Paypal steals your money

[myst woman]

Paypal screwed up the recharging of my Starbucks card. I have a receipt from Paypal for the transaction but it didn't hit Starbucks. paypal won't let me file a claim.

[Tia Wood]

In that case it should reverse in a couple of days or less.

[tekz999]

Have you emailed paypal?

[DC20]

I won't touch PayPal with a 10 foot pole, but it does sound more like it's likely to be Starbucks' problem rather than PayPal. That said, watch the incoming payments, a lot of money has been lost with them.

[bwhhisc]

I have done hundreds of deals thru paypal with no problem...and no discrepancies in 8 years.
Not to say they don't have a few snafus but I think they are rare or the community at large (probably 80 million customers)
would be up in arms. I would still recommend you reconcile your account monthly to catch any errors.

Regarding buying on EBAY their sister company....I try to avoid that as if you do get scammed don't expect much (if any) help from them or paypal in those transactions.

[Poohnix]

I haven't had many issues with PayPal as a Buyer... But as a Seller - well, it's too much to list here... I offer PayPal as a Payment Option to my customers because I have to - too many idiots wants to use them, so I would lose too much business if I didn't offer it.
But with 2-300 transactions per day in 7- 8 years, I do have a statistical sample of what can go wrong with PayPal.
But the worst is their attitude... second worst is their competence.
Example: For over 3 months now, 100% of all payments from a Visa Card having a US billing address, paid to a Merchant having Website Payments Pro (UK version), have failed with an Address Verification (AVS) error. Do they know about this issue? Yes. (Although it took them 2 weeks to realize it was really happening.) Have then fixed it? (Hear the hollow echo?)
I know business which actually went bankrupt due to this error, losing 10's of thousands... does PayPal care? (Hear the hollow echo?)

That's just an example... there has been several such incidents over the past several years.
PayPal is simply to big for their own good... No one cares about single customers.

And have anyone ever contacted their support, (via email, not phone), and actually received an answer to the question asked, having the issue solved, on the first try?
Never happened to me... 100% I get a canned response, not even remotely relevant to the actual question asked...
Same thing with their Techical support for Merchants. They apparently aren't at all able to actually read the question...

[RobM]

People who are doing massive amounts of business but only using paypal are asking for trouble. You shouldn't be building your empire on the back of a company that ultimately controls your fate. Get a merchant account directly with the bank - all serious clients have credit/debit cards.

[Poohnix]

People who are doing massive amounts of business but only using paypal are asking for trouble. You shouldn't be building your empire on the back of a company that ultimately controls your fate. Get a merchant account directly with the bank - all serious clients have credit/debit cards.

I do have that; Always had. Some business who went bankrupt didn't.
However, that doesn't help when the customer demands to pay via PayPal, and blames you when PayPal have an issue... As I mentioned, I would lose too much business if I didn't offer PayPal as a payment option. Too much for it to be worth ulcers and hart failure, unfortunately.

[RobM]

I understand however I'm very wary of clients who can *only* use paypal. It signals to me that they are either kiddies with no money or people that want to be safe in the knowledge that they can screw you over at any time (sometimes 6 months later) with zero repercussions. Having been on both ends of disputes with paypal it became clear that the perceived increase of business wasn't worth the aggro of dealing with a company that makes the rules up as they go along. Also I hate dealing with companies that set their own exchange rates which, most of the time, don't bear any resemblance to the real world banking rates. I've seen them convert euro to dollars at a rate of 1.2 when the central rate was 1.35 - nice little earner for them.

[Poohnix]

The business I'm in, I usually don't have any contact with the buyers; I only see the numbers in the turnover, and would lose high 5 figures on a yearly basis if PayPal wasn't an option I offered. Actually, there are a lot of customers who don't have credit cards - my customers comes from contries on every continent, and not everywhere are credit cards neither common nor easy to get. PayPal isn't available everywhere either, so I have several other options available too, for that kind of users.
Fortunately, chargeback and dispute rate is extremely low, so that's not part of the equation, much.
But I've learned to *never* keep much money in the PayPal account, since they always limit the account First, and ask questions after, never the other way around.

[Banned: adonivideo]

it's a nice thing especially if you do recurring billing
but there are problems
when clients start to send you over 10K they have all kinds of issues verifying the client trying to pay you a lot of money over time
when you use that paypal junk at walmart as paypal money, forget it
if you withdraw as cash they flag you
it's only good to spend on paypal
but for simple membership sites that pass the sniff test
recurring billing
having money transferred out autmatically
it's a pretty decent company
and I don't usually like much
LOL

[mkellerman]

But I've learned to *never* keep much money in the PayPal account, since they always limit the account First, and ask questions after, never the other way around.

Good advice.

The other day Paypal limited my account and cancelled a payment I made. The account limitation is now removed, but the money I paid is now in limbo--neither I nor the recipient has it yet. Paypal is good for small amounts but don't rely on them too much.

If you will suffer serious financial loss if Paypal limit your account and take away your money, you have a problem, as this can happen.

[Stian]

It's funny. I've used PayPal since 2002-2003 and I have never had a single problem with them. Not once.

[Poohnix]

It's funny. I've used PayPal since 2002-2003 and I have never had a single problem with them. Not once.

I've never had any problem with my private PayPal account.
The business account is a different story... But it's a matter of volume, and it seems they are more sensitive the more transactions you have. Anything that breaks the "normal" pattern will cause them to limit the account. If one doesn't have a very established "normal" pattern, (larger variety in the types of transactions, and amounts), I guess they aren't as sensitive.
For me, it's gone so far so if I log in to my business account from a different ISP, (even in the same town, in the same country), they sometimes limit my account...
I guess in that case it's not really a negative thing, they are protecting me, but it's a nuisance... I travel a lot, and had to set up a VPN to my home network to use when logging in to my PayPal account...

[Stian]

I've never had any problem with my private PayPal account.
The business account is a different story... But it's a matter of volume, and it seems they are more sensitive the more transactions you have. Anything that breaks the "normal" pattern will cause them to limit the account. If one doesn't have a very established "normal" pattern, (larger variety in the types of transactions, and amounts), I guess they aren't as sensitive.
For me, it's gone so far so if I log in to my business account from a different ISP, (even in the same town, in the same country), they sometimes limit my account...
I guess in that case it's not really a negative thing, they are protecting me, but it's a nuisance... I travel a lot, and had to set up a VPN to my home network to use when logging in to my PayPal account...

I only have a business account and 1000+ transactions (probably more). Again, never had the issues you speak of. Maybe it's country specific.. ?

[Poohnix]

I only have a business account and 1000+ transactions (probably more). Again, never had the issues you speak of. Maybe it's country specific.. ?

Doubt it. UK Business account. Not just a regular account, but a Pro account. (Not available in Norway.)
Before that I had similar problems with a regular Swedish Business account, but I don't live there any more so couldn't keep that.
I average 1000 transactions about every 3 days, though.

[Stian]

Doubt it. UK Business account. Not just a regular account, but a Pro account. (Not available in Norway.)
Before that I had similar problems with a regular Swedish Business account, but I don't live there any more so couldn't keep that.
I average 1000 transactions about every 3 days, though.

Dunno what kind of business account I have, but I never had any problems with it. I don't have anything near 1000 transactions every 3 days though..

[stevee1644]

i have paypal but i never encounter that situation i think you should explain it to them and ask if why it is happening..maybe in that case they will talk to you and ask how can you get back your money.

[cheapbuying]

I'm using paypal since 2001. But this happened to me once. Paypal is very famous for their superior support.
It took years (20 days) to make that brilliants understand what is what. Then Some other person started from A B C D.
Finally I got back the money after 40 days. (I paid to seller from my friends account)
But again a problem. Paypal didn't credit me the fees $28 !!! I wrote them twice and couldn't make them understand.
So I left that one.

But its our bad luck to live with a devil. But its fate

[DexSmart]

I think the Starbucks issue, is a minor thing. One big issue is that they take fees when you receive money, and also when you withdraw. Ok, not a problem, i admit that the online bank system, goes like that. But jessus, their fees, are sometimes huge, and really not proportional with the amounts you receive.

That would be the only reason i dislike paypal. All in all, i have had a good relation with them. But in 5-6 years, i have lost A Lot with their fees.