News Katrina Relief Fund account frozen by PayPal

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/09/05/somethingawful_paypal/

 

The amount of bad publicity PayPal are getting over this is amazing

Edit: forums.somethingawful.com says PayPal will be refunding all of the donations. Hah.

 

I stopped using paypal as often as I could after they stole several thousand dollars from me. I do truly hope this hits mainstream media (well, more mainstream than sites with titles containing "News for nerds"), as they'd be up a creek.

 

That is just sickening, an individual trying to raise money for the reliefe efforts, and being screwed by paypal. Hopefully some one will pitch in with a credit card system, and he can use that.

 

Hopefully the people that were running his (now soggy) online system will come forward and help.

I'm sure the forum members would be happy to help out.

 

what happened?

 

I am a goon, and the horror stories that SA has gone through with Paypal are nothing short of incredible. It's a fine system as long as nothing goes wrong, but all it takes is ONE person to complain of suspicious activity and you can consider your money gone, even if the charges are unfounded. SA has over 50,000 members, most of which are regularly active, so with that volume it doesn't take long for complaints to appear.

Seriously, I think Lowtax has put up with 10000x more crap than the average forum administrator simply because of the nature of the community. While it's funny to see how people feel they are entitled to do whatever they want without consequence over the Internet, it's sad to think that he spends an ungodly amount of time sifting through e-mails that wish death upon him and his wife/daughter.

 

Lowtax rocks, seriously. Much respect for what he's done at SA.

 

I had problems with PayPal also. About a year or two ago, they decided to 'randomly' verify me. I had to FAX (they wouldn't take an email) my Drivers License, Birth Certificate, Bank Statements, and more! I also had to spend hours on the phone talking to their stupid people to get my account back... Note that in this case there WASN'T any reports of fraud or anything, just a "random check". Anyone using PayPal should consider simply getting a Merchant account... Or at least using some other service...

That being said, I still use PayPal rarely and haven't had issues since.

Also, I feel bad for SA. Man, the Halloween Special Flash still has a place in my heart.

 

UH, you sure it was PayPal? That sounds exactly like the Paypal Scam that's going around.

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=97205&page=1&pp=20

 

No, this is indeed how Paypal operates... It's very different from how a scam works. Communication takes place through the usual Paypal site that you log into, rather than via a link or in response to an e-mail sent to you.

 

PayPal just assumes that all of its customers are thieving scum until they prove themselves otherwise. Disgusting business practice in my opinion.

 

Oh I see, it sounded like he got something like an email.