Comment by notyourwork | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notyourwork | Hacker News Reader

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A much smaller scale but same problem. I for a holiday years ago received an iPod from two different relatives. My parents bought me one earlier that year so although appreciated I didn't want to offend family and try to ask for a receipt or return them. Therefore I opted for selling them via eBay. As an eBay small volume seller with 100% positive rating, I posted 2 iPods, sold and shipped to payer.

My account funds were frozen and paypal requested proof of purchase. At this point as a poor high school student I was flabbergasted they could withhold my money for no reason.

I reached out to both relatives, explained what happened and told them about the receipt paypal requested. Both send me a copy of the receipt which I supplied. Paypal rejected the receipts (I forget the reason) and told me they were not going to release the funds.

I determined they could only hold it for 6 months (I don't remember the legal reasons here). Therefore, I parked my account paypal account, 6 months later took my money and never looked back.

> Paypal rejected the receipts (I forget the reason)

This reminds me of when PayPal told me I needed to send them a scan of my drivers license, then rejected it as fake. ???

The upside is that my account isn't allowed to hold a balance, and they transfer any funds immediately to my bank, which... I dunno that seems like my account has been improved?

I've tied credit cards to PayPal, but not checking/savings accounts. The company historically has had very loud users who post about all of the bad experiences of having their bank account frozen by PayPal, who then proceeds to slow step their way to investigating. Having a personal bank account frozen for 6 months isn't something I'm prepared to tolerate for a moderate amount of retail convenience, even if the probability is extremely low.

Somewhat related funny: a friend of mine lived/s on "Isis Court". His Venmo transfers were always delayed/held for review for what we suspect are obvious reasons that the implementation of the State Department sanctioned persons list seems to be a substring match, ignoring that there are extremely relevant semantic differences between Isis that can show up in a street address in the USA and an employer/organization name in Western Asia.

PayPal has frozen people's personal accounts? How does that work? Paypal fraud team contacts bank fraud team?

I actually don't have independent verification that this is what actually happened. It's possible that the description of what happened was inaccurate.

That said, there are enough posts on PayPalSucks.com to scare a person away from using PayPal without lots of redundant/protective measures.

Saying your license is fake sounds to be grounds for a lawsuit

and after 4 years (if you have the six-seven figure cash), you win what?

> I didn't want to offend family and try to ask for a receipt or return them

>I reached out to both relatives, explained what happened and told them about the receipt paypal requested. Both send me a copy of the receipt which I supplied.

Sounds like the worst possible outcome. You no longer had the iPods. You didn’t get the money. The relatives found out you didn’t like their gift.

Second worst. Paypal confiscating the money might be worse, or SWATting you would be worse.

Waiting 6 months is a nice hack, but how about the guy who has waited 18 months for $25k? Does he just need to stop pestering them for 6 months and voilà? Or is the rule different above $5k? Or outside the US? Or outside Europe?

It's easy to bash PayPal but they probably implemented that after too many people used the platform to sell stolen goods. The receipt was probably in your relatives name's; which means you did not buy it. This is actually a good use case for Gift cards.

Absurd.

PayPal should just ask the seller to have the original purchaser make a statutory declaration stating the item was a gift to a relative / friend, maybe provide some sort of supporting documentation to prove the relationship.

Notarizations and medallions are not cheap.

Here in Australia the list of people who can notarise a stat dec is as long as your arm.

https://www.ag.gov.au/legal-system/statutory-declarations/wh...

Your point still stands, you may not know any of those people who are willing to witness a stat dec below the value of the funds in question.

I'm not clear on why selling 2 iPods is cause for Paypal to assume malicious intent. Selling dozens sure but come on.

Yes but that's PayPal's problem and it's up to them to find a solution that works for both sides, or leave the business and let a more competent company solve the problem. It's not an impossible problem to solve either, banks also have requirements to detect and block fraud and they do occasionally get it wrong but at the very least you are able to reach out to a human (and not a script-reading monkey, as in PayPal's case) and get any false-positives sorted out.

What is not right is presenting their service as easy to use, letting people sign up and sell items and then essentially steal the money unless they are lucky enough to pass their broken verification process.

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