To each their own. Use something else if you want, but there's millions of people who don't want PHP to die.
537 karma · joined March 19, 2010
yum install ImageMagick-devel.i386
pecl install imagick
echo "extension=imagick.so" > /etc/php.d/imagick.ini
service httpd restart
PayPal's automated fraud detection is notoriously inaccurate. They also don't have very good customer service. For years their phone number was hidden 10 pages deep where no one could find it. They freeze your account and hide from you.
A while back they ran into some trouble with the bank that was sponsoring their merchant account, they had to quickly make changes to keep processing.
Instead of spending money to improve their fraud/risk algorithm, they just lowered the threshold that triggers an account freeze, which helps with fraud but also drastically increases the number of false-positives, which they consider acceptable collateral damage.
They aren't even nice about it. Why tell me my account is "frozen"? Why can't they say "Congratulations on the recent spike in transactions. Your business must be doing well and we are delighted to hear that! Please give us a call when you can so we can go over some additional documentation that we will need from you".
Think about this: PayPal freezes your account, which brings your business to a halt, then you have to scramble to fix it. PayPal doesn't need to freeze your account, they can just as easily prevent you from withdrawing money to your bank account, which sucks but it probably won't kill your business. At least your customers can still pay you. They even have a "window" to reverse most transactions, but they would rather just freeze your account and act all nonchalant about it.
The logistics of PayPal is all wrong. Work with your customers, not against them.
- ACH transfer the money out.
- Create checks using the account info, send it to a sucker on Craigslist who then deposits it and sends most of it back to you through Western Union, Money Gram, etc.
- Open credit cards or loans in your name. Not long ago they were getting peer-to-peer loans on Prosper.com but it's not as popular anymore.
- Buy stuff with your credit card or a "virtual check"(account # and routing #) and then sell it.
- Sell the information and let someone else worry about it.
If they get enough information about you, they can use that combined with some social engineering & fraud to accomplish nearly anything. They can even get replacement documents such as your birth certificate or license, depending how good they are.
The primary problem is that to do this right, you will need to spend a lot on legal fees or find a lawyer to work for equity in your idea(you wouldn't even have a single customer yet).
I've run the scenario a million times and I would love to create a start-up that can disrupt, maybe even revolutionize the payment processing industry. My friend runs one of the big PayPal sucks sites, and makes several million collecting residuals by forwarding angry PayPal customers to open a real merchant account. I've seen first hand every possible complaint and gripe you can imagine.
Someone find me a VC that wants in on this. I'll take a $1 salary.
- Sell infected users software to remove it.
- Replace links with affiliate links.
- Redirect websites/searches to other sites.
- Steal your data and sell it.
- Turn your computer into a zombie (botnet), at which point you and thousands of other infected computers attack various business servers around the world.
That's the jist of it. It's all about money.
There is also a delay in the crushing so you don't know how often we look for mutual crushes so you never know when to change the 20(max limit) you already have.
Think about it the other way too: They were told, but you weren't. You think she just doesn't crush you, but maybe she did and you weren't told. What if she was told and she starts flirting with me?
The mystery is glorious.
They mentioned something about not allowing "intangible products" but it was complete bullshit because they always have, always will, and still allow intangible products. This wasn't their reasoning for it but just something they vaguely mentioned once, I never did get any answers out of them.
They permanently froze my account after I refunded everyone and refused to talk to me when I called. I wasn't able to get a merchant account and I lost thousands of PayPal recurring subscriptions. This was the death of my first start-up.
PayPal is a scam and it's not as uncommon as you think. If you're using PayPal, your time will come. I didn't think they would do it to me either, they never bothered me once until all of this went down.
Check out Linode or SoftLayer.
I'd like to see him pull off another startup and grow it to be as big as Reddit is, then everyone would know it wasn't just luck and would have much more confidence in him.
As an angel investor, what is he bringing to the table? He has some experience with startups but not a whole lot. He was a non-technical co-founder and spent most of his time using Reddit like any other user. He didn't do any coding, scaling, or sysadmin work. Reddit isn't even profitable.
He did draw the Reddit alien though...
The entire process changes when you get into a particular range, it varies but for the most part $500 to $2000 seems to be the common upper limit. Anything above that can take days, weeks, sometimes even months of going through the process.
I did some consulting for a large company and it took 4 weeks for them to go through the process of sending me around 2-3 grand. It wasn't even "approval" that took so long, it was just the process of going up the ladder and waiting each step along the way.
If the company is large enough that I will never be able to directly talk to the "decision maker" then I pass on it. I don't have the patience to let them run me around in circles.
Either that or your time just hasn't come yet :)
They permanently froze my account after I refunded everyone and refused to talk to me when I called. I wasn't able to get a merchant account and I lost thousands of PayPal recurring subscriptions. This was the death of my first start-up.
PayPal is a scam and it's not as uncommon as you think. If you're using PayPal, your time will come. I didn't think they would do it to me either, they never bothered me once until all of this went down.