PayPal blocks ~$20,000 in Hurricane Katrina donations

[TomRakewell]

Just a warning for those of you considering of donating relief funds for Katrina through PayPal. SomethingAwful, whose servers were housed in New Orleans, began a large scale donation campaign for hurricane victims, collecting around $20,000 for the Red Cross in a matter of mere hours. Though the owner of SomethingAwful has had publicized problems with PayPal's service in the past, he used PayPal again to facilitate the donations.

Unfortunately, PayPal locked the account after a few hours without any notice, leaving the $20,000 in limbo, and shutting off valuable time to recieve more donations. The drama gets explained in detail on SA's temporary frontpage, and what PayPal is doing seems pretty ridiculous. Even though PayPal is offering an appeal process, anyone who has dealt with them knows how frustrating, time-consuming, and arbitrary that can be, and even if things get resolved, their locking of the account has already cut off a flow of several thousand dollars an hour and delayed the ability of the funds to reach the hurricane victims in this urgent situation.

Just a heads up about PayPal's behavior, especially since they have a pretty glaring history of such practices.

 

[suse920]

They should sic Kanye west on them :frown:

 

[Miramonti]

There's got to be something more in the history between SA and paypal that isn't eluded to in your post.

 

[Eli]

:|

 

[TNM93]

Why don't people just donate directly to the Red Cross instead of giving it to someone else to give to Red Cross?

 

[mzkhadir]

Originally posted by: TomRakewell
Just a warning for those of you considering of donating relief funds for Katrina through PayPal. SomethingAwful, whose servers were housed in New Orleans, began a large scale donation campaign for hurricane victims, collecting around $20,000 for the Red Cross in a matter of mere hours. Though the owner of SomethingAwful has had publicized problems with PayPal's service in the past, he used PayPal again to facilitate the donations.

Unfortunately, PayPal locked the account after a few hours without any notice, leaving the $20,000 in limbo, and shutting off valuable time to recieve more donations. The drama gets explained in detail on SA's temporary frontpage, and what PayPal is doing seems pretty ridiculous. Even though PayPal is offering an appeal process, anyone who has dealt with them knows how frustrating, time-consuming, and arbitrary that can be, and even if things get resolved, their locking of the account has already cut off a flow of several thousand dollars an hour and delayed the ability of the funds to reach the hurricane victims in this urgent situation.

Just a heads up about PayPal's behavior, especially since they have a pretty glaring history of such practices.

thats why there is a site call http://www.paypalsucks.com

 

[wiredspider]

Originally posted by: ysperalda
Why don't people just donate directly to the Red Cross instead of giving it to someone else to give to Red Cross?

Some people set things up where whatever they collect, someone else matches...

 

[suse920]

Originally posted by: ysperalda
Why don't people just donate directly to the Red Cross instead of giving it to someone else to give to Red Cross?

because SA was going to give them free stuff.

 

[TNM93]

Originally posted by: wiredspider

Originally posted by: ysperalda
Why don't people just donate directly to the Red Cross instead of giving it to someone else to give to Red Cross?

Some people set things up where whatever they collect, someone else matches...

Ah, I see..

 

[everman]

Nobody would use a bank that pulled the stuff Paypal does, and yet they still use it. It's just mind boggling.

 

[Mrvile]

Wow that's terrible.

 

[Eli]

Originally posted by: everman
Nobody would use a bank that pulled the stuff Paypal does, and yet they still use it. It's just mind boggling.

Nobody would eat at McDonalds if they knew anything about their food, either...

Convienence speaks louder than common sense.

 

[skyking]

fact. I was burned for $270 on ebay, and the paypal money back bs was just that. they judged against me.

 

[TomRakewell]

Originally posted by: jjsole
There's got to be something more in the history between SA and paypal that isn't eluded to in your post.

Well I did mention that Lowtax (SA's owner) did have problems with them in the past. They're explained in an entry on the SA forums (which are down, so I can't find the link). I know there's a lot of overlap between AT and SA, and I'm sure someone here can explain it better than I can. The gist of what I remember was that PayPal falsely accused SA of being a pornographic website and thus violating their terms of service, and basically locked the account without listening to any attempts to prove otherwise. Another piece of famous SA/PayPal drama was when one member repeatedly used his mom's credit card to buy forums accounts, leading to a PayPal chargeback when the kid's mom found out. So yeah, there's no love lost between Lowtax and PayPal, but he makes it pretty clear on the website that he was doing this as a last ditch method because his credit card processing options were gone due to the hurricane, and he needed a way of collecting addresses to send gifts to donors.

Regardless of the history, what PayPal is doing (and has been doing for years) is pretty despicable, and they definitely deserve to be hung out to dry for pulling something like this at such a heavy moment.

 

[acemcmac]

wow....

you guys know that that ISP in the middle of New Orleans was hosting SA too, right?

fvcking amazing

 

[KarenMarie]

they might think it is suspicious because of this

f this is some thing where Paypal is dubious of Something Awful, fearful I'll take all the money and buy a luxurious $22,000 house in Beverly Hills, fine, you morons at Paypal can take every cent from my account and manually donate it yourself to the Red Cross. The only reason, and I repeat ONLY reason I used your service, was because I needed a way to get peoples' shipping addresses so I could send them free merchandise for donating. Oh my god, what suspicious activity! Since all our servers are down, I couldn't use our credit card payment system to do it myself, so I had to rely on your lousy company. I guess I learned my lesson here, eh?

perhaps they say that it was not from the regular merchant account and panicked.

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: TomRakewell

Originally posted by: jjsole
There's got to be something more in the history between SA and paypal that isn't eluded to in your post.

Well I did mention that Lowtax (SA's owner) did have problems with them in the past. They're explained in an entry on the SA forums (which are down, so I can't find the link). I know there's a lot of overlap between AT and SA, and I'm sure someone here can explain it better than I can. The gist of what I remember was that PayPal falsely accused SA of being a pornographic website and thus violating their terms of service, and basically locked the account without listening to any attempts to prove otherwise. Another piece of famous SA/PayPal drama was when one member repeatedly used his mom's credit card to buy forums accounts, leading to a PayPal chargeback when the kid's mom found out. So yeah, there's no love lost between Lowtax and PayPal, but he makes it pretty clear on the website that he was doing this as a last ditch method because his credit card processing options were gone due to the hurricane, and he needed a way of collecting addresses to send gifts to donors.

Regardless of the history, what PayPal is doing (and has been doing for years) is pretty despicable, and they definitely deserve to be hung out to dry for pulling something like this at such a heavy moment.

Its his very last ditch effort on his long list of options...why his last ditch effort? because he knows there's bad blood and probably suspects there might be problems. And what were his previous ditch efforts?? There are other online payment systems available that he's had plenty of time to setup an account with since his relationship with paypal went sour.

There's no regardless imo...it sounds like he should have cleared it with them first and not made assumptions that paypal will suddenly regard him as righteous.

So he fvcked up and you go around trying to sh!t on paypal implying this is an example of paypal not giving a crap about the NO victims. :|

 

[TomRakewell]

Originally posted by: jjsole
Its his very last ditch effort on his long list of options...why his last ditch effort? because he knows there's bad blood and probably suspects there might be problems. And what were his previous ditch efforts?? There are other online payment systems available that he's had plenty of time to setup an account with since his relationship with paypal went sour.

There's no regardless imo...it sounds like he should have cleared it with them first and not made assumptions that paypal will suddenly regard him as righteous.

So he fvcked up and you go around trying to sh!t on paypal implying this is an example of paypal not giving a crap about the NO victims. :|

Name 3 large scale online payment processing services off the top of your head. PayPal's existence is pretty much entirely dependent on the fact that it has no established competition in its business.

Also, based on my own personal experience and the link to paypalsucks.com that another user posted, PayPal has a HUGE history of this kind of behavior: randomly locking accounts without explanation, making customer service intentionally difficult by hiding contact information and limiting communication options to hinder the appeals process, and freezing large sums of money and not returning them. PayPal lost a massive class auction lawsuit for exactly this sort of behavior, so it actually is pretty damning that they are still continuing it, especially in such an urgent situation like Katrina relief.

Finally, if you want to write it off as just a personal gripe between SA's owner and PayPal, ask yourself why none of the thousands of people who have donated money through SA have been contacted or offered their money back, with the money still being held in limbo by PayPal.

 

[Miramonti]

Name 3 large scale online payment processing services off the top of your head. PayPal's existence is pretty much entirely dependent on the fact that it has no established competition in its business.

Don't you think he should have thought of that before he decided to go to battle with them? If you're going to pick a fight with an industry leader, almost worthy of a monopoly at this point, you better be damn sure you don't need them anymore. If you do, you best handle it delicately...which sounds like he didn't and is partially to blame for this bad blood...altho from what you say it seems he didn't have much concern for having a good relationship with them.

Also, based on my own personal experience and the link to paypalsucks.com that another user posted, PayPal has a HUGE history of this kind of behavior: randomly locking accounts without explanation, making customer service intentionally difficult by hiding contact information and limiting communication options to hinder the appeals process, and freezing large sums of money and not returning them. PayPal lost a massive class auction lawsuit for exactly this sort of behavior, so it actually is pretty damning that they are still continuing it, especially in such an urgent situation like Katrina relief.

I'm not defending paypals history...just that it is probably completely irrelevant to this situation and is wrong for you to piggy back on those issues just to justify a weak case. You want to get the anti-Paypal emotions incited by your choice of words, but this sounds very much like it has nothing to do with some of their more unjust activities that they've had legitimate complaints about.

Finally, if you want to write it off as just a personal gripe between SA's owner and PayPal, ask yourself why none of the thousands of people who have donated money through SA have been contacted or offered their money back, with the money still being held in limbo by PayPal.

I agree, the ones who donated money are the victims...but not of Paypal, but of SA's arrogance. It would be wrong imo if they didn't get their money back eventually...but you don't know the exact reason why they are holding it, so its moot to even speculate about how they are going to handle it and with what timing.

And why did he have to suddenly use Paypal? so he could give gifts to the donor's??...how friggin righteous...I really just don't understand why Paypal won't bury the hatchet when he's going to give gifts to donors, lol. :laugh:

From what it sounds like to me, he fvcked up, and instead of admitting it, he's blaming it on Paypal instead of being a man about it, which is probably why all the bad blood with paypal began in the first place.

So if you're looking for a pity party here you're looking in the wrong place. :roll:

 

[Baked]

Originally posted by: ysperalda
Why don't people just donate directly to the Red Cross instead of giving it to someone else to give to Red Cross?

Because people are stupid.

 

[Ketteringo]

He should have used Neteller

 

[TNM93]

Originally posted by: Baked

Originally posted by: ysperalda
Why don't people just donate directly to the Red Cross instead of giving it to someone else to give to Red Cross?

Because people are stupid.

I guess. I would never donate to some middle man to make my donation for me, too many scammers out there.

 

[rahvin]

Originally posted by: ysperalda
I guess. I would never donate to some middle man to make my donation for me, too many scammers out there.

There is chartiable fraud written all over it. Even if the money makes it to the red cross who gets the deduction? He should know better than doing something like this.

 

[Triumph]

Does paypal have some sort of automated lockup? I mean, an account goes from no activity to $3,500 an hour in activity, maybe it tripped some limit somewhere in the software?

I don't like Lowtax, but I believe he's sincere in this effort and he wouldn't take a cent of this donated money.

 

[Savij]

Yay paypal! Way to screw up something else. Oh, how we love thee.