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Comment by die_sekte | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that money transfer and storage tend to be rather heavy and complex things. And countries like to regulate banking.

But nevertheless, a online payment thingie that doesn't suck? Sign me up!

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Paypal isn't even considered a bank in any of the countries it operates in (except Luxembourg, where they serve all of the EU). This means they're not subject to any of the regulations that are attempts to keep banks honest.

Keeping your money in PayPal is a massive risk. As a customer, you have no protection, no deposit insurance (covered by your Federal government in Canada and USA), and basically when things go wrong, you are stuck with sending emails and legal action.

What a massive scam. Spread the word: avoid PayPal.

Besides this incident, what other evidence do you present that Paypal is a massive scam? I've used paypal for 5 years and never had a problem. I'm sure things like this happen, but it has to be a negligible percentage of their volume.

It's not. Someone tried to rip us off on Paypal once. After they received confirmation that we'd shipped their product, they contacted Paypal, claiming that we'd scammed them, and demanding their money ($400ish) back. They got it, immediately and without any real question asked. As I'd already transfered most of the money out of the Paypal account, the amount I actually lost was small, but my account had a balance of negative several hundred dollars, which meant I couldn't use it for anything. It took about a month to get them to reset my account balance to zero, which is the point I stopped trying at, even though it still left me down the fifty dollars I hadn't withdrawn.

S'yeah. Paypal is pretty horrible.

Not my own personal experiences.....but nevertheless: http://www.paypalsucks.com/

If it's registered as a bank in Luxembourg, it is a bank it the whole EU. Just like an organisation registered as a bank in Iowa would be considered a bank in Nevada as well.

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