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Something Awful got SCREWED by PayPal

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sublimind

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www.somethingawful.com

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Further Proof Paypal Sucks
9/03/2005 - 9:36 PM - Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka

Well, after breaking the $20,000 donation mark, Paypal decided to shut down the donation account. No warning, no customer support, no chance to fix anything. Why? Here's their reason!

I AM NOT SELLING A SINGLE THING. What part of "donation" is difficult to understand? I even selected "donation" on Paypal's site when generating a link for this website.

They are asking me to provide a shipping number FOR ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. How they hell am I supposed to comply with this? What do they want? Oh, well you see, here's proof I shipped NOTHING via NO COMPANY to NO ADDRESS. Is this good enough? I can't even enter a fictional shipping number for the fictional item that never shipped to the fictional customer because THERE IS NOTHING THERE TO CLICK. I press the "continue" button and it says:

Well WHAT THE HELL DO YOU EXPECT? How can I dispute something WHICH DOESN'T EXIST?

I have no idea what will happen to all the donations you guys contributed. All I know is Paypal has locked me out of the account. I'm going to try to straighten things out with them, but I think everybody here is awfully familiar with Paypal's (lack of) service.

You try to do something good for people and look what happens.

I guess the nice ladies and gents at Paypal are now using your funds for Project: Paypal Takes Your Money. Sorry your donations can't go to help those in need. Hey Paypal, why don't you head on down to New Orleans and tell people who lost everything that, well, some folks donated TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to you, but hey, you ain't getting it because we don't feel like it.

That's fine. You idiots don't want me to run a charity drive? Fine, that's your decision. But it's not me you're hurting; it's the thousands of goddamn people with no homes, no money, and no hope fleeing a burning, flooded wasteland they used to call "home." I wasn't going to take a single cent of the donations, unlike Paypal, who decides that when people send money to help victims survive a national disaster, their company should still make over 2.35% of everything sent in. I doubt the CEOs of eBay and Paypal give a crap about this crappy little website and our insignificant drive to help out people in a time of crisis, but this drive meant a lot to me, and once again Paypal has completely screwed over another customer bringing in plenty of money in their ridiculous "transaction fees."

If 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?

Paypal has completely walled themselves off from customer complaints. Oh, you want to dispute something? Fill out these forms and click "SUBMIT" and have no clue who or what is going to read your message.

You guys want to close my account? Fine, close it. I'm done dealing with you. I loathe your wretched, vile, disgusting, bloated waste of a company with every last fibre of my body. You're a grotesque, swollen parasite whose existence hinges solely on the lack of competition. You can close my account and shut me out, but you'd better take every single cent people donated and send it directly to the Red Cross. Folks from around the world trusted you with their money, and you'd better make sure it gets to where it was going, and I'm not talking about your wallets.

I fully expect you refund each and every single person who donated thinking they'd be helping, not padding your wallets. I'd advise any and every one of you using Paypal to stop, but I'll just let their service speak for itself. If you want to support a company who acts like this, then that's your decision.

I'm pissed off and I can't stop writing. You guys were donating nearly $3,500 AN HOUR before Paypal locked the account. Let me repeat that again: $3,500 AN HOUR. You guys were exceedingly awesome. You were going above and beyond being gratuitous. It was amazing, I was wearing socks and they were blown off so hard that they slammed into my sock drawer and all the other socks flew out. Now it's like everything collided head-on with a brick wall, and it's all smoldering mess.

It's bad enough I'm losing money and customers every single minute of every single hour I have no business. All of that is very crappy. But this charity drive, having Paypal step in and shut it down... that just makes me beyond angry. I can't stop writing about this crap, and I'm afraid I'll be here venting my fury at this despicable corporation until my wife saws off my arms. I'm going to stop right now, because I'm just repeating myself at this point.

Here's all I want: you people at Paypal send every single dollar donated to the Red Cross. Then you give me these peoples' mailing addresses so I can reward them for donating by sending them free merchandise, which I pay for out of my own pockets. That's all I ever wanted to do, and I'm sorry you won't allow this.

If you want to see this changed, please, file complaints/e-mail PayPal.

20,000 is a lot of money, going to a great cause.
 
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That's a shame :(
 
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Even though this site has been around for a while and has decent PR - I can still kind of see Paypal's point .... not to mention it says that several "Complaints" were filed by the folks making the donations ....

It seems bad to many folks when people jump to possibly the wrong conclusion - But these things do happen in time of crisis ....

Sad the folks along the Gulf are not receiving this immediately I agree - But they could have Added a link directly to the Red Cross Donation center and accomplished just as much if not more - IMO
 
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all4cost said:
Even though this site has been around for a while and has decent PR - I can still kind of see Paypal's point .... not to mention it says that several "Complaints" were filed by the folks making the donations ....

It seems bad to many folks when people jump to possibly the wrong conclusion - But these things do happen in time of crisis ....

Sad the folks along the Gulf are not receiving this immediately I agree - But they could have Added a link directly to the Red Cross Donation center and accomplished just as much if not more - IMO
You can't blame them for wanting to know how many of their members donated, and they wanted to give their members something for being kind.

they had the best intentions.
 
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I can see that - But , We all know that paypal does strange things at times ... and even with "Donations" through Paypal - Some currency is still lost ...

I'm just saying if these folks had donated directly to the Red Cross - This money could be utilized much quicker than being tied up in paypal hell now .... ;) Why fill out the check to a middle man ?

Here is a good sign though ;) - Linked from Google's home page

http://s1.amazon.com/paypage/PELYGQVJ8Q7IB/102-5562905-0592111

Total Collected: US $6,567,779.00
# of Payments: 63806
 
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all4cost said:
Sad the folks along the Gulf are not receiving this immediately I agree - But they could have Added a link directly to the Red Cross Donation center and accomplished just as much if not more - IMO


Exactly. I'm getting tired of seeing all of these vanity sites. People are just trying to draw attention to themselves and pat themselves on the back for all the good they are doing.

If people want to do good they should direct all of their efforts toward established charities and stop with all of these Paypal and Google adwords schemes.
 
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Don't take this the wrong way, but thats a good excuse for the person to keep the $20,000.....
 
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Screw Paypal back

Why don't you contact your local TV stations? Pick your favorite "investigative reporters" call them and let them take over. Telll them Paypal is holding hostage money that belongs to the hurricane victims.

I have done this in the past and if you pick the right reporter they will help and splash it all over the news. My uncle was lost and we called the TV station and they posted his picture and was found and I am in the Chicago area which would have made it harder to get on the news. Your story is even more newsworthy at this time.
 
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If I was a member at SA I would rather donate through them and get something for free yet my money still goes to the people in the disaster then donate to the Red Cross and get nothing. Either way my money gets there, but I just get something in return. But I mean now that the account is locked I would regret sending my money through SA.
 
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Humdizzy said:
If I was a member at SA I would rather donate through them and get something for free yet my money still goes to the people in the disaster then donate to the Red Cross and get nothing. Either way my money gets there, but I just get something in return. But I mean now that the account is locked I would regret sending my money through SA.
Exactly, they are one of the largest and oldest communities on the net, i dont care if they want to pat themselves on the back for starting the fund and showing how much their community cares.

Also to the person who said it was a good excuse, i whole heartedly agree, yes it is.
 
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you agree as a member to let paypal have all your money at anytime they want it. Why people only complain when it happens? Never ever keep money in a paypal account, keep it in a bank account...... This has been happening for years, yes it sucks, I don't get why people don't learn though. Its been a old topic how much money paypal makes from closing accounts.
 
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silver1 said:
Why don't you contact your local TV stations? Pick your favorite "investigative reporters" call them and let them take over. Telll them Paypal is holding hostage money that belongs to the hurricane victims.

I have done this in the past and if you pick the right reporter they will help and splash it all over the news. My uncle was lost and we called the TV station and they posted his picture and was found and I am in the Chicago area which would have made it harder to get on the news. Your story is even more newsworthy at this time.


Yeah - call in the national guard.

Call in the ARMY, Navy, Air Force or Marines.

Forget that - call the President directly.

WE WILL RESCUE THAT POOR MONEY !!!!!

Blah blah blah.... W h a t e v e r D u d e.


- A site with questionable content, has it's PayPal account frozen...

- It appears there was legitimate reason for concern with the "donations".

- The webmaster (I presume?) writes a rather angry "shocked" plea above.


Give me a break man. REAL Life is being lost. We don't have time for this attention whore-ish, self serving type stuff. No offense to anyone. When you are trying to do a good thing, you do it even when nobody is looking, and you do it without begging for media attention.
 
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With the "kids" they have at Something Awful I wouldnt doubt that they had a few "stolen" funds "donated" and thats what flagged the account. Until the owners of Something Awful straighten up their act and the acts of some of its members they will always have problems.

If it was stolen accounts or credit cards they would have lost any "credit card payment system" they used.

silver1 said:
Why don't you contact your local TV stations? Pick your favorite "investigative reporters" call them and let them take over. Telll them Paypal is holding hostage money that belongs to the hurricane victims.

I have done this in the past and if you pick the right reporter they will help and splash it all over the news. My uncle was lost and we called the TV station and they posted his picture and was found and I am in the Chicago area which would have made it harder to get on the news. Your story is even more newsworthy at this time.

They do that and Paypal can come back with whatever it was that flagged the account. Think SA really wants to let MORE people know that they have "kids" there that like to cause problems on the net?

If it was stolen PP accounts or stolen credit cards that sure wouldnt make SA look good.

Edit: Just to make it clear. I have NO idea what reason PP had to freeze the account. I am just guessing and from what I know about some at SA I am guessing my guess is correct.
 
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Then again who is to say paypal even shut their account? ;)
 
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i've had my paypal frozen with 1400$ in them..and they told me the fund will be availalbe to me in 180 days....

ok so 180 days later i log back in (they emailed me saying i can withdraw now) and when i do so...my account is cancelled and I have yet to see that money. Never got the money..my paypal account userid/pass doesnt even work...

:P

Paypal does suck a whole lot..but its soo widely used that sometimes u have no other option...

I'd like to open up some service and shut paypals/ebays account :P i just wish
 
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Why didnt you join that class action against them?
 
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jane118 said:
Paypal does suck a whole lot..but its soo widely used that sometimes u have no other option...

I'd like to open up some service and shut paypals/ebays account :P i just wish
I agree. Paypal sucks. The file-a-complaint system is completely misleading, they make you think that they care about customer satisfaction. If they did, they wouldn't charge you for it.
If I had a choice, I wouldn't use paypal. Just like jane said.
 
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i belive the mistake is leaving any amount of money in the paypal account.... they freeze your account, and $0 is in there since you trasnfer to a bank account, your fine....

I keep a bank account (not linked to others) just for paypal, and never leave a penny in paypal to ensure I'm not screwed over.
 
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Until Paypal refunds someone because they reported the account as hacked and then they try to refund from your Paypal accoutn and you have $0 so they try the bank account.
 
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I've seen more and more paypal complaints and this really tops it!! Are there any companies similar to Paypal with better service and better coordination? I mean, no disrespect but it does seem like paypal is run from a local zoo!
 
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