacorp overlords.
The email the bank sent me to prove 'I did it.' -- something very close to 'piratearrgghhhh34398903@yahoo.com' The fucking scammers taunted me by literally calling themselves pirates in the invoice. The one upside of paypal is the customer basically always wins to the point you're almost relying on the good faith of the customer not to take the money back.
But I can call American Express, be instantly connected to an agent who at least pretends to care, doesn't sound like they're overworked, and will gladly put in the chargeback request for me. I can also do this online if I'm feeling less social that day.
My reading is that this applies to transactions that promote violence, obscenity, etc. Yes it is indeed awful and deserving of ridicule, but it's not a charge against your non-transaction related activity. So in that sense the headline is overstating the case.
I'm only finding pitchfork raising junk sources right now, but anyway those say that this applied to seller activity in the last go-round. My reading of https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full is that this "now" applies to either side of a transaction. So in that sense, the headline is understating the new problem.
That AUP happens to also have a date of 9/21/21 so apparently this has been in effect for over a year. Why isn't that called out?
A CDBC would be a huge improvement over PayPal.
He votes what the constitution says.
As originally drafted it would have included using PayPal to sell a DVD of a movie that depicts violence. The new TOS are still very broad, but they don't include these ridiculous cases, which obviously should never have been included.
Perhaps when they said "oops, it was a mistake" they meant that the inclusion of a couple words like "depict" was a mistake, but the general thrust was exactly what they wanted.
The clause says they may deduct it from any of your PayPal accounts, but if you haven't given them that much money to hold on to, you still owe them, and presumably they will come after you.
For how rarely they are likely to actually enforce this, it just seems like a rather stupid hill to die on. Not just the initial decision but the attempt to try and sneak the terms back in.
It’s tempting people who shrugged their shoulders and used PayPal because they were a monopoly to re-evaluate if they should click PayPal in a checkout with Visa Checkout for instance.
Also, is this a “fee” that becomes due on some sort of bill that you can choose to ignore, or can/will they actually pull money from a linked account?
"You acknowledge and agree that $2,500.00 U.S. dollars per violation of the Acceptable Use Policy is presently a reasonable minimum estimate of PayPal’s actual damages.... PayPal may deduct such damages directly from any existing balance in any PayPal account you control."
https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full#...
Paypal's TOS mention $2,500 fine for "Acceptable use" violations but that has to do with sending money. NOT what you post online.
https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full
This is such a board statement than they an decide whatever they want and pull that fine.
And if we look for the Acceptable Use Policy, there is a line:
> (f) the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory or the financial exploitation of a crime
https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/useragreement-full#...
...shocked picacho face...
This can be proven wrong with a quick check of PayPal's acceptable use policy in the WayBack Machine. The $2500 fine that the article alleges has been added back after "criticism on social media died down" has been there since 2021. [https://web.archive.org/web/20211013092233/https://www.paypa...]
As for article's allegation that a prohibition on intolerance has just been added this October, that clause been there since 2018. [https://web.archive.org/web/20181108164503/https://www.paypa...].
So there is no justification to the article's allegation that the clauses have been quietly added back to PayPal acceptable use policy.
Furthermore, in building its argument that the misinformation clause was sneakily "added back into the terms of service," the article erroneously makes the assumption that a prohibition on intolerance equates to a prohibition on misinformation. This doesn't follow.
I'm not trying to support PayPal's acceptable use policy. But if you're going to attack it, at least use facts.
The TOS specifically say that you may not use PayPal for promotion of hate etc.
So you might not be able to buy a Nazi flag via PayPal but there's nothing there, for example, to stop you posting an image of a Nazi flag on Twitter.
This POS company is a blight on humanity. Neither their executives nor the government officials that should be regulating them care, since they’re all laughing all the way to the bank.
I do remember that guy, his name was Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka (he died). PayPal offered to donate the money to United Way, and Lowtax refused. The money was refunded by PayPal to the donators minus forex fees[0].
[0] https://www.wired.com/2005/09/paypal-freezes-out-katrina-aid...
It's important to remember why Lowtax refused:
>The Paypal representative said they can only donate money to the United Way; you know, the organization where the president was sued for stealing half a million dollars from them. You know, the organization with a loathsome two star rating, that spends nearly double the amount of money in "administrative overhead" (read: advertising) as Red Cross. It turns out that this is what the United Way is famous for. They weasel their way into companies and sign contracts with them, blocking the corporations from accepting donations to any other charity. I guess it's fitting Paypal chose to team up with them.
Canada's Trudeau showed the world what the nightmare scenario is: he single-handedly and with no evidence, decided that donating to a cause was retroactively illegal and every donor in his jurisdiction will have their assets frozen extra-judicially. No thanks.
And a story that claims that PayPal is out to hamper free speech is exactly the kind of lightning rod that would attract such people.
There seems to me to be plenty of room for interpretation (and potential for foul play) in the TOS. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but to call it a "fake news clickbait" is disingenuous.
“If you are a seller and receive funds for transactions that violate the Acceptable Use Policy, then … you will be liable to PayPal for the amount of PayPal’s damages caused by your violation of the Acceptable Use Policy. You acknowledge and agree that $2,500 U.S. dollars per violation … is presently a reasonable minimum estimate of PayPal’s actual damages.”
I don’t think I do agree with that estimate. On the other hand, it’s a complete lie that PayPal said they can withdraw money from your bank account for saying something they don’t like. This is about sellers and transactions that violate the (somewhat vague) AUP.
I think in the end I’ll choose not to engage in extended dialogue with people who misrepresent facts. This kind of crap just strengthens the divide in the US.
Non sequitur, but ok. There seems to me to be plenty of room for interpretation (and potential for foul play) in the TOS. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but to call it a "complete lie" is itself to misrepresent facts.