Why I Can't Use PayPal To Buy Your Product | Hacker News Reader

Why I Can't Use PayPal To Buy Your Product

pud.com

97 pointspud70 comments

While some people may have various business reasons for wanting multiple PayPal accounts linked to one bank account, I've run into this problem for another reason that I imagine is even more common: I'm married. My wife and I both have PayPal accounts. But guess what, PayPal? We have but one bank account. You know... a joint account... like I'm sure a vast majority of married people have. What a stupid rule.

You probably had separate bank accounts once too. You merged those, what is holding you back from merging paypal accounts? Seems like it would be the easier of the two operations.

I think it's against the terms to have a joint PayPal account. I'm sure I read that somewhere and it is the standard for most web services (accounts can only be used by one person).

Do Paypal Ts&Cs let multiple people use the same account?

Well... nothing now (other than I don't want to). But at the time I was using mine for business purposes so it wasn't really a great option.

PayPal does let you use the same joint bank account in two accounts. The only problems is that you need to be married and share the same last name. This may make sense in the US, but in a lot of other parts of the world, you don't take your husband last name when you marry.

I'm tired of PayPal too, but just wanted to let you know that there may be a solution to your problem.

> PayPal does let you use the same joint bank account in two accounts.

Thanks. That must be new in the recent years as I don't believe we had that option when we had that issue... but its been a while. It is no longer an issue since we don't really use PayPal much anymore.

>share the same last name. This may make sense in the US

That counts me out. My wife was well-known professionally before we were married, so she kept her name. In my circle of friends, I know a handful of others to whom this also applies. Paypal's policy might have made sense in 1950's US, but not in the US as it is now.

Completely off topic, but I wish this could have just said "my wife uses her own last name" or something like that. It reads like your wife needs an excuse to keep her last name, which I'm sure isn't the case, but is indicative of the weird - slightly misogynistic - society we're in where the default is for women to give up their names at marriage.

Descriptively I think that's still the case, at least on average: most women who have no specific "reason" to keep their name adopt their husband's name, while rates of not doing so are much higher if there's some reason it would be actively advantageous not to change names (e.g. an academic with a publication record under her name).

Among my circle of friends, even among academics, the tendency towards changing seems to be fairly high; those who got married late-ish with a significant publication record didn't switch, because it would seriously dilute their name recognition / citation counts / etc., but those who got married in grad school with 2-3 existing publications have all switched. Not entirely sure whether it's tradition or personal reasons or family or what.

(US-centric point of view:)

Most women like that part of getting married. They get excited about it. They want their kids to have the same last name as both parents and they want to share the name of their husband. Please try to not turn it into some male domination thing, as so many discussions on here needlessly turn to that. It's like the HN version of "all discussions eventually lead to Hitler," or however that goes.

In my limited anecdotal observations, I see the same as you. That does not mean that it isn't a "male domination thing" (at an ingrained-into-the-core-of-society level).

I simply wish we didn't feel like we have to excuse women keeping their own name, and hope that one day it will simply be the default.

I trust that the billions of women world 'round who practice this know in their heart-of-hearts that they are not being dominated by adopting their husband's last name. Yours is something of an extreme point of view, IMO.

The point is not that women adopting their husband's names is misogynistic but rather that the need to excuse women who don't is misogynistic.

A wife taking the husband's name is still the norm here. I think that some people feel they need to explain why they didn't so that other (more judgmental) people don't just label them as "weird" or "femi-nazis" or any of the other disparaging labels that people put on others when they don't have the same opinions and ideals. I think this change is a slow process and will not have 100% acceptance. But I have no doubt that the time will come when that choice will no longer be questioned.

We're both off-topic, but since you chose to go there...

My wife was 18 when we got married. She wasn't "well known". She wasn't a feminist. But she kept her last name and it has never been a problem - except for PayPal.

Our kids have her last name as their middle name and my last name as their last name for convenience - mainly the school's convenience.

Personally I hope some day we go to a system where you turn 18 and pick the name you want. I've known at least two couples where when they got married they didn't choose either name, but took a name for "them". I personally would like to see more of this, but then I'm a bit of a romantic.

> My wife was 18 when we got married.

o_O

That really isn't unheard of, you know. It isn't common, but it happens often enough that you shouldn't be that surprised. If you are shocked by people marrying at 18 I recommend you avoid looking into teen pregnancy rates.

Many early marriages fail (but then again so do many late ones, so that generalism might be based on confirmation bias) but some people are mature enough to have a solid relationship and life plan by that point so getting married early works for them.

Male hegemony is not the same thing as misogyny.

And a societal norm of women taking their husbands name is neither hegemony nor misogyny, it's just what it is.

Not everything is a kind of domination. Especially if it doesn't involve people doing stuff they don't want.

My wife doesn't need an excuse and I didn't offer one. I provided an explanation for this discussion lest you think we were recent immigrants or had some other cultural norm different from mainstream US. In fact, we're about as mainstream as you can get in this wonderfully diverse country, and no one I know bats an eye about us having different names. No one except PayPal and that one grumpy old Cuban* in south Florida who wanted some proof of our marital status for a rental car contract.

* and before I'm branded racist for pointing out his nationality without relevance, I'll add that he was the one who made a long case about how things were done properly in his country and how I lacked machismo for allowing this sad state of affairs. There was much wagging of fingers and clucking of tongues about this "American way". Maybe he works for PayPal now.

Well the solution is simple, you take her name :)

There's a great book called 'Founders At Work' that tells Max Levchin's account of PayPal's early days. Apparently they stopped considering PayPal a payments company very early on. They moved on to being a fraud prevention company. In reality, they no longer have to do anything to promote growth or even sustainability in money moving through the system, so they can just ignore that part. Almost their entire focus is on preventing fraud. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying.

To bad I can't offer stripe as an Australian company. We have one local bank that will let you accept multiple currency through a merchant account and they have some pretty major costs.

Until my startup gets a decent userbase I don't see an alternative to PayPal.

I've hit this 'can only link bank account to one PayPal account' problem a few times and it is very frustrating.

The way I operate my business and personal bank and PayPal accounts means I have to shuffle money around to work with this rule. Why, PayPal?

> Why, PayPal?

To prevent fraud.

Care to elaborate on that? How does it prevent fraud?

Presumably it keeps people from just spam-creating new accounts every time they get banned.

In this case, however, it's hurting their business by being too strict. They could, for example, let you have at most two accounts linked to solve the problem some married people have.

If that were the case, then they should be able to tell when you try to link your bank account to a second PayPal account that the first one was banned. Slap those people in the face... not everyone. As long as all PayPal accounts linked to a bank account are in good standing, why limit it to just two?

I do not see why they need to stop spam creation of accounts. They can just ban the bank account in addition to the Paypal account. Without any bank account or credit card connected to the Paypal account it is not very harmful to Paypal.

Someone might be able to use the dozens of accounts for fraud before they could catch them and put a stop to it. If the money is already gone, Paypal would suffer the losses.

I hit it because my wife had a paypal account before I did, and we share a joint account. It's really irritating, but I found a work-around (use another account) and moved on.

Wish there was a strong competitor to paypal...

Wish there was a strong competitor to paypal...

Google Checkout / Wallet?

I've worked around this in the past by changing my e-mail address in my current paypal account, and then just creating a new account. (and then deleting my previous, now useless account). The limit is large enough that I so far have only needed to do this once. (I don't trust paypal enough to link it to an actual bank account).

This would make sense if your account doesn't have any more money. But it may happen to you some day that you have more money in your account than your limit and then you will be stuck as you cannot transfer it to another account.

I never have any money in the account. I only use it to make credit card purchases.

This is a good idea.

Ridiculous. But a good idea.

This is clever, but likely an easy way to get perma-banned from PayPal, as they run checks for unusual behavior to detect fraud.

And even if they didn't notice, they will if your account is ever under review.

My account was restricted once and I ran through all the paperwork - faxing my id, my credit card statments (unbelievable) talking to a csr and it was still deemed I was somehow in the wrong. After all that I deleted my account and just created a new one - when the truth doesn't work lie.

Want to experience real pain? PayPal + eBay. Talk about some horror stories.

Here's what's interesting: It's YOUR MONEY. This isn't a credit card. It's a payment system that allows you to take your money --real cash-- and pay for things. Why are they placing limits on people's own money? If the account has enough balance for the purchase in question (and the money has been there for a while) you should be able to spend it as you wish.

As for linking a bank account. Not a big deal these days. You can open an account with $100. I don't see this as a problem, particularly if you are talking about paying thousands for conferences. Yes, it's a pain to keep track of. That's what Quicken/Quickbooks is for.

Quicken?

I have no direct experience with it, but according to wikipedia article it's very very horrible. For example:

"Quicken contains a sunset provision that stops online features and any QFX formatted files from working after a certain amount of time,[8][9] requiring users to first buy a new Quicken license, and then to learn a new, often confusing interface to the more recent Quicken version." or "To migrate to Lion, users are required to pay for an updated version of Quicken 2007. It has no new features." While GnuCash isn't perfect, and probably wouldn't work too well for business, Quicken would have to have really great features for someone to put up with this. And QuickBooks seems to be pretty much the same.

I've been using it since the early days (by that I mean IBM PC/DOS). The paragraph you quote does not represent anything I have ever experienced with any version of the product.

I'm pretty sure you can go to pay while not logged in to PayPal. Then enter your credit card directly. They will tell you it's linked to an account and do you want to login. But there is still an option to go ahead and just use the card.

Nope. I used to be able to pay using only a credit card before (like 2 years ago), but now it just asks that I login or register a new account. I suppose with over 200 million users you can get away with this crap...

I'm fairly sure I've done this in the last 6 months.

It's a setting that the merchant has to enable, by default you have to have a paypal account.

I tried to use that option, but every time it tells me that the card was rejected. Even though I can use the card fine if I enter the details directly... it's just weird.

I've tried that, and when it complained that the card was linked to an account, it wouldn't let me proceed until I logged in.

At the time, my account was locked down because I had the audacity to go to a conference in a town 80 miles away and try to use my Paypal account for something. They wouldn't let me unlock my account until I gave them a new landline phone number (which I didn't have) or fax them my ID (which I wasn't willing to do). It was as if they didn't want me to reactivate my account.

And I still couldn't buy anything until I got a new card.

I have an account with a linked credit card, and have used the same card without logging in on a few occasions without any trouble. Maybe the policy is different for each country?

I can use my credit card without logging in as long as my PayPal account status is normal. But when my account was restricted, I couldn't pay using my linked credit card. I also tried to close my PayPal account - they don't let you do that either while the account is restricted.

I've had quite the bad experience with PayPal myself. I used to sell goods on the internet. Nothing shady, unless you consider Wordpress shady. Anyways, one day I try to charge against my PayPal account and I find out my account has been frozen and is pending investigation. I had not a lot of money, but more than a few dollars.

It's been frozen ever since (about 2 years). I've tried working with PayPal, but they've yet to help me in any constructive way. If I were to add to this post, this is the reason I won't allow PayPal payments on my site.

Another PITA issue I've hit with PayPal is trying to link Bank Accounts or Credit Cards from multiple countries to the same account... can't do it.

So even though I'm an Australian living in Canada, I'm stuck charging my Australian Credit Card and Bank account whenever I use Paypal. Sigh

To be fair that may have to do with regulations. Paypal has to walk through a complex maze of regulations to work internationally. In the US it's a company, in the EU it's a bank etc. Their existence may have actually been a motive in establishing money transfer regulation.

I had the same issue when I moved to Australia from the UK. I had to open a new PayPal account (with a different email address), which was a hassle but having two accounts is working fine for me now.

In Australia, I believe that every PayPal account can also use a credit card - no matter what the card type. Just today I bought a CD with my Visa card, over PayPal.

I believe that it's because the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission stepped in some time ago and told eBay that they couldn't force people to only use PayPal to pay for their products as this is third-line forcing.

I love strong competition law :-)

In a related vein: Try to change your name for your PayPal account. In Australia (and I assume globally), last I checked you had to fax 100 points of ID to them. Setting up an account requires nothing. I could wait until my CC expires and open a new account in my new name, but I've tied my account to my bank account too.

The screenshot that we are to assume is from paypal says that he's reached his "sending limit". What is that supposed to mean? In the text, he says he's reached his "spending limit". Is this just a weird typo from paypal? Or something stranger?

Open business accounts and use one personal account. Problem solved. You can open a business account with just a ficiticious business statement (a "dba") which you can get online instantly in some counties, or by mail in about a week.

This is an outlier issue.

For the average person selling things through PayPal, this is rare. If it's that important for your business, it shouldn't be a big deal to create a new bank account for each PayPal and link them to that.

PayPal is good in some ways (lowers the bar to becoming a merchant) it is broken and horrible in many other ways. Let's hope the competitors can improve upon things (Google, Amazon, Square, Facebook, Apple).

its less of a paypal problem and more the websites problem for not offering several payment options. Just paypal is easier for a majority of the population. If your particular paypal didn't work then you'd have to manually enter your credit information, which most people myself included don't like to do.

Could anyone summarize this article? Site is blocked as "tasteless" on the filter (?)

looks like they're really trying to push people to link their bank accounts to paypal.

This wouldn't be a problem if you accepted Bitcoin. ;)

It would cause numerous numerous other problems.

It's non-trivial to convert bitcoin into a regular currency, you have to use 3rd party sites that have a terrible record with security

It's not understood and accepted by most people.

You can't do chargebacks.

> It's non-trivial to convert bitcoin into a regular currency, you have to use 3rd party sites that have a terrible record with security

Wrong. There has only ever been one successful attack against MtGox. By contrast, attacks on banking financial websites are widespread: http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/6652 A small security-focused startup like MtGox can more easily secure their infrastructure & code, compared to the corporate developers working on humongous code bases behind most banking websites.

> It's not understood and accepted by most people.

Circular reasoning ("technology X won't get adopted because nobody knows X").

> You can't do chargebacks.

This is actually an advantage for merchants. Credit card chargebacks eat into their already thin margins. But once they receive bitcoins no one can take them away from them.

Paypal forced me to open an account with them so I could buy shit by credit card through their interface. And so they could try to shove their other shitty products down my throat.

I want to set every single person who works for PayPal on fire.

@DannoHung

I want to set every single person who works for PayPal on fire.

While I can understand your frustration, I think you should cool off and think before posting such extremist views here.

I completely sympathize with customer "service" induced pyromania. Between Paypal and my cable company...

I think we can safely say that this was very much said tongue in cheek!

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