GIANT Problem with PayPal Terms of Service

[okie john]

Saw this on Twitter.

Basically, PayPal can dock your account for $2,500 for anything they deem misinformation or hate speech. That's bad enough, but if we look under Prohibited Activities (https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full), then we find this:

You may not use the PayPal service for activities that:

1. violate any law, statute, ordinance or regulation.
2. relate to transactions involving (a) narcotics, steroids, certain controlled substances or other products that present a risk to consumer safety, (b) drug paraphernalia, (c) cigarettes, (d) items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity, (e) stolen goods including digital and virtual goods, (f) the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory or the financial exploitation of a crime, (g) items that are considered obscene, (h) items that infringe or violate any copyright, trademark, right of publicity or privacy or any other proprietary right under the laws of any jurisdiction, (i) certain sexually oriented materials or services, (j) ammunition, firearms, or certain firearm parts or accessories, or (k) certain weapons or knives regulated under applicable law.

Be careful. This policy probably will not withstand legal challenge but you don't want to be the test case.


Okie John

[Lon]

A buddy of mine had like $4500 seized by PayPal cuz the dipshit who bought 5.45 ammo from him put something like “ammo” in the PP payment info. And Jim didn’t transfer the $$ out immediately.

[JRB]

Saw this on Twitter.

Basically, PayPal can dock your account for $2,500 for anything they deem misinformation or hate speech. That's bad enough, but if we look under Prohibited Activities (https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/acceptableuse-full), then we find this:



Be careful. This policy probably will not withstand legal challenge but you don't want to be the test case.


Okie John

Paypal is hot garbage and protects nothing as a buyer or a seller. Their moratorium on firearm or ammunition related transactions has been around for a long time though.

Ostensibly the hate speech policy only applies if it's a transaction involving hate speech, which I'd imagine would be something like using paypal to pay for or sell profoundly racist materials or books or something.

Still, that's why I resent having Paypal and I have it pointed at an account that I keep basically empty.

[Borderland]

A scammer hit me for 50 bucks. I contacted PP resolution and they agreed I was owed some money. Lots of others were hit using PP by the same company.

OK. I got scammed. So did lots of other folks. Did PP do anything. Nope.

PP is worthless and the sooner people realize that the better we'll all be for that.

I see this site uses PP. That might not work for me on a reup.

[Willard]

I see this site uses PP. That might not work for me on a reup.

Gotta believe we can do better.

[entropy]

Face to face. Friends. Handshakes. I don’t need anything that bad, nor do I need to sell anything that bad to be their bitch. Life went on just fine before them. It’ll go on just fine without them. Next!

[Spartan1980]

How is this even legal? Seems a cease and desist letter from the Attorney General might have an effect? Oh wait...He's woke. Nevermind...

[RoyGBiv]

I think I put this in the BS thread, but, I've been working to close my PP account since that announcement came out (and was immediately rescinded).

I went through the trouble of figuring out a way for them to send me my <$3, then phoned (yes, phoned, via some convoluted chat session then phone) them and they told me they were having "technical problems" closing accounts.... and would I please mark my problem as closed since they removed all of the stops preventing my account from closing. I told them I would close the request when they closed my account (Schrodinger would be proud!). Logged in yesterday and the open request was deleted and I still can't close my account.

I was able to also delete all of my payment methods.... They don't let you delete the last one, but, I kept the nice Filipino lady on the phone long enough that she finally "worked out the problem" and deleted the last one. Then asked me to close the "close my account" request... LOL.

I opened up a fresh request.... let's see where it goes..

*Below images are from different days... so.. ignore time stamps...
** If you click the "End Message" button at the bottom, it closes the case!!!!!!

[BehindBlueI's]

I see this site uses PP. That might not work for me on a reup.

IIRC, @LittleLebowski had a workaround you could do manually, but you'll have to get with him. Mods aren't involved in that aspect of the site.

[WDR]

Ages ago, I opened a paypal account to buy a Dillon reloading press off of ebay. If I recall, this was after their merger. At the time, reloading equipment was not on their "prohibited items/transactions" list or whatever... and was allowed by both paypal and ebay.

A few months later, they closed my account, for "firearms related transactions"... No skin off my nose, as I had never used the account since then, and their anti-gun bias was growing all the time. Them freezing accounts, and locking folks out of their money was enough to sour me even way back then. I never linked a checking or credit card account, thankfully.

Years later I kept getting emails about attempted updates to my account. Seems somehow they had allowed themselves to be hacked or what have you... and someone was trying to gain access to my long dormant, and I thought, closed, account. I had to CALL them and run the gauntlet to actually CLOSE my account for good. I suppose maybe it actually is closed now.

I sometimes wish I had never used their service. But I've made a lot of ammo on that press.