Paypal: feel the love
You’ve probably read about (or even felt) the anger over Paypal “stealing money” from Regretsy, which is only the latest in a series of things they’ve done that have pissed the Internet off. I suspect, given the attention this is getting, they’ll fix this. (Unlike them cutting off Wikileaks, this time Paypal is as coming as close to stealing from orphans before Christmas as one can get without writing a Dickens story.) This will quiet down. Then, within six months, they’ll do something else to piss the Internet off.
In no particular order, here’s a few random thoughts.
The key to understanding Paypal is this: Their policies in dealing with their customers are all crafted with the assumption that their customers are out to screw them. It’s not that they don’t want to do business with you, it’s that they don’t trust you. Ever. Under any circumstance. They want your money, but they hate you.
They hate you because in a measurable percentage of their transactions, people are trying to screw them over. As the cliché goes, it’s not paranoia when they really are out to get you.
Except that approaching every transaction with that attitude really is paranoia.
For at least 99% worth of transactions involving Paypal, though, everything goes smoothly. And I’m probably overestimating the “bad” transactions by an order of magnitude. When I’m buying online, if a merchant has a Paypal option, the vast majority of the time that’s what I choose, because it means I don’t need to enter my credit card. That appeals to both my laziness (I don’t need to go over and get my wallet) and my security.
If you buy stuff online routinely, getting away from Paypal is pretty hard. Even though they hate you, nobody else does what they do as well as they do. They’re easier and cheaper for merchants to deal with (when things go right), they’re easier and faster for customers to deal with (when things go right).
As people point out whenever Paypal does something terrible involving someone else’s money, Paypal can do these things because they’re not a regulated financial institution. Paypal may not be the only outcome one gets when the free market is left to create its own unregulated, uninsured bank (which it is, in all but name), but it’s clearly an outcome.
And speaking of that free market, shouldn’t it have created a competitor to Paypal that, by merely taking the stance of not treating their customers as criminals, would have eaten their lunch? Seriously, Paypal shouldn’t be the only outcome. But I’m not going to stop using them. They hate me, I hate them, but there’s no truly useful alternative.
Did you mention Google Checkout? Seriously? Oh, you’re funny.
