"PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1757343318239813730

by bundie • 2 years ago

149 154 2 years ago

twitter.com

lovegrenoble2• 2 years ago

it's better to avoid PayPal anyway, so sorry for you, hope your post will be in the top.

triyambakam• 2 years ago

Alternative?

hnben• 2 years ago

depends on your location and your target audience.

e.g. the swiss use TWINT for almost everything and it works great

smileybarry2• 2 years ago

The problem is a lack of "I want to pay you but don't want to give you my credit card" processors out there. That's 99% of the reason I use PayPal (with just one case of using buyer protection because the vendor just forgot about my order for months and didn't respond).

Google Pay & Apple Pay helps with this now (and the fact they're implemented as a payment type like VISA and not a processor like PayPal helps a lot to prevent lockout cases like this) but they're nowhere near as widespread as PayPal, at least from my experience.

TheCapeGreek4• 2 years ago

I don't understand this "I want to pay without giving my card" thing.

Payment gateways process your card, not the app.

"Paying without giving my card" is not what that feature is, but rather "card details are saved so you have a lower barrier to spend more".

is_true7• 2 years ago

It's hard to avoid, what you should do is move the money out of paypal as fast as you can.

lovegrenoble2• 2 years ago

And why did you keep so much money in your account, there's must be an explication?

javcasas• 2 years ago

Because victim blaming, that's why.

junaru• 2 years ago

Never used paypal as a merchant but think funds are held for x days before you can transfer them.

dkjaudyeqooe5• 2 years ago

Paypal, and other payment processors, will hold funds to cover potential chargebacks.

If he really was doing 6 figures in sales then roughly 10% being withheld is in the ballpark of reasonable.

devaiops90013• 2 years ago

Businesses will abuse you like this unless you know how 1.] to sue 2.] how to make a threat to sue sound credible 3.] be strong on #2 with articulation on punitive damages.

A well written letter can get things moving pretty quick.

bluescrn• 2 years ago

There's not many businesses that'll take $80K of your money and refuse to give any explanation, though. Especially businesses that have a long history of similar incidents.

devaiops90013• 2 years ago

Heh. I wish it were so uncommon that it were unheard of. Ya gotta have a great legal team or else you'll get hosed. There are days I'd rather have spent coding rather than working with legal.

madsbuch5• 2 years ago

As I wrote on another thread: PayPal is exploiting the fact that they exist in several jurisdictions. So you don't just need to be able to sue. You need to be able to sue across borders, several borders – Good luck with that.

devaiops90013• 2 years ago

"Good luck, I'm behind seven borders".

y7• 2 years ago

Punitive damages are not a thing in a large part of the world. In particular in the European countries where Paypal or some of its subsidiaries reside.

mcv6• 2 years ago

$80k sounds like it's worth a lawsuit.

PayPal is terrible and unreliable and should be avoided, but if they confiscate your money, I would expect you should be able to sue them for it.

MrThoughtful• 2 years ago

I thought the finance industry is highly regulated?

Can a company really "hold any funds in your account for up to 180 days" just willy-nilly?

And what does this mean:

    Fun bonus, they hold $80,000 I won't get back.

Has anybody ever really been completely robbed by PayPal and never gotten their money?

madsbuch5• 2 years ago

I thought it was common knowledge at this point that there is this risk using PayPal and it was generally not recommended for anything but hobby use.

PayPal has been seen using several jurisdictions, eg. Luxembourg, France, Germany. When maltreated customer try to sue and get their funds back, they will ping-pong people around in different orgs across these jurisdictions.

In the end you would need several very persistent lawyers across several jurisdictions, which is more expensive than loosing 100.000 EUR.

(There is a specific case on this that was shared on HN some time back).

dewey3• 2 years ago

Paypal only being for hobby projects is a bit of an exaggeration if you see almost every e-commerce store at least in Germany supporting it.

dathinab• 2 years ago

yes

its not that rare of an story

epolanski2• 2 years ago

Has anybody ever really been completely robbed by PayPal and never gotten their money?

On both ends of the spectrum of being an ebay buyer and seller.

Once I sold a WoW account, and as soon as the buyer got the account charged back the payment.

Another time I bought a piece for my motorbike. Never got anything. Asked for a chargeback. Got nothing.

Did not use their service and I am still livid for their lack of transparency, consistency and honesty.

helsinkiandrew3• 2 years ago

Surely both of these had nothing to do with PayPal? (this is an honest question - I'm not trying to defend PayPal)

If the buyer did a charge back on their credit/debit card, PayPal gets charged and passes it on to you. Likewise if you as a seller didn't get the chargeback isn't that on your card company?

dkjaudyeqooe5• 2 years ago

It says they'll release it in 180 days, don't know why he figures he won't get it.

What's missing here is a description of what he was doing to generate that money. Maybe he was completely legit, but we don't know anything. Does he perhaps have a reason to think he won't get his money? Maybe he was getting a lot of chargebacks or some other negative metric.

https://www.headshotpro.com/ seems to be his business.

emmet• 2 years ago

Literally every time these things come up it's because the person was doing something dodgy and refuse to admit it.

mpeg4• 2 years ago

If I had to guess, I would say the reason is that they're getting a high amount of chargebacks because the website marketing copy promises "14 days money back guaranteed" and even highlights that their competitors don't offer a "refund after usage"

But then, in the FAQs, you can see the refund policy specifies they will only refund if you haven't downloaded any images. I imagine some people sign up to try it, then go refund if the quality is not as expected (textual inversion generators like this can be a bit hit or miss) and find they can't.

Mountain_Skies• 2 years ago

Know Your Customer, anti-terrorism, anti-drug money laundering, and many other laws have been enacted to keep "the bad guys" from being able to operate efficiently. Unfortunately, and perhaps even sometimes by design, these laws have created all kinds of loopholes that allow financial institutions and governments to prey on innocents, especially those who aren't doing anything illegal but sometimes things that are unwanted. It all does seem to be designed to strongly discourage the possession of cash and cash equivalents by anyone not in the right circles of power.

im3w1l• 2 years ago

It's gone way too far. My bank refuses to cash international checks (no banks in my country do). IRS refuses to do international wires. The result is that the united states government owes me money I can only claim if I actually fly there which is expensive enough and too much of a bother for the sum involved.

Like if even the fucking IRS isn't trusted enough to push money through the system then it's a complete joke.

noirscape• 2 years ago

It technically is. A bank iirc cannot do the sort of black box of terminations PayPal likes to do with its customers.

The problem is that PayPal isn't legally considered a bank in the US but a payment processor, which gives them a lot more freedom to run their service in the way they're infamous for.

In the EU, they are a bank, which permits you much more rights but you have to drag them kicking and screaming to enforce your rights. (Among other things, they're homed in Luxembourg and basically employ all the competent financial lawyers in that country, making it basically impossible to get legal representation without getting rejected on a conflict of interest basis.)

jsjohnst• 2 years ago

Has anybody ever really been completely robbed by PayPal and never gotten their money?

Yes, speaking from experience. It’s been 22 years now and policies / laws have changed, so circumstances would certainly be different if it happened today.

SilverBirch• 2 years ago

One of the things that fascinates me about silicon valley is that there's this very clear playbook that goes along the lines of: We're going to 'disrupt' X industry with technology. And disrupt often has a veneer of technological progress, but really is primarily just regulatory arbitrage. Paypal: We're going to be a bank, but we're not going to adhere to banking regulations. Crypto: We're going to be a stock exchange, but we're not going to adhere to SEC regulations. Uber: We're going to be a taxi company, but we're going to ignore all local taxi regulations. Uber/Doordash/Gig economy: We're going to employ people, but we're going to ignore employment law.

Not only is it interesting that this keeps happening, and successfully. But we're like 25 years down the line since Paypal started, and Paypal is still acting in ways that you wouldn't expect a bank/payment processor to be allowed to behave by regulators.

Like, if I were a regulator I would seriously be considering just going through Uber's behaviour since the company started and prosecuting every single violation they committed. Let's see how well that business model holds up. It's not good enough to say "Oh we're all billionaires now and we floated on the stock exchange so I guess now we'll think about abiding by the law".

kalleboo• 2 years ago

Paypal: We're going to be a bank, but we're not going to adhere to banking regulations

There is nothing in banking regulations that stops what PayPal is doing here. Any credit card processor will not hesitate in putting a hold on your payouts if they want to investigate your business. Heck one of our credit card processors wouldn't even pay out before 90 days as standard.

is_true7• 2 years ago

The problem here is that Paypal wants to look like a bank to increase it's stock value.

tainted_blood2• 2 years ago

Wouldn't have happened with Bitcoin.

ggm2• 2 years ago

Forgot the /s (rugpulls)

tainted_blood2• 2 years ago

Bitcoin can't do rugpulls, what you are talking about is "crypto", which is indeed a scam.

lm28469• 2 years ago

Yes, since he'd probably lose 95% of his paying customers

rtsil• 2 years ago

Wild speculation: some of the AI-generated headshots sold by the company were used for fraudulent activities.

Real outrage: how can a company take $80K of someone else's money ("I won't get back"). Decline to do business, sure, hold until an investigation is done, why not? But this is outrageous. Did they refund it to the buyers at least?

ggm2• 2 years ago

Spend $200,000 and up, you might recover it, on the court steps. Or not.

mpeg4• 2 years ago

Ok so I know a bit about this as I had the same exact thing happen to me in the past.

The reason this probably happened is that their business was getting a high % of chargebacks from paying customers, paypal is not a specialist payment provider that wants to handle what they consider high-risk business like that, so they block your account and hold your funds for 180 days and during that time keep processing chargebacks.

After the 180 days, Paypal will give you the remainder of the money back, so the title is clickbait, they will get back their money.

The best thing to do if you operate a business which gets a lot of chargebacks is to find a payment processor that is okay with that, when I had this issue I ended up looking at which payment processors porn sites used and picked one of them, which had no problems. That was a long time ago, so I'm sure there's more options now.

geek_at• 2 years ago

does that mean if a group of people don't like you they can chargeback-bomb you and get you banned?

danpalmer• 2 years ago

Yes, although in general this will happen with any payment provider. Stripe for example will decline your business after a certain point, and in a few cases have banned entire product categories that were having significant issues with chargebacks. There are payment providers that specialise in high chargeback rate industries, but they cost a lot more.

Crosseye_Jack3• 2 years ago

Pretty much, and if your avg payment is rather low you could end up owing PayPal money as you don’t just pay for the refund of the order, but you have to pay additional charges for the chargeback.

Let’s say your avg payment is $15, one chargeback means that not only have you lost the payment from the customer who charged back but as you now also owe the chargeback fee you technically lost the payment on a sale which wasn’t charged back.

Edit: just a quick note. Chargebacks are different than “PayPal Claims”, chargebacks are initiated by the card issuer, claims are initiated by the customer in the PayPal interface, so claims cost less than chargebacks, but PayPal will still ding your account if you get too many of them.

Edit the second: the 180 day hold is to cover not only chargebacks (which generally have a shorter period the customer can start one) but also PayPals own “protection program” claims which is 180 days iirc.

jeroenhd• 2 years ago

If you take credit card payments on any platform: yes. The difference is in how much prior warning you're getting and how expensive paying for the chargebacks is going to be, but every major payment platform will either shut you down or massively increase prices if you incur too many chargebacks.

This is one of the practical reasons why credit card processors generally don't take porn sites as customers.

Dalewyn• 2 years ago

Keep in mind that chargebacks are considered a nuclear, double-edged option. Yes, you can get your money back as a customer or abuse the system to financially cancel someone, but issue too many chargebacks and the banks will be more than happy to also kick you out too.

Chargebacks as they are intended are used only when all other attempts at resolving a dispute have failed, including the merchant refusing to issue a refund. It's the means of last resort and damages the credibility of both sides involved in the transaction.

piltdownman3• 2 years ago

Exactly this. If you want to kill a competitors iOS app it's a well-known blackhat route, and testified to here before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=343060

In this case a competitor used fake accounts and stolen credit cards to buy a competing app to get it delisted - Apple's apparent policy once the chargeback total hits some arbitrary figure.

Edit: Immediately downvoted for no reason. Catching these sort of malfeasant actors was literally one of the USPs of former Irish yCombinator Winter 2014 participant Trustev, which was picked up by TransUnion for €44 million a year later : https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/transunion-buys-tru...

reisse• 2 years ago

It's more complicated. In theory, you should not be able to chargeback any transaction at will, you need to provide a reason for it. But because US banking is stuck in between of 90s and 00s, to pay with the card online it's enough to know what's printed on the one side of it, maybe two sides. Therefore, "fraud" can always be used as a chargeback reason ("Oh, it wasn't me, someone taken a photo of my card! I definitely didn't pay 300$ on that hot mums nearby website!").

In some parts of the world this is solved by mandatory 2FA authenticaton for online payments (3DSecure and similar tech). If the transaction is verified by 3DSecure or some other 2FA, you cannot chargeback because of "fraud", but you still can chargeback for any other verifiable reason (e. g. goods not delivered).

rmholt• 2 years ago

Not critiquing you but the approach - that's abysmal UX. If PayPal blocks your account with no feedback, that's incredibly anxiety inducing.

And in an environment like finance, good communication of the status of the account should be the difference between an "oh okay that's fair" and a lawsuit for theft.

mcv6• 2 years ago

Not only anxiety inducing, it can actively deny the customer the thing they paid for. I've heard of events that had to be cancelled because PayPal didn't want to release the money. PayPal making the chargebacks a self-fulfilling prophesy.

helsinkiandrew3• 2 years ago

Isn't the real issue that Paypal lets both consumers and businesses receive money, and consumers are far more likely to be fraudsters - receiving money and not sending goods or requesting chargebacks for goods they have received etc.

If you use a credit card merchant that does more vetting of the seller side businesses, they're more likely to give you the benefit of doubt if you start getting chargebacks and not lock everything.

beeboobaa3• 2 years ago

An $80k interest free loan sounds pretty nice

posting_mess3• 2 years ago

Any evidence it appears on balance sheet / they use it as capital for investments? or are you just parroting a line you heard someone say one? Parent comment makes it fairly obvious why they are holding the money, seems entirely sane and reasonable - or do you think PayPal should take on an $80K risk? Would you or your business? (in this very specific context)

is_true7• 2 years ago

It happened to me a while ago and while chatting with support they had my birth date wrong and thought I was underage. When I told them that they just deleted the support thread.

I had only ONE charge back, in 2015 I think.

I would understand if they would try to cooperate or ask for more info to prove things. But they have too much power and it's easier to just limit accounts.

In times of high interest rates it's even better.

pyb• 2 years ago

But Danny will have a $80k gaping hole in his cash flow for half a year. Some businesses would not survive this

aga98mtl• 2 years ago

If you are at or above 1% chargeback you are going to get problem at any normal payment processor.

Source: https://www.chargeflow.io/blog/chargeback-threshold-limits

mpeg4• 2 years ago

Yep! In my case I switched to a processor that had higher fees but had less of an issue with chargebacks.

Having said that, I think these days there are ways to limit your exposure, for example requiring 3D Secure for every card payment, as well as tools like Stripe Radar that help reduce fraud.

KomoD2• 2 years ago

After the 180 days, Paypal will give you the remainder of the money back, so the title is clickbait, they will get back their money.

Not always, they can take it sometimes as "damages"

mpeg4• 2 years ago

Hence why I said the remainder. In my case they held about $10k and I got back most of it, they take back any chargeback amounts + a flat fee per chargeback

lgregg• 2 years ago

What payment provider did you switch to?

ijhuygft776• 2 years ago

Paypal still need to be regulated. It also needs to be fined for events like this.

forinti• 2 years ago

The last paragraph indicates he'll get his money eventually.

Nice idea for a business, by the way.

dncornholio• 2 years ago

Has it been 180 days yet?

tjbiddle• 2 years ago

This is precisely why on all my PayPal accounts I have a auto-sweep enabled so that anything over $6,000 is sent to my account daily.

I could set it to a lower threshold, but my AOV is ~$2,000 so I prefer to have enough for refunds - otherwise PayPal needs to debit my checking and then it takes very long for the customer to get their money back.

gregjor3• 2 years ago

Not enough information, no context. PayPal has terms of service and laws they have to comply with. Probably a story here but unlikely PayPal just shut him down and kept his money for no reason.

TheCapeGreek4• 2 years ago

You can find other examples of this with PayPal, Wise and others online.

Hiding behind KYC/AML laws makes these bans completely opaque in every possible scenario.

Whether or not you think Danny is innocent or not, the point is not even he could know why there's suddenly a problem. There's no recourse.

gregjor3• 2 years ago

That's just speculation. We don't know if PayPal "hid" behind KYC/AML laws. More likely the account got too many chargebacks -- I've seen processors cut people off for that reason, but after multiple notices. I don't know what happened, just what the victim posted, but that's not enough to know the chain of events. Accusing PayPal of closing an account and keeping $80k with no additional information seems like a serious charge, but with no additional facts I don't know what to make of it. I suppose it plays well for people who hate PayPal. I have nothing to do with PayPal, for the record.

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

Very likely it was a dumb reason, an automated reason, a poor user experience of that reason, a completely optional experience, a poor corporate policy that substantially diverges from legal obligations, legal obligations being poorly thought out and misguided as well.

There's literally no reason to blame the victim here when HSBC can launder money for the literal cartel under the same legal regime that deputizes financial institutions to demonize transactions instead of a government agency demonizing an actual behavior and investigating that actual behavior. The party in power made a choice they shouldn't be in a position to make or shouldn't chose to do that way, the predictability of that choice occurring is not a factor at all.

thriftwy• 2 years ago

"Comrade Stalin, a terrible mistake is happening!"

Well PayPal is known to do that for two decades now, it would take a huge amount of self-confidence to keep $80k there.

gndk11• 2 years ago

I have nightmares about this. The comments here saying that PayPal is just for hobby projects and should be avoided are living in a different reality.

For me (e-commerce business, mainly in Germany), PayPal makes up around 70-80% of revenue and isn't easily replacable.

I'm sure some customers would whip out their creditcard (if they even have one) or enter their long IBAN bank account numbers for direct debit, but many probably wouldn't. The convenience of PayPal is unmatched.

helsinkiandrew3• 2 years ago

What about adding Stripe/Google Pay/Amazon Pay as a choice, or if you have enough revenue history VISA etc through a merchant account.

The real issue is that if you start getting chargebacks - you will be liable for them. A bank might ask for payment, Paypal just grabs any money in your account and locks it. If you keep an eye on the level of chargebacks you should be able to sleep better!

pbmonster• 2 years ago

What about adding Stripe/Google Pay/Amazon Pay as a choice

Not even close in popularity in Germany. People just don't use it. Would be surprised if more than 10% of transactions would move to that if offered while PayPal is still there.

gndk11• 2 years ago

Adding more payment methods is definitely key. But like the sibling comment says, they don't come close to PayPal's popularity. So its a reasonable fallback, but I wouldn't remove PayPal voluntarily.

Chargebacks are interesting in our case, since we barely get any and if we do, we solve any cases super quick. I remember a few years ago, I talked to some PayPal representative from their business team (so higher level, not normal support) and they mentioned how they had never seen an account with such a low amount of cases. Keeping that up is a big focus for us.

Degorath• 2 years ago

Do any of those support German bank accounts? (PayPal does)

Plus, as far as I can tell, Google Pay only works on mobile phones.

nness• 2 years ago

I wonder if this might be a case of PayPal in the US vs. Europe — at least with regards to charge-backs.

It seems that the burden of proof in the EU is much higher before an issuer will allow a charge-back — at least anecdotally, the credit cards I've used require you to prove that you tried to resolve the issue with the merchant first, prior to charge-back. Even then, charge-backs would negatively impact your account standing with the issuer, so are dissuaded.

dkjaudyeqooe5• 2 years ago

In my experience with Paypal that's not the case.

gndk11• 2 years ago

I think many people in Germany actually have their bank account linked with PayPal, not their credit card. So PayPal uses direct debit to get the money from the customer and "floats" the payment to the merchant.

Direct debit payments in the EU can be reverted within 8 weeks with just a few clicks in your online banking. Those cost around 8€ to whoever debited (I think thats cheaper than CC chargebacks?). I've never done it, but I think you don't even have to put a reason. That just starts the process though, so they might have to add more information later.

CalRobert2• 2 years ago

Not sure what your sector is but how is Paypal easier than paddle, stripe, chargebee, etc?

Actually, how do people buy stuff in Germany? I'm in the Netherlands and everything uses iDeal, which was annoying at first but now I like it. I use a credit card otherwise. When I was in Ireland I used a debit card which functioned like a credit card.

aeyes• 2 years ago

They are probably selling on eBay where it is (or used to be) very tightly integrated. In Germany eBay used to be very popular and that's how PayPal got so popular, it is one of PayPal's most established markets.

jabiko• 2 years ago

Actually, how do people buy stuff in Germany?

Most of the options I observed are either PayPal, direct debit, Giropay, collect on delivery or credit card.

I absolutely prefer direct debit. Just enter your name and IBAN and you are done. No 3rd party websites, no fuzz.

mcv6• 2 years ago

iDeal is how all online payment should work in my opinion. The merchant only needs to know to which bank they should redirect you, and that's all. Your data and your money as as safe as your own bank is able to make them.

The only downside is that it's only for Dutch consumers, and therefore international support is very spotty (Steam supports it, Lego does not). This weekend I heard a rumour that they might be making it international, though. That would be really nice.

gndk11• 2 years ago

Its just very convenient due to being basically a one-click payment.

I think the big difference in Germany is that people here tend to have their bank account linked with PayPal, not their credit card (because many people in Germany don't even have one).

Compare that to entering your "up to 34 alphanumeric characters" IBAN bank account number manually while on your phone.

jpalomaki• 2 years ago

When dealing with smaller vendors I (as customer) still prefer PayPal as payment method. Having PayPal as an option increases my probability of buying (hard to say how much).

I guess I'm behaving this partly because I know PayPal can be hard against the vendors. For me this indicates that if vendor accepts PayPal, then they are probably not fraudulent.

rambambram2• 2 years ago

I hope they add your long IBAN bank account number, instead of their own. ;)

All jokes aside, I've good experience inside the whole EU with receiving money for (digital) goods. Just from one simple bank account to the next, inside EU. I think it is a really overlooked paying method.

We even built an 'internet friendly' website/webshop system around that fact (https://www.heyhomepage.com/?link=16)

byyll• 2 years ago

How does your system detect that an order is paid if it goes directly to the bank account of your clients?

gndk11• 2 years ago

Yeah, bank transfers are still popular here, especially with older people. Either completely manual with (hopefully) automatic reconciliation through some reference number or with giropay/SOFORT.

dkjaudyeqooe5• 2 years ago

The convenience of PayPal is unmatched.

I use Paypal because:

- I don't have to enter or reveal card details

- I will not get rejected by the website because they can't identify me sufficiently

- It gets around the fact that I have US cards but I live in Europe, which tends to be disqualifying for most websites.

- I can ship to an address other than my card address without problems

- I can get a refund via Paypal within 90 or 180 days with much much less effort than doing a change back via my bank.

Always keep in mind that you're benefiting from these things as much as the buyers are, in that they give you revenue, you can always not use Paypal and reduce your risk, but then you lose revenue. You'll also suffer from more fraud using other payment methods, etc.

Such is business.

is_true7• 2 years ago

I thought just like you for more than 15 years, then I understood why people were so reluctant to have money in paypal.

ghusto• 2 years ago

The convenience of PayPal is unmatched

Every time I see PayPal, I hit the 'nah, just let me fill in my card details'. I think you're overestimating their worth, and underestimating both your customers and the competition. As someone already pointed out: "Stripe/Google Pay/Amazon Pay" are available, to name just the most recognisable ones. There are others with better fees!

gndk11• 2 years ago

Maybe I'm overestimating and most customers would go through the trouble of manually filling in their payment details, but it's scary to find out :-)

Fees are a good point. PayPal's fixed fee (0,35€ per transaction on top of the percentage) is actually kinda painful, since we have relatively low average order value.

bufferoverflow• 2 years ago

Paying with PayPal is the best payment experience, I prefer it to anything else on the web.

As a developer, PayPal is the worst, so many horror stories of money frozen.

bluecrab• 2 years ago

There's paddle, lemonsqueezy and even buymeacoffee. PayPal is too shady

ThePowerOfFuet2• 2 years ago

I cannot comprehend why any seller would leave a balance in PayPal instead of enabling autosweep into their bank account daily.

Mind blown. FAFO.

dvko• 2 years ago

I never even knew this was an option, despite relying on them for well over 10 years now for well over half of my business' revenue (with 0 issues whatsoever, fwiw). Just enabled it.

djakaitis• 2 years ago

This guy also had his stuff deleted from Heroku. I get the feeling he might be in the wrong here and isn’t telling the whole story.

ramon156• 2 years ago

They don't just consider your payments high risk based off of some numbers, there's 100% something shady that happened

dannypostma• 2 years ago

This guy here (Danny). This is bane of our existence as digital nomads. High chance to get flagged for using lots of locations

trogdor• 2 years ago

Looking at your HN history, your PayPal situation is not at all surprising.

Before this one, your most recent comment on HN was written ten months ago, promoting your website. One person replied to that comment. This is what they wrote:

“I signed up on profilepicture.ai and paid, but have changed my mind before uploading photos. There is no way to contact you through the site for a refund because the live chat isn't working and there isn't a support email. Also, when I search the help desk no content is returned. How can I reach you?”

You ignored that person.

It’s no wonder you are getting lots of chargebacks.

xyst• 2 years ago

TIL: from reading comments here. PayPal, an American company, is very popular with German businesses and consumers.

As an American, I only used PayPal to send and receive money to/from dad. I have seen a few pushes to use PP, but mostly in the e-commerce space for some promotion. “Use PayPal, get extra X% off price!”

Personally, I am not a fan of the debit/credit world. I will use them simply out of necessity and “cashless” society. But there are much better ways to pay people and businesses that don’t involve a sea of middleman siphoning off percentages or pennies of each transaction.

gndk11• 2 years ago

He got his account reinstated - https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1757411996989825200

justinclift3• 2 years ago

For me, that's not loading:

    Something went wrong. Try reloading.

Tried reloading several times. :(

gndk11• 2 years ago

Seems like he deleted that tweet and reposted it here https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa/status/1757411405266067865

is_true7• 2 years ago

And then deleted all the tweets about it, seems like Paypal's PR team was the reason he got is account back. Haha. A bit egotistical from him.

is_true7• 2 years ago

The guy just got is account back. But this thread is now hidden on HN's frontpage.

This is an isolated case, do not expect Paypal to solve your issues if you don't get this level of visibility.

coolspot• 2 years ago

We call them “PayPal mafia” for a reason.

"PayPal took $80k from me and banned me"

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