> Maybe it's buried in the small print that they don't expect anyone to read.
Maybe you don't expect people to read the fine print, but PayPal clearly does, and frankly if you are going into business then you should be making a point out of always reading the fine print.
> If PayPal has good reasons not to accept donations and crowdfunding, they shouldn't fucking accept donations or crowdfunding, instead of letting users get in deep enough to get screwed before dropping the hammer.
Money is money, so if you are dealing with people who apparently won't consider reading "the fine print" or even doing some trivial due diligence in the FAQ, you can't somehow not accept these use cases.
> Holding funds in escrow should not be a complicated problem.
Correct, it isn't. This is why that's what happened: PayPal doesn't just steal your money and leave, they put various restrictions on your account that mitigate the risks involved in your business.
The most simple thing that they can do, and which tends to be the first recourse (and thereby the one that, if you don't go insane with a public rant you can negotiate down from) is a 180-day hold.
If you call PayPal, however, and demonstrate that you shipped these products, showing some kind of documentation of shipment, PayPal will release your funds immediately. That is an "escrow".
"Maybe you don't expect people to read the fine print, but PayPal clearly does, and frankly if you are going into business then you should be making a point out of always reading the fine print.
Money is money, so if you are dealing with people who apparently won't consider reading "the fine print" or even doing some trivial due diligence in the FAQ, you can't somehow not accept these use cases."
Fine print is an odd problem. In a world of rational actors, yes, obviously everyone should read all the fine print all the time, just like everyone should every word of the manual for every product they buy. The problem is, a typical internet power user is signing up for new services on a weekly basis, and most of them have 20 goddamn pages of fine print of which 19.5 are useless, meaningless gibberish. Corporations train their users to not read fine print, because 99% of the time it's half an hour wasted to learn nothing of value, and then exploit that training to slide shit past the radar. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a company that cares about its users' welfare to put the really notable bits up front in full-size print.
Just as an example, did you know that, by signing up for a comment account on any Gawker Media site (Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker.com, Deadspin, io9, Kotaku, Jalopnik, Jezebel), you give them explicit blanket permission to sell any positive comment you make about a commercial product for use in that product's advertising? I bet you didn't, and Gawker counts on you not knowing that when you sign up.
I am going to repeat this, as I don't think you caught the key noun: if you are going into business then you should be making a point of always reading the fine print. You don't hear about "power users" running into serious problems with PayPal because "users" are the core of PayPal's risk model. In stark contrast, this failure of a situation is a business attempting to deal with over one hundred thousand dollars via PayPal... I have absolutely no sympathy for them--or any other business--that can't take a few minutes to read "the fine print", doing even basic due diligence into "am I allowed to use this service for this purpose"; reading the contracts you agree to for critical services like payment processing is fundamentally different than reading the terms of service on your Gawker account: you should understand what you are agreeing to in full, and should not be relying on some cribbed cheat sheet of "the big stuff" handed to you by the service (as you argue should be provided, in this and other threads). Business involves lots of agreements, these agreements have to deal with tons of complex contingencies, and if you don't take agreements seriously (and likely it you don't actively enjoy reading them) you simply shouldn't be in business.
Maybe you don't expect people to read the fine print, but PayPal clearly does, and frankly if you are going into business then you should be making a point out of always reading the fine print.
> If PayPal has good reasons not to accept donations and crowdfunding, they shouldn't fucking accept donations or crowdfunding, instead of letting users get in deep enough to get screwed before dropping the hammer.
Money is money, so if you are dealing with people who apparently won't consider reading "the fine print" or even doing some trivial due diligence in the FAQ, you can't somehow not accept these use cases.
> Holding funds in escrow should not be a complicated problem.
Correct, it isn't. This is why that's what happened: PayPal doesn't just steal your money and leave, they put various restrictions on your account that mitigate the risks involved in your business.
The most simple thing that they can do, and which tends to be the first recourse (and thereby the one that, if you don't go insane with a public rant you can negotiate down from) is a 180-day hold.
If you call PayPal, however, and demonstrate that you shipped these products, showing some kind of documentation of shipment, PayPal will release your funds immediately. That is an "escrow".