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http://www.regretsy.com/2011/12/05/cats-1-kids-0/

You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people. -PayPal

I can't even properly describe how messed up this is. They pocketed the fees from the donations. They pocketed the fees from the donations being forced to be returned. They pocketed the fees from selling the toys individually. They pocketed the fees from making them return the sales. And finally they pocketed the fees from processing the sales. All the while they gave a giant middle finger to poor families everywhere. I hope every cent they made off of this goes towards cleaning up the impending PR nightmare.

Close your PayPal account. They clearly do not want yours, or anyone else's, business.

This post has been edited by Malevolence on 6th December 2011 07:42

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moé in the streets, senpai in the sheets

I feel like there has to be more to this story than what the person in question has let on, and clearly there's some miscommunication between them and paypal. I've seen several successful uses of the donate function, both for charity and personal use and have personally never had any issue with paypal at all (quite the opposite, in fact.) so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt before I bust out my pitchfork. Still, that's a pretty unfortunate situation.

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Okay, but there was a goat!

Quote (Dragon_Fire @ 6th December 2011 04:27)

I feel like there has to be more to this story than what the person in question has let on, and clearly there's some miscommunication between them and paypal. I've seen several successful uses of the donate function, both for charity and personal use and have personally never had any issue with paypal at all (quite the opposite, in fact.) so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt before I bust out my pitchfork. Still, that's a pretty unfortunate situation.

Well, first let me say that there's a good reason that companies like, say, Penny Arcade go to pains to segregate their charitable arms from their day-to-day businesses. For-profit entities (of which Regretsy is clearly one) should have a variety of reasons to keep their charity separate, regardless of whether Paypal is involved.

Other than that, I think that I agree with DF on this one by and large. It's a really unfortunate thing, and I think that there are clearly errors on both sides - for instance, why did the author reference a PDF but then show no evidence of linking the Paypal employee to the PDF when the employee claimed to have no knowledge of it? From the other side, virtually every word from the Paypal employee was probably a mistake in the long run.

It's been a long-standing point of fact that if Paypal freezes your account, you're in for a world of problems. It's happened to a lot of people and I don't think it's ever a good experience. The only really novel thing in this story is just how abusive the employee is, if you ask me.

I think I'm with DF, as I say. Some of the accounts that Paypal freezes are done for a good reason, and some are not. It would seem that this is in the latter camp, and the problem was made worse by a terrible employee. Not sure that Paypal as one gigantic entity is to blame here.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

PayPal sucks for a lot of reasons. Here's another horror story that happened at the SA forums from which they pocketed a nice chunk of handling fees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awf...Katrina_charity

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

I think all companies for the most part are greedy shysters but...

If we go shutting down all these companies and services by closing accounts, not buying from them or ECT.. We are putting people out of jobs some of whom may not agree with they're companies policy, loosing a convenient service to us I use Pay Pal all the time on Ebay or even affecting the economy of one or more countries.

For unrelated circumstances the U.S. Postal service may be closing soon. If that happens I don't know how bills even though aggravating will get to my house as well as my Ebay packages and game magazines. Even worse my mail man seems to be a very nice person and how is he going to support himself or family.

So when closing your Pay Pal account think about the person working there to take care of his wife,three kids and maybe the family pet. Who is just as angry as you over this charity fraud and will loose his job and probably be homeless himself on the streets feeding his family out of garbage cans.



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I treasure those who I love that love me in return. <3

The Green Geek article that goes a little deeper into the legalities seem to indicate this is an issue of loose wording in Paypal's user agreements, so as far as I'm concerned, this is on them. I know at least one person on this forum is a lawyer or learnin to be one, but I haven't seen 'em round in a while. Be interested to see what they have to say should they find this.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 6th December 2011 20:57

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

I agree with most of the sentiment here. Keeping the fees is not exactly fair. They need to reimburse Regretsy even if it's within their rights to keep them. That employee, if the impression is accurate, is very stupid. I don't know where that 'sick cats, poor people' stuff came from that was like a bullet from space. I know what he meant but still it was horribly worded. He didn't seem to know what PayPal policy was, so that's his fault and definitely PayPal's fault for having bad staff.

I have a bit to say about the rest of it. Regretsy are either a bit naive or ignorant of what they've done here. They're a commercial organisation of some kind (they seem to be run as a sole trader by April Winchell) that have a charity fund. When their first charity plan failed because they couldn't use the donate button without declaring themselves as a non-profit organisation they started some kind of ad hoc plan to accept commercial transactions from donees and then give gifts to the children. I don't understand why people are so incredulous, this is really stupid. I think the PayPal employee was entitled to ask to be able to track the sale and transfer. The only thing worse than children not getting their presents is if hundreds of people in other 'charities' are roped into a fraud that rips them off, and the children don't get anything either. If PayPal's policy allowed this kind of thing to go through you can be sure someone would exploit it even if Regretsy are legitimate. Imagine PayPal's PR nightmare then? PayPal would be potentially criminally liable on top of this.*

Don't get me wrong though, it's a really nice idea just executed poorly. I think like R51 said they should separate their charity from the commercial part. The children are not benefited via a registered charity, they're vetted by Regretsy themselves on grounds of... poverty I suppose. The problem seems to be a lack of transparency from Regretsy and PayPal being unsure of the risk. It's the same with the Hurricane Katrina donations. It just seems to be a lack of tracking what money is going in and out, which should really be better organised. The fees are still ridiculous though I agree.

So my opinion is that the fees should be returned, an apology from PayPal and a promise to have less confrontational badly informed staff (assuming it's true), and Regretsy should reorganise their charity arm (i.e. pull it off) so that this doesn't happen again. The fallout over this is a bit much though. Like I said if PayPal wasn't diligent I'd imagine we'd be hearing about people being ripped off due to PayPal's negligence more than accounts being frozen.

*National Stolen Property Act and wilful blindness I'm thinking.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

Happy update, it seems!

http://consumerist.com/2011/12/paypal-bows...tsys-funds.html

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

And all the Whos down in Whoville couldn't have been happier, I'm sure!

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moé in the streets, senpai in the sheets