Post by Philip HandsHi Folks,
Since this list has people that are reasonably likely to come up with
crowdfunding projects, I thought I'd point at this sorry state of
http://neo900.org/news/paypal-trouble-delays-project
(the link to http://garethhayes.net/paypal-warning/ is hardly
encouraging either)
I have been somewhat aware of this situation - the Neo900 one, not the
Australian one - and I can only say that it is most unfortunate.
PayPal has a poor-enough reputation that I refuse to use their service at all:
I've seen people struggle with getting an account enabled to be able to pay
people fairly urgently, seeing them go round and round in the stupid card-
sampling verification loop to no avail; it used to be possible to pay random
merchants by card via PayPal, but now they appear to want you to create an
account to do so, and even with an account in the bag, a simple transaction
becomes something that Kafka wrote up. I've even read reports of jurisdiction-
surfing (moving Swiss accounts to Singapore, if I remember correctly), and it
wouldn't surprise me if their European residence is in the most leniently-
regulated venue that can still offer services to people in the EU.
The last time I was confronted with the option to pay by PayPal, I had a nice
chat with the merchant (Fritzing Fab) and we agreed on a bank transfer
instead, to everybody's satisfaction. Merchants/vendors feel that they need to
offer convenient ways of paying for things. Sadly, there are people for whom
PayPal has caused no problems who see fit on insisting on using the service
for payment. As Werner writes...
"However, after many supporters asked for a means to pay by credit card, due
to wire transfers being difficult and expensive for them, we looked for a way
to accommodate these wishes."
Now, it may be the case that some people would otherwise have to use archaic
banking systems that don't offer decently-priced transfers to Europe (or
within Europe if we're thinking of UK banks). However, convenience may have
been king for some people for whom PayPal is easiest but where other options
would still have been easy. I would encourage people to reconsider their
preference for PayPal even if it causes them slightly more inconvenience and
slightly more cost, because the result (as we see here) is neither more
convenient nor less costly.
Not that anyone really needs to be told this (or maybe thinks that they need
to be told this), but anyway.
Paul
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