Talk:PayPal/Archive 1

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paypal backlash

There's a huge backlash against PayPal that should be mentioned in presenting a fair picture of this phenomenon. The backlash comes both from PayPal buyers and sellers who have been burned by not only PayPal's system, but their notoriously apathetic representatives. Some allege that they have lost thousands of dollars because of PayPal. Sites include www.nopaypal.com and literally dozens of others.

I think this should be included in "Criticism"-- discussing PayPal's commissions(business fees for credit card transactions) in combination with eBay's fees (initial value, listing fee, final price commission). PayPal has become disgustingly adept at ripping off its customers, and something needs to be given mention-- about the ridiculousness of their fees... ~nz

Some editors see this as POV and attacks so once it's made to look like it's not, they will leave it in. The three main anti-paypal sites are: www.nopaypal.com , www.paypalsucks.org , and www.paypalwarning.com . nopaypal.com actually redirects to paypalsucks.com (a different site than the .org one) and a name without sucks tends to make editors feel it is not an attack site (at least compared to sucks in the name). The sites do have good evidence--and paypalsucks.org quotes things right from paypal's website. DyslexicEditor 18:08, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

paypal ownership, and monopoly control

PayPal is now owned by Ebay. These facts, as well as the facts that Ebay is a monopoly in online auctions, and PayPal has a growing monopoly as a payment processor for Ebay auctions. This monopoly was in place before Ebay purchase PayPal, and has only been reinforced since Ebay acquired PayPal. It is much more complicated for both buyer and seller to use any other form of payment besides PayPal.

I pay most items I buy on eBay using normal national and international bank transfers to the seller's bank account. To me this is less complicated than using PayPal, and in most cases also means less total fees, both for the sender and for the recepient. However, some sellers (mainly American) only offer weird and highly expensive kinds of payment options, such as cheques, or payment options unavailable in Europe, such as money orders, so when buying from an American seller I usually have to use PayPal. (Stefan2 15:28, 3 July 2006 (UTC))

site outages

How long has PayPal been down? It should probably be mentioned if they were closed or something like that. I have been unable to send money from any computer for several months, but can find no evidence that the shutdown ever occurred.

It's working fine - I just logged on now. -- Arwel 00:55, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

pp feez

Shouldn't we add something about the rather high fees that pp charges? have we been over this one already?

PayPal's fee structure is actually pretty good, especially considering the lower volume levels for the majority of its audience. check a comparison calculator for merchant account rates if you'd like to see what the market charges. full disclosure: i worked for PayPal from 2001 to 2004; but on this issue i'm not concerned about any bias i may have... really, the rates aren't high. in fact, they're best in class for a lot of low volume scenarios).dave 05:27, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Legal issues

I created a section titled Legal issues and moved the paragraph on bank regulation into it. I also wrote up a second paragraph in the section, regarding the class action lawsuit against PayPal. I encourage people to take a look at the section with an eye towards (a) coming up with a better section heading (if necessary); (b) providing more background/detail on the lawsuit; and (c) possibly providing some cohesiveness between the two paragraphs in the section, I assume the issues are related. - Walkiped 20:07, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Google vs. PayPal

I know there has been speculation on Google setting up a rival system to PayPal, but I didn't see solid evidence to this effect. Anyone know anything about this? Gchriss 18:17, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Katrina donations

SomethingAwful set up a Payapl account for donations. They recieved over $20,000 from various users, and then Paypal shut it down without explanation. Should this be in the article if the situation isn't resolved?

This isn't the first time Paypal has closed an account, and it's closure was likely automated. I don't think it should be a part of the article, regardless of how big a fuss goons create.
I think it should stay. It's a great example of the way Paypal does business, whether it was an automated freeze or not.
Agreed. Paypal is a business which has little to no customer support. This is an example of how they treat their customers and as such is relevant to the article. CrazyLittle 06:51, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
um, i don't know where you're getting your facts from; more than half of PayPal overall staff headcount is in customer service. the PayPal customer support team in Omaha has over 1,000 employees (probably closer to 2,000 these days, i left a year ago), and i believe eBay customer support in Salt Lake City is of equivalent if not larger size.
So what you're saying is, they employ lots of people who don't do their jobs.
nope, not what i'm saying -- i was providing factual observations, rather than subjective assessment.
one customer service example doesn't provide the empirical evidence necessary to support the sweeping statement made above earlier, and my note provided further numeric evidence to contradict a factually INcorrect assertion that had been made. whether or not they "do their jobs" is a qualitative / subjective assessment that's probably based a lot more on perspective than fact. regardless, i don't think the earlier statements are made from NPOV.dave 08:44, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


Paypal certainly is the company with the lousiest customer support I’ve encountered.  % of staff in customer support is hardly indicative of quality seeing as the business is nigh on fully automated. Bombot 11:23, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
it's quite possible that either bureaucracy and/or a negligent customer service agent contributed to the unfortunate situation noted above, but to say PayPal has 'little or no customer support' is quite inaccurate.dave 08:02, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
So, after all this debate, why isn't this in this entry? It's in the entry for Something Awful. This controversy should be stated without POV.

Bias

I think the part of article about PayPal blocking the donations to the Red Cross is quite unfairly biased against PayPal. People seem to have ignored the fact that PayPal needs to take measures to protect itself from fraud and I think they acted quite reasonably.

Something Awful started accepting donations on Friday. Now, PayPal's offices, like most businesses would most likely be closing for the weekend so getting a human to deal with this would likely be more trouble.

The account collected $30,000 in only 9 hours. I don't think these are unreasonable circumstances for PayPal's computers to flag the account as suspicious for it to be investigated further by a human. Kyanka says he "no chance to fix anything." What if this account was owned by a phisher with credit card details to hand that was linked to a bank account opened in a false name and address? Should PayPal keep the account open and merely ask him to "explain"? Of course not, in this case the funds would be instantly transferred away from PayPal leaving them with $30,000 of chargebacks!

Now when this happened, Kyanka, after writing an article about how much PayPal sucks he got in touch with them. From Kyanka's posts on his website there's no evidence to show that they ever said Kyanka couldn't give the money to the Red Cross if he just waited, but Kyanka asked them to give the money to United Way. After deciding that United Way wasn't a suitable charity instead of asking them to restore the account so he could transfer the money he asked PayPal to refund all the donations. I think a lot of this situation could have been avoided if Kyanka had handled things differently.

The article also mentions that people donating got less back than what they paid. This is what happens when money is exchanged from one currency to another, this is called an exchange rate, I hardly think we can blame PayPal for this.


Brilliant words from someone who obviosly works for PayScam. Get lost idiot.

Er...so how does it work?

Nothing in the article touches upon that most basic of points. I have no clue myself. Credit check? Do two people need an account? Etc. Mithridates 18:06, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I checked out this article because their site doesn't state how it works. Which is ludicrous. There's lots of stuff about how brilliant they are but hardly anything on how it actually works. This makes me very suspicious. It feels like a scam. But the thing is Paypal is the only way to pay for certain things. Which makes me even more suspicious. Monopolies in private hands don't make the most reliable businesses, especially when the monopoly is worldwide. A potential new Microsoft, except these guys deal with money directly. Sounds very scary. DirkvdM 06:53, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I've tried to make a payment through them in several ways, but failed. So I contacted them and got a very lengthy standardised reply that didn't answer my question (which was pretty straightforward and very essential). Their customer support does indeed seem to be non-existent. DirkvdM 17:52, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

This article needs to be re-written

The point of any encyclopedia is to present factual data in an objective manner. The "Criticisms" area presents criticisms in a critical, rather than objective way. This is slanted and biased, only showing the failure of the author of the section, as well as the Katrina section, to provide a balanced perspective of the issues given as well as a lack of any understanding of the banking and financial industries.

Article is incomplete

http://www.paypalwarning.com/
http://www.paypalsucks.com/

These sites have a few thousand horror stories about paypal. I'm going to put them as links, but we need to incorporate their content into the article. DyslexicEditor 16:54, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Not all of those stories are false, but many of them are quite dated and a bit extreme in perspective (though in a few cases, perhaps not without cause). full-disclosure: i used to work for PayPal from 2001-2004 so i'm probably biased. you might want to investigate the details of the Eliot Spitzer settlement and customer service class action lawsuits that resulted in changes to PayPal's TOU (Terms of Use) and revised policies on freezing / unfreezing customer accounts.

in general, most customer service issues arise from either a) forgotten password / account info, and b) PayPal's fraud prevention efforts which were probably a bit heavy-handed in the early days (and with good reason; there were millions of dollars in fraud in those days while they were still getting some of the systems & policies up to snuff).

when people forgot their passwords, PayPal usually required they verify a number of detailed personal ID items to re-enable access. some folks didn't like this, but in many cases it was necessary to make sure fraudsters didn't get access to other people's accounts & access to their credit card or bank accounts.

similarly, when questionable transactions arose that had some potential fraud characteristics, sometimes the result was often to place a temporary (and in a few cases, not so temporary) freeze on a customer account until more information could be verified. some customers who had this happen didn't appreciate this approach, and in a few cases where funds were frozen for a long time (or a large amount), some people became angry, persistent critics of the company.dave 19:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

"Foreign Mafia rings found ways to steal millions from the young company."?????????

This needs to be expanded. More info? URL please? DyslexicEditor 17:23, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I worked at PayPal from 2001-2004, however i wasn't around when the larger fraud incidents occurred... although i did hear a lot of the war stories from that time.
Incidents of fraud still occur regularly for most popular internet payment sites, however during the 1999-2001 timeframe many of the new only payment startups were being ravaged by fraud. These incidents caused a number of online payment startups to hemorrhage funds, and a lot of them went bankrupt and/or had to shut down. PayPal was no exception, and in the summer of 2000 (not sure on exact dates) there a number of efforts by russian mafia (among others) that resulted in multi-million dollar losses. Unlike many of their competitors, PayPal eventually got a handle on it, and implemented stronger anti-fraud systems to deter future large losses, however they did have a rough time of it that summer.
For more detail on this, you should read the PayPal Wars book, or contact the author Eric Jackson at World Ahead Publishing.dave 19:44, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I was wondering how were these companies stealing from paypal? Was paypal just anti-money laundering? Were people paying with credit card, taking out the funds, then the payer filing a chargeback?
As for the book, my library is closing all their branches in January for remodelling so I can't get it till February. Do you know how exactly they were stealing from paypal? It doesn't seem possible. (This info should go in the article, too). DyslexicEditor 01:40, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
i don't have all the details, but there were several scams & variations. usually it involved a stolen credit card (cc numbers are available for sale on many black market BBSs) or some other compromised financial instrument attached to a PayPal account, and then either the funds would be sent to another PayPal account where they were withdrawn, or used to buy other goods which were later laundered. this also might be daisy-chained thru several accounts.
in the past 5 years PayPal has gotten a lot more sophisticated at detecting and preventing these scams, however as with other white hat / black hat battles it's an ongoing affair. these days i believe they've gotten fraud down to <0.5% of payment volume, which is pretty good considering normal physical world transactions typically have 1-2% fraud rates. anyway, i'm probably rusty on the exact story, but i'm sure if you email Eric he can help provide more info too.dave 07:32, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Removed text

I removed this text:

Ebay has previously stated that it is just a venue. After acquiring paypal it has become more than a venue by listing in auctions whether the buyer accepts paypal (no other payment options listed) and allowing buyers to sort by paypal. Next, Paypal accounts that are frozen without it being the seller's fault (sometimes frozen without reason) have resulted in ebay accounts being banned [7]. In August 2005, it required that sellers who take paypal not refuse credit card payments, which result in fees and may result in chargebacks due to credit card and other buyer fraud. Beginning in January 2006, ebay now prohibits any online payment system except Paypal, as stated here. Ebay deceptively gives bidpay.com as an alternative, but bidpay has already gone out of business. This singularly requires that online payments through ebay must use ebay's system. Issues of illegality and antitrust have been raised over this decision. [8] Ebay specifically prohibits E-gold, a legitimate competitor to Paypal.

Please feel free to reinsert it after rewording it to sound less like an anti-eBay rant and more like a proper encyclopedia entry. Thanks.

kmccoy (talk) 01:33, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I did some work. Will you please help with editing it. I know you love to delete everything, but it's better if you helped edit things. DyslexicEditor 02:07, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

x.com

the x.com entry says basically the same thing as this one except in a more unorganized manner. somebody who has the time should merge the information (if any) and just have "x.com" redirect here since it says in the article that x.com is paypal.

It seems that has already been done. I'm removing the link now, since X.com redirects to PayPal.

"E-gold, a PayPal competitor with high fraud history"??

The article currently says "E-gold, a PayPal competitor with high fraud history"?? I'm halfway through the book the paypal wars and paypal has a high fraud history. In the egold article it has a small amount of fraud, mostly money laundering denied by the company's owner. So is the statement of high fraud history true about egold? How about a source? DyslexicEditor 11:59, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Paypal refunds to buyers for returning empty boxes

I see this a lot on eBay in feedback complaints and forum complaints. I've read a couple news articles about people being arrested for it (I lost them now). We need some mention of how paypal's buyer protection allows buyers to get a full refund (including shipping charges) for returned a tracked empty box. DyslexicEditor 01:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

No-Paypal, Paypal-Alert, etc.

While there are obviously bad issues with Paypal, PayPalSucks and PayPalWarning are, IMHO, not sites which should be linked in the article. Many of their stories sound like blatant fabrication, and they particulary have a tendency to blatantly advertise competing services. example1 example2.

They also do exhibit some censorship of logical Pro-PayPal arguments (personal experience), and there is the point in fact they have had legal dealings with eBay and PayPal in the past. Some of their stories are exact duplicates or ad libs apon closer investigation, they all share quite some level of ...fanaticism would be a good word, and they do have traces of fairly blatant spamming.

Perhaps it is all to maintain a clear image and ensure the fiscal maintenance of the site, and all the keyword hogging may be just to make sure that the site gets the attention which is 'so urgently needed'. I do not know. However, it may be in best interest to find a more (competition/advertising) neutral site which has critism of PayPal.

  • shrug*

-Avillia (avillia@gmail)

  • That they advertise competing services isn't particularly relevant. I've tried to purge at least "PayPalSucks" as an attack site, but it keeps being re-inserted, and since I have an obvious bias, I've stopped trying. I don't see how these are particularly encyclopedic sources; they're like listing blogs as sources. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 04:45, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Linking to a site is not the same as using it as a source. DirkvdM 07:08, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I've got some of my own commentary on the subject here. It's not really encyclopedic (it's just an essay of my opinions), and it's a few years out of date by now, but it discusses some issues with PayPal. *Dan T.* 04:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Also not useful as a source, though. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 16:39, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


Here's a source, bought laptop on ebay, received box of bricks. More of a paypal scam than ebay scam so the link belongs somewhere in the article (I was going to add it with my recent talk on ebay's article but nope it's more about paypal). I don't know where. http://www.phpfreaks.com/articles/92/0.php DyslexicEditor 14:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Some more links here http://www.paypalsucks.com/links.shtml DyslexicEditor 14:05, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's a link from another place showing proof that buyers can alter URLs to get products for only a penny thanks to paypal's system. http://www.0xa9.com/?p=25 DyslexicEditor 14:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

That's what encrypted buttons are for. The owners of those sites should have created encrypted payment buttons. --Anon, 4 July 2006

referral?

Does PP have a referral scheme? 203.218.37.8 03:21, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Credit Cards

Paypal issues credit cards through Washington Mutual Bank (formerly by Providian National Bank, acquired by WMB). This is not mentioned and should be added. CompIsMyRx 06:50, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Alternate

Can you guide alternate to Paypal for rest of the world (asian and europian countries) where Paypal does not work?Unknownworld 09:57, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I've added a couple of alternatives I've found helpful. I don't know how useful they'll be from Asia, but Moneybookers was recommended to me by a European internet radio station I was trying to donate to. I believe that Kagi supports some Asian currencies, though its range of products is limited. (Disclaimer: I wrote Kagi's Newton client many years ago, but since the Newton's demise, I've merely been a satisfied customer.)
FlashSheridan 04:05, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Is this a commercial?

"...one of the leading fraud prevention systems in the industry, ... dedicated to customer service ... a safe, global, real-time payment solution...". This is the kind of language you hear in a commercial. Not very encyclopedic. Better would be to say how many people they employ and then maybe specify how many in each department, although that doesn't seem necessary. But certainly not a phrase like "dedicated to customer service". This is not supposed to be a commercial. So I removed some bits. Stating "leading fraud prevention" once is quite enough. And the employee-bit needs to be more encyclopedic. There are also way too many links to the company's website. I count a total of 31! That;s a bit over the top isn't it? Especially if many are double. So I deleted some of those too. But some more pruning would be in place. DirkvdM 07:43, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Fucking PayPal!

They keep spamming my email with some shit about a supposed account and I never even signed up for PayPal!—Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.161.209.41 (talk • contribs) 02:34, 19 June 2006

Most likely, any mail you get that claims to be from PayPal (if you don't actually have an account with them) is actually a "phishing" scam from somebody else, hoping to get people to follow a link to their site and provide their PayPal username/password, or bank account or credit card info, that they can use for identity theft. *Dan T.* 02:54, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Ax to Criticism

The "Criticism" section is unruly on a lot of levels. It is disjointed, first listing common general complaints, to lawsuits (not exactly criticism), to loopholes and scam opportunities implied as unjust (POV). I don't like PayPal either but I think it's appropriate to cut it down severely or at least sort it out. Bordello 13:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

  • Under criticisms, I took this statement out because I can't make real sense of it. It sounds like an unruly customer:

"Additionally, sellers who use credit cards can authorize a chargeback for a payment used to fund their PayPal account that went to purchase the service up to six months after the date of the charge. For PayPal merchants that provide monthly services, PayPal will collect some basic information to contest the charge on behalf of the merchant with the credit card issuer. But in real world experience, PayPal rarely if ever succeeds in getting the chargeback reversed because the credit card transaction was deemed a "card not present" transaction. Until January of 2005, PayPal protected its merchants by allowing them to prevent a transaction funded by a credit card to be accepted as a payment. Since PayPal removed this feature, fraud against its merchants has skyrocketed. Because PayPal's fees and volume increased when they removed this option, management doesn't care about their merchants' increased fraud rate, the cost of which falls entirely on the merchant." Bordello 14:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

I've removed all the criticism that does not have direct citation. Way too many weasel words and too much opinion and speculation. If someone wants a specific piece of criticism included they can provide a credible citation for it.--Crossmr 01:27, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Those citations do not support what is written in their respective section. The first one citing pcworld references "heavily" criticised. I see no usage of the word heavily in the article. The weasel words need cleaned up. The second citation is pretty vague a 23 page pdf file. Cite some page numbers for those who want to verify and don't have time to wade through 23 pages looking for that specific bit of information. The last one isn't criticism its a lawsuit, same with the second one. Don't say criticism when we have a law suit. Perhaps a separate section to address any lawsuits filed against the company is in order. Actually there is a legal section. These should be moved there and written and referenced appropriately.--Crossmr 05:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I restored things verbatim from earlier revisions, 'weasel words' and all. Thanks for weeding those out. As for the lawsuits, I'll try to move them to the legal section. -Bordello 22:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Paypal frozen

Is there any early warning or sign before a paypal account is frozen?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Korenzhang2244 (talk • contribs) 12:17, June 22, 2006

-No, they own it completely and do it without prior notice.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.222.81.224 (talk • contribs) 20:02, September 2, 2006

External links = spam?

Someone convince me that the (long) list of external links of critical sites and "other resources" do not violate external link policy against external link spamming, do not violate the fact that WP is not a repository of links, or, at the very least, aren't incredibly redundant. Their existence seems to encourage endless additions of other external links. --MichaelZimmer (talk) 00:44, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

From the external link policy:
However, adding a small number of relevant external links can be a valuable service to our readers.…
What should be linked to…
On articles with multiple points of view, a link to prominent sites dedicated to each, with a detailed explanation of each link.
I'm not saying that the section is always perfect; obviously some intelligent editing is often in order, and sometimes happens. But removing the whole section as spam would strike me as as great an NPOV violation as having only critical comments.
FlashSheridan 17:22, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Npov doesn't require equal time for all sides. A few websites set up by some people with a beef isn't covered unless there has been credible coverage of these sites. As such its clearly the bulk of the external links and should be trimmed accordingly--Crossmr 17:56, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
And I think having 9 critical sites exceeds the "a small number of relevant links" suggestion. --MichaelZimmer (talk) 18:03, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. WP:NOT should be required reading and you should sign a statement attesting to the fact that you've done so and understood it. Too many people think a wikipedia article is a good place to air any grievance they have.--Crossmr 18:44, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I have no knowledge of any of the specifics of the criticism pages. Lets give 72 hours if someone who's interested in them wants to pick 2 or 3 of the most notable ones they can do so, otherwise I'll try and do it, but no guarentees I pick the best 3.--Crossmr 07:27, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I've looked over all the sites, and to pick three is not too difficult because I would say each falls in to one of three general categories: 1) Communal complaint pages, where a number of stories have been collected 2) Personal complaint pages, where one person essentially rants about his or her bad experience with Paypal 3) Multipurpose complaint pages, where it might have a blog, forum or other places of input. There is overlap, but I think we can work with these provisions. Discretion welcome.
Here is a basic run-down:
  • PayPal Warning-- information to deter using paypal and collected paypal "horror stories"
  • No PayPal (aka paypalsucks.com)-- mess of a website, but big active forum, and they cover most common complaints against paypal.
  • About Paypal-- carbon copy of "Paypal Warning". *Removed*
  • Paypal Complaints-- a place to send in horror stories, with active blog tracking paypal's policies and personal experiences with paypal.
  • Screwed By PayPal-- Not As Described-- blog tracking one man's problem with paypal's "not-as-described" refund policy.
  • The Problem With PayPal-- dead. I took it off
  • Delayed delivery of fakes scam-- single blog post about said topic.
  • Paypal-related site (http://www.paypalsucks.org/)-- A few pinpoint examples of Paypal wrongdoing and a tiny forum.
  • Paypal-related site (http://www.justsaynotopaypal.com/)--Blog, but not updated in months
Though each site describes how vulnerable sellers are in the Paypal system and acts as a consumer alert, I feel the most useful three are Paypalsucks.com, Paypal Complaints, and Screwed By Paypal for reasons I don't feel like explaining but will if asked. So I'll delete the rest until complaints come. -Bordello 08:47, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I've found:
The other links are not as good. I think the blog is least useful out of these because of its lack of organization on the matter. Also the main paypalsucks.com site, which is famous, is not a useful source, although its forums are useful. Anomo 01:38, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Forums can't be used as primary or seconday sources. So at most its useful as an external link. The encyclopedia dramatica can also only be used as a link and not a source for any information as other wikis can't be used as primary or secondary sources. I would say of those 5 lose the blog if its hard to sort through. We don't want to send people to hard to navigate sites.-Crossmr 01:42, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think any of the anti-paypal sites can really count as references. There are news media articles out there that would, though, but I don't have any on me. Anomo 01:50, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
Those might actualy be relevant to the article if they can be found, depending on how many of them there are.--Crossmr 02:32, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
I've seen them linked from anti-paypal sites. I don't think there's been anything recent. This [1] is something recent, but I think it's a blog. Maybe there's a reliable source on this, I don't know. Anomo 02:39, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
definitely a blog, and I don't see any sources for the opinion there. That don't appear to be a subject matter expert either.--Crossmr 02:44, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
As for the subject of sources, I thought we were only talking about external links in the first place (External links = spam?). Anywho, after using google news, I found some links that might be useful:
-Bordello 23:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
That's right, but external links are not just an indescriminate collection of every link that might possibly be related to the subject. There are guidelines for external links, and you have to balance what you list so that you don't give undue weight to a PoV via external linking. By allowing all external links it would be easy for one side of an issue to push PoV through there rather than through the article.--Crossmr 00:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Sounds fair enough. I, personally, have no qualms with what paypal does, and have had no problems with their services yet. Looking for news online about paypal, though, there doesn't seem to be anything but complaints. Because there doesn't seem to be any Paypal advocacy groups, cursèd corporate machine that they're apart of, it seems it has to be neccesarily one-sided. There is the accolades section, which, thankfully, aggregates things with a link to paypal's own page, but complaints are so scattered and various compared to what they've been merited for. One concise link location versus one hundred different ones. What to do? -Bordello 00:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Having just taken stats, one of the things we covered is the value of online opinions. As in there really isn't much of one. The internet like other certain kinds of medium attract people with strong opinions and doesn't really give a proper cross-section of what the population as a whole might believe. Another thing to consider is the fact that the media rarely does "X business is having a good day today" stories. They only write about something when the crap hits the fan. They enjoy creating FUD its basically how they operate. That being said I find it best to limit external links to one of a kind. I.e. one covering phishing, one covering customer complaints, etc. If there is an unusual amount of news stories or other credible sites covering a specific issue, perhaps another 1 or 2 links for that issue (depending on the size of the external links). We don't want to turn the external links section into its own article.--Crossmr 00:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
Completely agreed. But, as it goes, which do we use? I'm a little tired. I trust your discretion and will check back later. -Bordello 00:24, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Why are the critical sites being deleted?

I think it is fair to leave these sites on the page, and every time I make an attempt to put them back, they are deleted again. So I want this up for discussion. These critical sites offer two sides to the article and shows that PayPal may not be a good idea, leaving the decision up to the user.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.193.81.111 (talk • contribs) 13:16, 15 August 2006

I agree. I don't know why they've been shorn. Unless done before I get to it, I will restore it at a later time. -Bordello 13:44, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
How about because one of the links just leads to a page saying "Site temporarily disabled", and the other leads to one person's rant, not at all an informational page -- all that can really be gleaned from it is that he's pissed. The problems could use a WP:NPOV treatment in the article, which indeed has some serious suckitude, but those links were not in any way helpful. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 13:53, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Both pages are working fine, I just checked them. And the fuckpaypal.net website does not sound like a rant. The user provides ALOT of sources to back up his 'rant', including PDF documents of what PayPal sent him and court cases. This page shows the flaw of PayPal's "not as described" policy and should remain, as well as aboutpaypal.org because of all of the complaints.
I just checked them too. paypalcomplaints.com says "Site Temporarily Disabled. This site has been temporarily disabled. If you are the owner of the site, please contact customer care." "Screwed by paypal" is a blog, and we generally don't have those as external links, as they are not even remotely reliable sources. We simply don't allow attack sites, which fuckpaypal obviously is. Try adding some actual material to the article instead; it's far more welcome. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 14:39, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Read WP:NPOV. Npov does not mean equal time to varying sides of a debate, it means equal time to equal sides. A handful of websites written by a few people with a complaint doesn't amount to a significant viewpoint of those who are or have been customers of Paypal.--Crossmr 14:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

paypalcomplaints is not what I am talking about. I am talking about aboutpaypal.org, which is not an attack site. the domain fuckpaypal.net makes it seem like an attack site, but it actually goes to a page http://www.silic0nsilence.com/paypal.htm, which could mean someone purchased the domain and just forwarded to this address. None-the-less, I do not see this as an attack site, it is simply warning about the policy. This site is not a blog, but a page with updates. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.22.121.110 (talk • contribs) 15:24, 15 August 2006
I didn't say only attack sites are limited. However reading that site its clearly not on objective site and thus falls under NPOV. He's indicating his experience is broad fact.--Crossmr 15:27, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
From what I can see, there is alot of evidence showing that he is a victim of fraud, which is known to happen using online services. I believe this site should be shown as a link in this article because it is one of the FEW sites that actually backs up the problem with evidence.
Do you understand WP:RS? Regardless of its links, it's a blog, and blogs are inherantly not reliable sources. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 15:37, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
How is it a blog? It is a regular site, with updates underneath. I am emailing the webmaster to see what kind of 'changes' can be done to make this look less like a blog, because it is one of the greatest fraud sites I have ever seen. If I get a reply, I will mention it here. This is rediculous, in NO WAY is this is a blog.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.22.121.110 (talk • contribs) 15:44, 15 August 2006
They can be used as external links but can't be used to support facts, opinions, theories, or conclusions in the article. However, external links still have to conform to NPOV and including these few critical sites violates NPOV as it gives undue weight to the critical side which seems to be made up of a couple of very biased sites. It also falls under WP:NOT Wikipedia is not a soapbox. Please sign your posts.--Crossmr 15:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
This is my last post, I have emailed the webmaster. Something has to be changed because this site is fantastic and is not very critical, it is showing that fraud happens. Template:198.22.121.110
that's nice. A lot of things "can" happen. Which is the point of WP:NPOV. There is no evidence this happens to a significant portion of the population of paypal users and until such a time it becomes undue weight.--Crossmr 15:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I didn't realize which sites we were advocating here. This makes things more comlpicated. I'm sure "Screwed By Paypal" will eventually become a news story, but that's my speculation-- in other words, it's popular, and it may even be important, but, hm, what standard do we use? If we're not going to wikilawyer this whole issue, it doesn't seem completely wrong to put it up, even considering that it is blog-like in nature.

I'm still for having a list of critical sites, but what would qualify them as NPOV? There simply doesn't appear to be any cool secondary source which will expand on these very real problems people are having, which Paypal, as most companies, will not publish either. I think there is always room for the dissenting minority and would not mind seeing at least a couple pages with caveats using Paypal. -Bordello 16:23, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

The dissenting minority rarely tries to stay as such. they try to push PoV through slowly expanding external sites, introducing a little bit into the article etc. The minority has to be significant though in order to be covered according to NPOV. Wiki-lawyering, Ignore all Rules, etc are fine to bring up in certain situations, but they shouldn't be used as a catch-all to run over corner-stone principals like WP:V and WP:NPOV. Otherwise why have them? Its fine if we have some credible sources on which to base a part of the article around phishing, scams, etc, but using subjective self-published sites to do that isn't the write way to go about it. Are we trying to say that some people hate paypal, or are we trying to say that scamming can occur with paypal? --Crossmr 16:29, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't think either of those is the issue. Paypal does have some serious business practice and customer service issues in its history (and perhaps in its present -- I'm not up to date), and, as I've said, it would be worth mentioning this things in the article in some or another NPOV fashion. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 00:35, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
And in order to do so, we need to find the proper references and citations to support it. Just because we know it exists doesn't mean we can turn around and use any old website to support the material.--Crossmr 00:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
If we are going to remove the critical sites, shouldn't we remove the link in the Criticism section? I've been waiting for someone to notice.
Sure, you can do that any time you want. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 04:32, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
No way, I am so winning the lazy-guy fight.. But seriously, let's keep it there until we figure out what's going on with the whole critical site situation.68.193.81.111 05:10, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Its already been figured out. If you want the material included you have to provide the appropriate citations. The burden is on the individual who wants the material kept to make the case.--Crossmr 05:14, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
What you are saying makes no sense! How can someone criticize something while keeping a neutral point of view? If PayPal were to screw someone over to the point of financial loss and frustration, it would be hard for them to prove their point that what PayPal did was wrong if they were trying to keep a neutral point of view. 17:46, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Actually they can easily prove they had a problem without coming across as an attack site. Regardless its a moot point because the self-published websites aren't acceptable as references or sources and we don't really have enouhg credible citations currently to warrant filling the external links with them.--Crossmr 19:41, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


If all you good folks will direct your attention here: [3], I think we can realize a more reasonable solution. So what it is is we need some critical views and not extremely slanted ones, ie most news sources will do, but most blogs will not. It's not a matter of citing sources and the like, I don't think, but allowing for a comprehensive and as close to objective analysis of PayPal's function as possible. So it comes to this; you see those news sources I cited earlier above (which I forgot about), they reflect many complaints the very vocal critical sites had in a reletively aplomb fashion. In other words, those other critical sites, though maybe a helpful warning, etc., are not even needed if alls we want is the information. Compromise? -Bordello 22:05, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

The computer world link is out, because its a blog. Unless there is some evidence that this is a column with editorial oversight being presented as a blog. This link is fine [4], This link [5] from the disclaimer indicates that the site didn't commission that article, and if possible the original publication of it should be found to be both evaluated and published. This link [6] comes originally from this [7] website which makes me doubt it. --Crossmr 23:13, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
The webmaster of fuckpaypal.net (Screwed By PayPal: Not As Described) posted this to the email that I and several other people sent him: "I am not a blog. This is my site, and these are updates. There is nothing else I can do." It's on his page if you want to read it. 17:54, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
that still doesn't change the nature of the site.Whether you call it a blog or not, the same issues exist.--Crossmr 19:28, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Correction to the comments above:

Actually, [8] was created with the help of using [9] The creator of the article is [10] and the author published the article on [11] (the article was submitted and accepted by the site) It is a genuine article from a genuine author.

--Ibroker 10:16, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

That doesn't really change anything. Whether it came from the place I pointed to, or the one you pointed to, the nature of both sites make me question it greatly.--Crossmr 20:07, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Can you share with me what you mean by the nature of both sites? What is it you are looking for? Sorry I'm confused and don't understand, thanks for your help. --Ibroker 11:06, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Both of those sites do not look trusthworthy to me. I'm not sure if there is any precedent for usage of those sites (sometimes they hold discussions about various sites on WP:RS) but I personally would find anything to come out of either of those pages to be suspect. They both seem to be created from the viewpoint of driving traffic to a blog or site and their job is to create articles that would do that, which often means focusing more on keywords and thigns like that rather than writing a good quality and researched article.--Crossmr 22:12, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

many major issues missing

...such as near monopoly status, de facto competition (merchant accounts), major spam/scam victim/bait, phishing, PayPal's security tips...!

The article incorrectly claims Most of PayPal’s major competitors have phased out, when in fact there is the viable and at least for vendors apparently much better alternative of a merchant account. Someone with more insight should explain that this exists and what it is.

Also, does anyone know something about www.free-merchant.com and whether it should be added here and in merchant account?

Why was www.paypalwarning.com removed? It was called informative (due to the case stories) in other informed comments above. At the very least, it should be mentioned and commented on in the article, especially if it is itself not trustworthy.

--Espoo 06:05, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


Brujo, it's not a good idea to just delete something you don't agree with, especially when you yourself notice that it was written in good faith and with an obvious effort to present an issue neutrally, objectively, and fairly. Just because much PayPal criticism is expressed in a crazy manner doesn't mean it's not based on true events. You simply deleted the following summary of that criticism; instead, please reformulate it in a way that you feel is better:

This is however both understandable and excusable considering that the criticism is usually expressed not by professionals but by private individuals who feel helpless against a huge monopoly. In addition, as with most other monopolies, there are in fact alternatives such as merchant accounts to PayPal, but these are not widely known.

The same is true of my explanation of PayPal's near-monopoly status and the effect this has on criticism and the alternatives to this monopoly. Simply deleting all of that information is a very bad idea and a sign of very sloppy editing! --Espoo 07:14, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


Brujo, this edit of yours is no solution and in fact illogical: PayPal has been the target of criticism due to its dominant position in the market. Much of this criticism has been the result of fraud by third parties which PayPal has no control over. This fraud has in turn led to restrictive policies on the part of PayPal which sometimes causes problems for legitimate customers or sellers.

The fraud and PayPal's reactions to it is not the main cause of the criticism. First of all, monopolies always create a hate community, even when they respect their customers and don't let themeselves be corrupted by greed and power, which rarely happens. Secondly, the criticism is mainly caused by PayPal's bad customer support and apparently generally negligent attitude towards complaints. The problem is that all monopolies think they don't have to take crackpots or even normal customers with a special problem seriously. Because there's no competition, they only deal with problems that affect many customers. Sears, for example, has a much smarter attitude to rare or even crazy problems and complaints: by even letting crackpots bring back 15-year-old sofas, they get a very good image and nearly free advertising. Normal, sane customers feel confident to buy and buy much more because they're sure they can take anything back if there's a problem. PayPal is apparently like Microsoft in just not giving a damn about individuals and their problems unless there are many with the same problem. --Espoo 07:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


Brujo, do you work for PayPal? This is advantageous because PayPal charges a lot less than a competative merchant account from a traditional bank, and is a lot easier to obtain is at least very bad editing because it doesn't just have a spelling error but is in fact blatant advertisement for PayPal since you combined it with the deletion mentioned above... --Espoo 07:58, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Recent edits

We've covered this once, but I guess we need to cover it again. Any and all information added to the article, including criticism has to meet WP:V and WP:RS, it also has to meet the various aspects of WP:NPOV. When writing such items read WP:WEASEL regarding the kind of language you can use to write them. Also see WP:OR for what constitutes original research. Anytime you put forth a theory, opinion, or draw a conclusion you need to provide a source for it. WP:NOT is also a good policy to read, wikipedia is not a how-to guide or a web/phone directory of any kind. The article is not provided to tell people how to call Paypal on the telephone or how to properly use their sandbox.--Crossmr 14:18, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I still do not see how we can have a PayPal site that is critical without being 'biased.' A site with sources to back it up should be more than enough. Yes, I know WP:V and WP:RS.. Blah, blah. It will just be near impossible to find a site that criticizes PayPal, but keeps it neutral as well. Most people that have had problems with PayPal have to deal with FINANCIAL LOSS. When you mess with someone's money and they want to tell other people about it, it's hard for them to say that a site can also be amazing. With that in mind, we have a link to a page where people give their opinions to PayPal. Isn't that link then incorrect? The people who are leaving comments are not providing sources to back up those comments... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.193.81.111 (talk • contribs) 00:05, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Crossmr, i hope you agree that this article should mention that PayPal has a near-monopoly status, and not just in a comment in the section "Acquisition by eBay". I hope you also agree that the article should mention that there are alternatives instead of indirectly advertising PayPal as the only choice. I hope you also agree that an article about PayPal should mention that the company's name and website imitation is one of the most common baits used in spam and phishing, which i'll call PayPal fraud here. I can see your point about Wikipedia not being a how-to guide, but the fact that you even object to a link that explains how to prevent PayPal fraud and a one-sentence description of that link shows that you're really exaggerating in your interpretation of Wikipedia guidelines.
Wikipedia is supposed to be much more than a fuddy-duddy paper encyclopedia with only boring and old facts about a company. The vast majority of Wikipedia users come into contact with the name PayPal not as customers of the company but as recipients of email spam fraudulently claiming to come from PayPal. It's simply ridiculous not having any mention of spam or phishing in a Wikipedia article on PayPal. Probably most Wikipedia users that look up this article are looking for info on this very aspect, including PayPal's attitude and reaction towards this spam and fraud. Basically, you've ignored what i said to Brujo, and what i said about the quality of his work as a Wikipedia editor applies to you too:
...it's not a good idea to just delete something you don't agree with, especially when you yourself notice that it was written in good faith and with an obvious effort to present an issue neutrally, objectively, and fairly. Just because much PayPal criticism is expressed in a crazy manner doesn't [edit: necessarily] mean it's not based on true events. You simply deleted the following summary of that criticism; instead, please reformulate it in a way that you feel is better...
The same is true of my explanation of PayPal's near-monopoly status and the effect this has on criticism and the alternatives to this monopoly. Simply deleting all of that information is a very bad idea and a sign of very sloppy editing! --Espoo 07:03, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
This is an article about Paypal, its not an advertisement for Paypal, and the article is not the place to advertise competitors. Also go back and read the policies I linked to. WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:NPOV are non-negotiable. Whatever your thoughts are on how most people encounter paypal, or other various criticism you have, unless you can write them in accordance with those policies they will continue to be removed. Also read WP:CIVIL in regards to referring to my editing as sloppy. --Crossmr 13:58, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Let's take this one issue at a time, Crossmr. I hope you agree that this article should mention that PayPal has a near-monopoly status, and not just in a comment on the side in the section "Acquisition by eBay". The information that PayPal has near-monopoly status is essential to an objective and informative encyclopedia article. Deleting that information is not careful editing; if you didn't like the wording, you could have rephrased it.
I hope you also agree that the article should mention that there are alternatives instead of indirectly advertising PayPal as the only choice, as the article is now doing. Don't you understand, Crossmr, that the article is advertising for PayPal now and that my edit tried to improve on that? Deleting my edit instead of changing it was not careful editing.
I'll address the spam/fraud issue once these two issues have been resolved. --Espoo 14:13, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't indirectly advertise paypal anymore than any other article on any other subject indirectly advertises it. If there is information about its competitors and who has closed and who has remained in businesses in the acquisition by ebay section then its covered there. We don't repeatedly cover a subject over and over again in a single article. Any opinions, theories and conclusions you want to put forth have to be properly sourced. If you'd like to do so, you can bring forth the citations and their inclusion can be discussed. I'm going to remind you a last time to comment on the content, not the editor.--Crossmr 14:19, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't know about anyone else, but I agree with Espoo. I feel almost as if Crossmr works for PayPal, as unlikely as that may be. Wikipedia should be more than a boring encyclopedia, and people should know more about the PayPal than the 'Full House' side of it. 16:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
As I've said, any material added to any article I participate in that doesn't follow policy is removed, this article is no exception. If you want to continue to push uncited opinion and conjecture into the article it will continue to be removed.--Crossmr 17:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Rewards

Paypal accounts can earn interest and the debit card they issue gets 1% cash back on all transactions processed as a credit card. I don't think competing companies have rewards like these and this sort of thing should be added to such articles. Hackwrench 08:15, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

"Phishing" section

Seems to me that whole section is unencyclopedic, and could be replaced by one sentence, but I'm not quite sure where it should go. The sentence could simply say, "PayPal has been frequently used in phishing schemes". --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 04:15, 28 September 2006 (UTC)