Paypal has given me a lot of grief when it comes to bitcoin related sales. They made false claims about my account, held my funds for no valid reason, and when I submitted the documentation and waited (3 months later) still they apparently failed to review my documents.
I have evidence that Paypal has ignored my submissions.
After being on hold for about an hour and discussing the situation and trying to resolve the issue, they got upset and "bitchcoins" came up, I said "I'm sorry?" and then the guy goes off on another subject.
Topic: Bitcoin Vs. Paypal - and PayPal is getting sued. - page 6. (Read 28606 times)
Docket number please, I'd like to follow this on PACER.
Sure thing man, for now, we have only gotten an approval to be heard. The actual lawsuit does not start until they do not reply to the letter of intent to sue, as per the judges orders. i guess even though paypal is not, i am supposed to be fair by giving them a notice to fix the issue or end up in a court room. As soon as the actual lawsuit fires up and hits the docket i will absolutely share it for you all to keep up on. it will make things a ton easier than me trying to keep updating the forum here every night.
Or were you asking for the docket number for our original request to be able to sue? If you were, the original filings were dismissed and thrown out without us even being heard. We only got the go ahead after that was already dismissed. I can get you the docket number for it i am sure, but as i stated in the original post, it will probably just say "dismissed" on it. We didn't file an appeal, the courts called us back which is totally out of the norm i am sure.
Might illegally seizing competitor's customers' funds on the basis that those customers are themselves marketing equipment that could be construed as enabling even more competition be interpretable as anti-competion practices, putting it somewhere in the anti-racketeering / anti-monopolies sectors?
-MarkM-
-MarkM-
This thread makes me happy.
I had someone force a chargeback on me a couple months ago, for services I rendered (Skype lessons) over 90 days after he paid me and a month after I finished training him. No complaints, no notice, no reason given.
Aside from that I have had no real problems with PayPal but the fees are high for what they do and of course I have heard the horror stories such as this one.
This is why bitcoin is going to work, is working. Absent all speculation it is just a better way of doing business and I am stoked to have an alternative finally.
Good luck in court, if it gets that far.
Ok, sorry guys, i didnt expect this much of a response and as much as i want to read each and every one of your posts, my current day to days are keeping me pretty tied down.
Of the few posts i browsed through i did some some very wrong information, some very far out there accusations, and some people who either got lost in the run on paragraph glitch, or didnt read the whole post so i am going to make a few things clear.
1: We have had a paypal business account for a decade now, linked to our business bank accounts, and the account is registered with our EIN not my social security number
2: California is a two party consent law state. meaning both parties must agree to having a phone call recorded. My lawyers did not think that paypal gave that consent when they first found out i recorded the calls. It was only when they heard the recording giving that consent to EVERYONE in which it became legal and admissible in court.
3: Paypal on NUMEROUS occasions admitted that the ONLY reason they were freezing the account was because i sold bitcoin hardware.
4: We have had not a single chargback or issue this entire calender year ( 2013 ) which warranted freezing the assets
5: The reason paypal WILL lose their right to process credit cards if i win is because a major part of the lawsuit is based on cardholder agreements. By processing credit cards paypal has agreed to adhere to the rules, regulations, and laws pertaining to the issuing company of the card. In which they are violating by seizing cardholder funds without warrant or court order. This has nothing to do with the fact that they are my funds once transferred to a bank. By law, until a transaction takes place in which a buyer receives goods and a seller receives funds, the funds belong to the buyer or card holder. Seizing those funds as a payment processor without warrant or order is a crime. Had all the merchandise been shipped to customers this would have been a different story. This part of what is going on has nothing to do with myself directly, this is a result of the FTC and SEC as paypal holds those monies in a money market account.
6: paypal does not make a profit. yes they charge you fees, but they have yet to develop a business model which has profit. With the amount of charg backs and delinquent negative accounts held on paypal, they have operated in the red since inception. They are barley 10 years old, maybe a little more, still a new company by every aspect, and they are still floating on borrowed capital ( ebay capital )
7: Nothing in paypals agreement states you cannot sell bitcoin mining hardware. For that matter it dosnt specifically say you cannot sell bitcoin either, but with legal interpretation it can be considered a currency no matter if the Fed admits it or not. A bitcoin miner is just a highly specialized computer. Trust me, my lawyers are not chumps, nor idiots. The only reason i hired them in the first place is because they have won 90% of their cases against major corporations like Lockheed Martin, Disney, Wal-Mart, Etc. as a matter of fact even their associates have to have a degree from Harvard ( they dont legally say that, it just seems to be the case as everyone there came from Harvard )
I am sure there was a lot more that i missed, but i haven't much time tonight.
To all of you, (hundreds of messages) who have messaged me. I feel your pain, i am there right now as you can see. Rather than reply to each of you one at a time which would take weeks. I will be starting a thread to help all of you out as a group. I am just one man who happened to get luck with a few well written letters from some very important people that convinced a judge to let me take them to court. Your chance of replicating that are slim to none. I am not here to give you false hopes, those are just the facts. From experience i can tell you that as a GROUP, collectively with thousands of pages of documented communications and hundreds of complaints filed with regulatory bodies simultaneously you would all again as a GROUP increase your chances of success.
Trust me, thousands of people have tried to get paypal in a court room. just google it. you can count the number of people who pulled it off on one hand.
I will post a link to my Hold paypal accountable thread once i have it written. It will take me a few days so please hang tight. Hopefully i dont suffer from paragraph tofu on that post as well.
Thank you all for your support. Our letter of intent was mailed today, and now we just wait. i will keep you all as in the loop as time permits. For those of you who want to get in on a group action against paypal please see the original post. SAVE, DOCUMENT, PRINT, AND RECORD EVERYTHING (check your local law before you record, some states do not allow it no matter what without court order)
Of the few posts i browsed through i did some some very wrong information, some very far out there accusations, and some people who either got lost in the run on paragraph glitch, or didnt read the whole post so i am going to make a few things clear.
1: We have had a paypal business account for a decade now, linked to our business bank accounts, and the account is registered with our EIN not my social security number
2: California is a two party consent law state. meaning both parties must agree to having a phone call recorded. My lawyers did not think that paypal gave that consent when they first found out i recorded the calls. It was only when they heard the recording giving that consent to EVERYONE in which it became legal and admissible in court.
3: Paypal on NUMEROUS occasions admitted that the ONLY reason they were freezing the account was because i sold bitcoin hardware.
4: We have had not a single chargback or issue this entire calender year ( 2013 ) which warranted freezing the assets
5: The reason paypal WILL lose their right to process credit cards if i win is because a major part of the lawsuit is based on cardholder agreements. By processing credit cards paypal has agreed to adhere to the rules, regulations, and laws pertaining to the issuing company of the card. In which they are violating by seizing cardholder funds without warrant or court order. This has nothing to do with the fact that they are my funds once transferred to a bank. By law, until a transaction takes place in which a buyer receives goods and a seller receives funds, the funds belong to the buyer or card holder. Seizing those funds as a payment processor without warrant or order is a crime. Had all the merchandise been shipped to customers this would have been a different story. This part of what is going on has nothing to do with myself directly, this is a result of the FTC and SEC as paypal holds those monies in a money market account.
6: paypal does not make a profit. yes they charge you fees, but they have yet to develop a business model which has profit. With the amount of charg backs and delinquent negative accounts held on paypal, they have operated in the red since inception. They are barley 10 years old, maybe a little more, still a new company by every aspect, and they are still floating on borrowed capital ( ebay capital )
7: Nothing in paypals agreement states you cannot sell bitcoin mining hardware. For that matter it dosnt specifically say you cannot sell bitcoin either, but with legal interpretation it can be considered a currency no matter if the Fed admits it or not. A bitcoin miner is just a highly specialized computer. Trust me, my lawyers are not chumps, nor idiots. The only reason i hired them in the first place is because they have won 90% of their cases against major corporations like Lockheed Martin, Disney, Wal-Mart, Etc. as a matter of fact even their associates have to have a degree from Harvard ( they dont legally say that, it just seems to be the case as everyone there came from Harvard )
I am sure there was a lot more that i missed, but i haven't much time tonight.
To all of you, (hundreds of messages) who have messaged me. I feel your pain, i am there right now as you can see. Rather than reply to each of you one at a time which would take weeks. I will be starting a thread to help all of you out as a group. I am just one man who happened to get luck with a few well written letters from some very important people that convinced a judge to let me take them to court. Your chance of replicating that are slim to none. I am not here to give you false hopes, those are just the facts. From experience i can tell you that as a GROUP, collectively with thousands of pages of documented communications and hundreds of complaints filed with regulatory bodies simultaneously you would all again as a GROUP increase your chances of success.
Trust me, thousands of people have tried to get paypal in a court room. just google it. you can count the number of people who pulled it off on one hand.
I will post a link to my Hold paypal accountable thread once i have it written. It will take me a few days so please hang tight. Hopefully i dont suffer from paragraph tofu on that post as well.
Thank you all for your support. Our letter of intent was mailed today, and now we just wait. i will keep you all as in the loop as time permits. For those of you who want to get in on a group action against paypal please see the original post. SAVE, DOCUMENT, PRINT, AND RECORD EVERYTHING (check your local law before you record, some states do not allow it no matter what without court order)
Docket number please, I'd like to follow this on PACER.
I hope they get that manager that said it was due to you selling bitcoin hardware in a deposition so she can explain why she knows that.
Aw I didn't know Bitmit shutdown.
It's a shame, too. None of the competition provides close to what they had. Something seems...fishy about this whole story. I've never heard of Paypal having anything against bitcoins, especially the actual hardware used because it's just computer hardware.
There must be something else in that mess of a wall you're not telling people.
There must be something else in that mess of a wall you're not telling people.
I agree something is fishy with this story. It's not just paypal that does this, all merchant accounts have high risk departments that hold customers money for a certain amount of time. Paypal is just one of the worst because so many of their customers are joe smo's who have no merchant processing backgrounds and deal in high risk/high chargeback businesses (like selling used equipment, and in a notoriously chargeback friendly btc field)
Best of luck to the OP suing paypal though, seriously. Good to see someone really fighting. Hope that works out well for you. IMHO, I don't think this will go anywhere, at all.
It makes sense to me that Paypal is at odds with Bitcoin, therefore have decided to use these tactics. It's believable, to me.
Why does that make sense? Paypal has nothing to gain from being against bitcoins. Paypal is not a form of currency. Bitcoins in no way threatens their profits and business model, and bitcoins is not competing against them in any way.
My guess is OP did something else to piss them off and they had no choice. I mean, if you are doing a million dollars worth of sales like you said, then all they stand to do is benefit from your service. So you most likely did something wrong you aren't telling us.
Paypal, and consequently eBay, is very much at odds with Bitcoin as a merchant payment. Specifically, they are at odds with Bitpay and other Bitcoin payment processors.
Besides eBay being impacted because they own Paypal, until they accept Bitcoins, then people will have have a reason to switch to auctions that do. On the other hand, if they do accept Bitcoins, then it erodes their Paypal business.
No, they aren't
Something seems...fishy about this whole story. I've never heard of Paypal having anything against bitcoins, especially the actual hardware used because it's just computer hardware.
There must be something else in that mess of a wall you're not telling people.
There must be something else in that mess of a wall you're not telling people.
I agree something is fishy with this story. It's not just paypal that does this, all merchant accounts have high risk departments that hold customers money for a certain amount of time. Paypal is just one of the worst because so many of their customers are joe smo's who have no merchant processing backgrounds and deal in high risk/high chargeback businesses (like selling used equipment, and in a notoriously chargeback friendly btc field)
Best of luck to the OP suing paypal though, seriously. Good to see someone really fighting. Hope that works out well for you. IMHO, I don't think this will go anywhere, at all.
It makes sense to me that Paypal is at odds with Bitcoin, therefore have decided to use these tactics. It's believable, to me.
Why does that make sense? Paypal has nothing to gain from being against bitcoins. Paypal is not a form of currency. Bitcoins in no way threatens their profits and business model, and bitcoins is not competing against them in any way.
My guess is OP did something else to piss them off and they had no choice. I mean, if you are doing a million dollars worth of sales like you said, then all they stand to do is benefit from your service. So you most likely did something wrong you aren't telling us.
Paypal, and consequently eBay, is very much at odds with Bitcoin as a merchant payment. Specifically, they are at odds with Bitpay and other Bitcoin payment processors.
Besides eBay being impacted because they own Paypal, until they accept Bitcoins, then people will have have a reason to switch to auctions that do. On the other hand, if they do accept Bitcoins, then it erodes their Paypal business.
Something seems...fishy about this whole story. I've never heard of Paypal having anything against bitcoins, especially the actual hardware used because it's just computer hardware.
There must be something else in that mess of a wall you're not telling people.
There must be something else in that mess of a wall you're not telling people.
I agree something is fishy with this story. It's not just paypal that does this, all merchant accounts have high risk departments that hold customers money for a certain amount of time. Paypal is just one of the worst because so many of their customers are joe smo's who have no merchant processing backgrounds and deal in high risk/high chargeback businesses (like selling used equipment, and in a notoriously chargeback friendly btc field)
Best of luck to the OP suing paypal though, seriously. Good to see someone really fighting. Hope that works out well for you. IMHO, I don't think this will go anywhere, at all.
It makes sense to me that Paypal is at odds with Bitcoin, therefore have decided to use these tactics. It's believable, to me.
Why does that make sense? Paypal has nothing to gain from being against bitcoins. Paypal is not a form of currency. Bitcoins in no way threatens their profits and business model, and bitcoins is not competing against them in any way.
My guess is OP did something else to piss them off and they had no choice. I mean, if you are doing a million dollars worth of sales like you said, then all they stand to do is benefit from your service. So you most likely did something wrong you aren't telling us.
It makes sense because Paypal's business is based on processing transactions. Once more people start using Bitcoin for their transactions, Paypall will do less business. Less business means less profit. Do you see the connection?
No I don't. Paypals business is based on secure, safe transactions.
Despite what everyone here will tell you, paypal isn't doing this because of profits. They're doing it to help combat fraud, which to me sounds 100% understandable. It says right in their policy you can't sell bitcoin miners or bitcoins, yet OP did anyways which is why they froze and put holds on his accounts.
Combat fraud?
I guess you missed the "HIT GOLD" section, and besides he is selling computers (miners) not bitcoins.
This. If they're going to ban things based on their ability to hash SHA 256 they might want to start banning all computers tablets and cell phones...
Just got off the phone with PayPal about my limited account. They said my account was limited for a couple of reasons:
1) due to the recent influx of high dollar amount transactions in my account (the previous product I was selling averaged $300, while the AsicMiner Cubes are about $800-900 which is not a huge increase really),
and
2) due to Bitcoin related products being treated as "high risk" by PayPal's underwriting department
They are waiting for all the shipment tracking status to show as "Delivered" before they will remove the limit, and at this point I have one package left to Greece which has not arrived yet. However she said they would consider releasing a portion of the funds right now (she will get back to me by the end of today).
She said the best way to avoid this is to have a rolling reserve of funds in my account to cover any disputes for up to 60 days after the transactions. I typically withdraw the money bi-weekly, leaving enough for returns to cover my 14 day return policy, since I am nervous about keeping ANY balance in PayPal. However I'm fine with keeping a larger reserve in my PayPal account if it means preventing my account from getting frozen again. However my gut feeling is that despite keeping a reserve in the account, my account will continue to get flagged/frozen as long as I continue to sell Bitcoin mining hardware.
I think it might just be an automated system with a penchant for flagging Bitcoin related items.
I will keep you all posted.
1) due to the recent influx of high dollar amount transactions in my account (the previous product I was selling averaged $300, while the AsicMiner Cubes are about $800-900 which is not a huge increase really),
and
2) due to Bitcoin related products being treated as "high risk" by PayPal's underwriting department
They are waiting for all the shipment tracking status to show as "Delivered" before they will remove the limit, and at this point I have one package left to Greece which has not arrived yet. However she said they would consider releasing a portion of the funds right now (she will get back to me by the end of today).
She said the best way to avoid this is to have a rolling reserve of funds in my account to cover any disputes for up to 60 days after the transactions. I typically withdraw the money bi-weekly, leaving enough for returns to cover my 14 day return policy, since I am nervous about keeping ANY balance in PayPal. However I'm fine with keeping a larger reserve in my PayPal account if it means preventing my account from getting frozen again. However my gut feeling is that despite keeping a reserve in the account, my account will continue to get flagged/frozen as long as I continue to sell Bitcoin mining hardware.
I think it might just be an automated system with a penchant for flagging Bitcoin related items.I will keep you all posted.
Very interesting, they've only hassled me once but they've never locked my funds. The women I spoke with said it was related to the number of chargebacks they are receiving on bitcoin miners. I'm guessing almost all pre-order miners that have ended up on eBay and never delivered certainly resulted in chargebacks. It seems it would be easy to determine what is a preorder by looking at the delivery confirmations but they are just red flagging all miner related sales. I think a manager you spoke with also singled you out after you made him work a bit.
I hope you win this. I have been screwed by them a few times. Recently lost $600 to their crappy policies.
Bunch of grammar-nazis on here.
Way to go. I've had trouble with paypal as well but not the resources to fight it.
Way to go. I've had trouble with paypal as well but not the resources to fight it.
Its like watching a Catholic priest get charged with molestation, and dozens of people come out of the woodwork to testify.
I cant wait to watch paypal burn for this.
I cant wait to watch paypal burn for this.
Toasting in an epic bread.
Anyway, this will be interesting and PayPal has really made a monumental mistake if they think they can screw mining hardware sellers in this way.
Anyway, this will be interesting and PayPal has really made a monumental mistake if they think they can screw mining hardware sellers in this way.
OP - please contact me. I left you a PM. I have been selling on eBay since 2003. I've been steadily selling Android TV media boxes for over 1 year now. Never had any problems. However my PayPal account was frozen about 2 weeks after I started selling AsicMiner Cubes. They are holding a significant amount of money and refuse to release the funds, although I have fulfilled their requirements of providing proof of delivery and copy of invoices. They have not said anything about Bitcoin, however their underwriting department said that I'm selling a "high risk item"... Not sure what to do at this point...
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