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Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

A dead throwaway account posted this:

Paypal have had their share of bad customer experiences. However it is clear in the Paypal policies that trusts are not allowed to own accounts. If someone was ignorant to not notice that, I believe it is unfair to point fingers at Paypal.

I have to agree. I can forgive a random individual for not reading a ToS, but as a business? That's unforgivable. PayPal might be skeevy, but you can't fault them when they follow their own written and publicly available rules.

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> you can't fault them when they follow their own written and publicly available rules.

This makes sense only in the context of choice.

If your business revolves around selling on eBay, PayPal is the only viable choice.

If PayPal wrote that they own your firstborn in their TOS, and every professional seller on eBay was made aware of this fact, their market share would not change.

Anyone who has used PayPal for any sort of volume (thousands per day), hates PayPal with a passion that cannot be described. And they continue to use it. Because they have no choice.

So, yeah, it's perfectly fair to point fingers at PayPal when they continue to make these asinine changes. Because when it comes down to it, for the majority of their customers, it's either use them or go out of business.

>If your business revolves around selling on eBay, PayPal is the only viable choice.

Then either your business model needs to change, or you need to follow the rules (i.e. no trusts owning an account) that you agreed to when you signed up. Those are the two options.

Whether or not paypal sucks has no bearing on the fact that the author was in violation of the terms of service he agreed to and had his account terminated for it.

Could they have handled it better? Sure. Are they under any obligation to? Nope.

Again, if this were a random individual person I would sympathize completely, but you do not, as a business, enter any contract without full appreciation for the terms you're binding yourself and your organization to. Just because he was ignorant of those terms doesn't mean they don't exist.

> or you need to follow the rules (i.e. no trusts owning an account) that you agreed to when you signed up.

No. Not when you signed up.

It's anytime they decide to change the contract. They modify the contract whenever they want to, without any regard for continuity or business viability ... and if you don't agree, they disable the account. Maybe keep some of your funds too.

Is it legal? Gray area. Some courts don't enforce contracts of adhesion strenuously.

Is it ethical? No.

You treat your business partners with respect and don't change the contract whenever you feel like it, to their detriment, simply because you can.

It's abusive.

That anti-excuse reminds me of one of the recent cases where Paypal screwed over a business for using the "Donate" button, because it should be obvious that only registered 501(c) organizations are allowed to use said button.

I'm not blaming PayPal for this, I agree I was not aware of this ToS, I am just making the point that they are pushing away legitimate business because of this policy.

But I doubt you can call it unforgivable. You can't tell me you have read every single ToS to every single service you have signed up to in full and detail. PayPal makes it more clear on their signup about this these days but I signed up a few years ago. It wasn't as clearly spelt out.

>But I doubt you can call it unforgivable. You can't tell me you have read every single ToS to every single service you have signed up to in full and detail.

As an individual? No. As a business, presumably an organization that has a lawyer on standby to translate the legalese? Yes.

You haven't run a small business before have you?

Actually yes. I consider having legal counsel part of the cost of doing business.

So you pay a few hundred dollars and wait a few days to a week every time you sign up to an online service such as Pay Pal for them to read over the terms and conditions. The same with any Microsoft, Google and Amazon accounts? Did you get them to check over the Microsoft license or Apple license before you loaded your operating system on a computer you use for business?

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