Oneiromancer
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Okay, I've heard some pretty crappy things about PayPal...lots of examples on this site. Is this bad reputation deserved? I actually once had an account with PayPal, but I deactivated it. Now there are some websites that only let you buy stuff through PayPal, but I think you can just use a normal credit card and not have a "debit" account with PayPal.

Basically, I am curious what others have heard: any bad experiences with PayPal, good reasons to use them or not to use them, etc. Any advice would be appreciated.

Game on,

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eytanz
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I hadn't had any real bad experiences with paypal as such - just a few not-good experiences. What I mean is that basically paypal is incredibly bulky, non-user-friendly, and prone to making errors. And their customer support isn't very efficient, either.

The worst thing about paypal as far as I am concerned is that they are mostly impossible to use for non-Americans. So, if you have a service that depends on Paypal, you lose a large potential market.

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ErikH2000
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Oneiromancer wrote:
Okay, I've heard some pretty crappy things about PayPal...lots of examples on this site. Is this bad reputation deserved? I actually once had an account with PayPal, but I deactivated it. Now there are some websites that only let you buy stuff through PayPal, but I think you can just use a normal credit card and not have a "debit" account with PayPal.

Yeah, you can have a PayPal account with just a credit card. That works fine.

Basically, I am curious what others have heard: any bad experiences with PayPal, good reasons to use them or not to use them, etc. Any advice would be appreciated.

I've been a buyer and seller with PayPal. I've written two websites that integrate with PayPal. So that's my background.

The only problem I have with them is not really specific to PayPal. They will let *anyone* take credit card orders, so it's a natural place to find flakes and frauds. Before PayPal got big and internet e-commerce was fairly young, I got myself a merchant account and it had all the steps of getting a bank loan. Plus I had to take pictures of my business (an unimpressive home office) and throw together some materials that showed I had a real product to sell. Now, with PayPal (and other places) you just fill out a few e-forms and you're good to go.

But I don't know of anything bad about having a PayPal account. You just have to watch for bad sellers, because the bar to entry is as low as it could get. And actually you are on better ground with PayPal in some ways because the seller doesn't get your credit card information and never initiates a payment on your behalf. So he can't add an extra zero to your card transaction.

-Erik

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Oneiromancer
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ErikH2000 wrote:
But I don't know of anything bad about having a PayPal account. You just have to watch for bad sellers, because the bar to entry is as low as it could get. And actually you are on better ground with PayPal in some ways because the seller doesn't get your credit card information and never initiates a payment on your behalf. So he can't add an extra zero to your card transaction.

Most of the bad stuff I heard was with PayPal itself...that if you want a refund it's almost impossible to get and the access that they have to your money is actually pretty extensive. There's even some kind of clause in their ToS that says "you can't sue us for any reason" or something like that. And like Eytan said the customer service is almost nonexistent. Perhaps they've gotten better, I don't know.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

ErikH2000
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Oneiromancer wrote:
Most of the bad stuff I heard was with PayPal itself...that if you want a refund it's almost impossible to get and the access that they have to your money is actually pretty extensive. There's even some kind of clause in their ToS that says "you can't sue us for any reason" or something like that. And like Eytan said the customer service is almost nonexistent. Perhaps they've gotten better, I don't know.

Hmm. Well, I may just have been lucky with them. Admittedly, I never looked very close at their contract or worked through any disputes with them.

-Erik

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Scott
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I haven't use PayPal but dad does. He buys and sells stamps on ebay and about the only way to do that is to use paypal. He hasn't had any problem with it. The only real issue is getting the money out as we live in Australia theres a sizeable charge for transferring to a non US bank.

trick
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You don't have to be an american to use PayPal fully. I'm norwegian, and PayPal supports transferring money from my local bank account without any extra fee, and to the same account for a fee of 5.50 NOK (the price of a regular stamp).

One problem with PayPal for normal users, is that you have to be a "premium" user to be able to receive credit card payments (ie. if the user transferring to you don't have money in their paypal account, so money is transferred directly from their credit card), and to get a premium account you have to pay a regular fee to PayPal (you still get next to no support, though). You can get around that by telling users to always transfer enough money to their PayPal account before paying you, but that isn't very user-friendly and limits your customers to USA, Norway, and some other countries where transfer to/from real bank is possible.

Another problem is that their privacy policy is dodgy at best (read it!), even if you don't believe the eBay thing.

[Warning: Rumor mode - take this with a grain of salt]
(The eBay thing is the episode where eBay is claimed to have said (at a closed conference that supposedly got leaked) they will give out all details about users if someone claim they are breaking the law, without any investigation or court order - so, if people say you've been bad, your privacy is potentially gone.. this is relevant because eBay owns PayPal).

There's many other reasons why people don't like PayPal. If you're interested in reading more about it, have a look at (white-out as it's a potentially offensive name, but it's a serious site):
[End of rumor mode]

Personally I've not had a problem with PayPal, but I've not really used them that much.

If you have a need to receive payments, and want an alternative to PayPal, have a look at BitPass. It's currently in a beta period, but I've used it, and it works great. "Earners" I've talked to say it's great, too. People can even transfer funds from a PayPal account, so you won't miss out on users. The process for signing up for an "earner" account is more involved than PayPal (or at least it seems so, but right now it's closed for new earners since it's in beta, so i can't actually verify this - they do keep earner and spender accounts seperately, though), paying actually guarantees access to what you pay for (through a special gateway file on the earners' web server - it requires php), and earners don't get any information about their spenders, so it feels more secure. (So, if you need to know information about your spenders you need to actually ask them).

Hm, that sounded like a BitPass commercial. Oh well. It is great

- Gerry

Mattcrampy
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I'm fairly sure BitPass is an attempt to implement micropayments, a controversial method of paying for stuff on the Internet (controversial because although it'd be cool if it works, good luck getting it to work.)

Anyone who reads Penny Arcade might know what I mean. Or Scott McCloud, for that matter.

Matt

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ErikH2000
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Mattcrampy wrote:
(controversial because although it'd be cool if it works, good luck getting it to work.)

Exactly.

Good article on why micropayments won't work by Clay Shirky...
http://shirky.com/writings/fame_vs_fortune.html

-Erik

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trick
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Mattcrampy wrote:
(controversial because although it'd be cool if it works, good luck getting it to work.)

ErikH2000 wrote:
Good article on why micropayments won't work by Clay Shirky...
http://shirky.com/writings/fame_vs_fortune.html

Good and valid points, but they're not universal. Sure, micropayments won't work for people that think they can get away with charging 25 cent for something people don't know anything about, or for people thinking charging less for low-quality products will make money come streaming in. It's also true that any payment creates a barrier. But, when people know what it is they're paying for, when it's something they want, that they know is worth their money, in those cases I think this might work.

Also, you don't have to use BitPass for just micropayments - it's a non-subscription based payment system. It's possible to use it for micropayments, but there's nothing keeping you from using it to charge 25 dollar in stead of 25 cent.

Time will tell whether it's a success, i guess.

- Gerry

ErikH2000
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trick wrote:
Good and valid points, but they're not universal.

Replying in a new topic--see "Micropayments".

-Erik


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The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)