First, it's not always "small claims." In the case of our charity fundraising at Christmas, we had collected $20,000 for those kids. That means real court, with real lawyers, and going up against PayPal's legal department. They will file motion after motion after motion and bankrupt your legal fund.
And really, public airing of corporate bad deeds is extremely effective. After we publicly shamed PayPal for keeping fees on charity donations they forced us to refund, they were embarrassed enough to donate $20,000 to 200 needy families.
Traditional court is not where individuals really have power.
In the phone call I had with a PayPal executive after the Christmas debacle, It was stated to me that when an account is frozen for bringing in too much money too quickly, the CS representative taking calls is asked to "make a judgment call. " In our case, "they made a very, very incorrect one."
That's my entire complaint with this process. In any other business, a good customer who makes you money gets dedicated customer service. Your account is treated carefully. That's not how they do it there.
I also want to say that I understand the compulsion to lay blame at the feet of the person being screwed over in stories like these ("They used the wrong button!" "They didn't read the TOU!"). Human nature is such that we have to find fault with the person on the receiving end of treatment like this. We desperately want to believe that if we'e very good, nothing bad will ever happen to us.
>I also want to say that I understand the compulsion to lay blame at the feet of the person being screwed over in stories like these ("They used the wrong button!" "They didn't read the TOU!"). Human nature is such that we have to find fault with the person on the receiving end of treatment like this. We desperately want to believe that if we'e very good, nothing bad will ever happen to us.
I'd say this is roughly 50/50. While Paypal's customer service is legendarily bad, and there's no excuse for not providing a method to talk to a live human, there's also no excuse for not reading the T&C and knowing what you can and cannot do, moreso if you're a business. This is a friggin' payment processor. One of your lifelines as a business. Not reading the terms is one of the dumbest possible things I can think of doing.
And this isn't a case of fine print, either. It's not hard to find Paypal's policy on preorders, or other things which you are specifically not supposed to do, and in fact agreed in advance not to do when you signed up.
You'd think that people knowing in advance that they're dealing with the devil would make them scrutinize the details that much more...
I stand corrected then. Process must be different when they call.
You are right about the human nature. Marketing is also to blame. You read "Accept money now ! click here and be ready in 5 minutes." so that's what you start doing, and it works great for a moment.
First, it's not always "small claims." In the case of our charity fundraising at Christmas, we had collected $20,000 for those kids. That means real court, with real lawyers, and going up against PayPal's legal department. They will file motion after motion after motion and bankrupt your legal fund.
And really, public airing of corporate bad deeds is extremely effective. After we publicly shamed PayPal for keeping fees on charity donations they forced us to refund, they were embarrassed enough to donate $20,000 to 200 needy families.
Traditional court is not where individuals really have power.