[AngryData]

Almost 20 years ago now paypal stole my $15 for no cause, I bought a videogame with it once off a major website, had $15 in it sitting around for 6 months, tried to use it to buy something off ebay and got locked out instantly. Then demanded all sorts of hoop jumping to get it back with notarized license and crap. Ive been saying screw them ever since, and not once have I regretted it. Every year there is some more shit showing that was the right move.

How many millions of dollars have they seized without cause? I can't believe they are still going, I can only hope someday somebody with a bit of money can sue their pants off in court and get them shut down.

[skizm]

I remember a long time ago on Reddit I saw a post saying (paraphrasing) "AMA: PayPal locked up $600,000 of my money because my video game is selling so quickly they think it is a scam." Turns out this was Notch selling early alpha versions of Minecraft off his personal website, which totally did look like a scam at the time.

[Kiboneu]

I didn’t get an impression that it looked like a scam. What makes you think that? The game was free before he started selling it.

[tokai]

With some of the promises Notch made back then it almost was a scam.

[righthand]

I tried to sign up for paypal to send money collected from coworkers for a pregnancy gift. I had to sign up, enter my bank info, then verify deposits went through to use the bank account. Once I did that my account was instantly locked, then I still couldn’t use my account until I called customer support and scanned in my ID. I called them to delete the account and just bought a digital gift card online.

[cj]

I thought companies can't profit off of unclaimed/abandoned money.

Was under the impression that funds like that eventually get handed over to whatever state agency is responsible for dealing with unclaimed property.

(If so, the cause might just be incompetence rather than greed or malice - not that incompetence is any better than malice when it comes to handling people's money)

[nitwit005]

They've faced a number of lawsuits for this, and paid out settlements. They are presumably not following the law.

[slumberlust]

If there's no one enforcing said rules you most certainly can.

[tmpfs]

I had an almost identical experience about 20 years ago too. I imagine they are still just as bad.

I think it is highly likely the wealth of the PayPal mafia founders is partly derived from this theft.

[kiba]

They have a monopoly and no meaningful alternatives and they're not the only monopoly.

[encom]

A monopoly on what? Online payments?

[tmtvl]

Yep. I tried paying with my card on Steam and it showed me a QR code and I was like 'what do you want me to do, hold my card up against the screen so it somehow magically makes the transfer happen?'. There simply isn't an alternative to PP in many cases. It sucks, but that's the state of online payments today. Crypto would be an alternative if it were the least bit stable. Wero seems promising but at the moment it doesn't work.

[fireant]

You might consider crypto debit card services - you load up crypto and can use it like a normal CC