Bitcoin Vs. Paypal - and PayPal is getting sued.

[cryptoirc]

Good luck, they ruined my booming business too. I was at the peak of my sales and they limited me as well several times.

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[vandeam]

Good Luck Bro!!
I really hope you will win!

Maybe Bitcoin be with you!

[cp1]

Go for it, just expect them to close your account give you a pittance and a NDA and forbid you from ever doing business with them again.

/sued paypal many years ago and won.

That's what I'm thinking too.

[Abdi Shakur]

Good for you and best of luck as others have said please keep us updated.

[Kenshin]

Good luck, they ruined my booming business too. I was at the peak of my sales and they limited me as well several times.

I was in the same position. I was at my peak, and I was selling more than 10 mining equipments a day. Then those bastard limited my account for 2 months. Now I got my account back. And I can't sell the price I was selling now.

[ecoinclub]

Thank you! You are taking a stand for all of us (literally all of us)

[rezilient]

OP - please contact me.  I left you a PM.  I have been selling on eBay since 2003.  I've been steadily selling Android TV media boxes for over 1 year now.  Never had any problems.  However my PayPal account was frozen about 2 weeks after I started selling AsicMiner Cubes.  They are holding a significant amount of money and refuse to release the funds, although I have fulfilled their requirements of providing proof of delivery and copy of invoices.  They have not said anything about Bitcoin, however their underwriting department said that I'm selling a "high risk item"... Not sure what to do at this point...

[lethe]

Toasting in an epic bread.

Anyway, this will be interesting and PayPal has really made a monumental mistake if they think they can screw mining hardware sellers in this way.

[ratty]

Its like watching a Catholic priest get charged with molestation, and dozens of people come out of the woodwork to testify.
I cant wait to watch paypal burn for this.

[snaxion]

Bunch of grammar-nazis on here.

Way to go. I've had trouble with paypal as well but not the resources to fight it.

[jballs]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1iyzkg/if_you_get_caught_selling_bitcoin_hardware_on/cb9sovr

[nairb131]

I hope you win this. I have been screwed by them a few times. Recently lost $600 to their crappy policies.

[CrazyGuy]

Very interesting, they've only hassled me once but they've never locked my funds. The women I spoke with said it was related to the number of chargebacks they are receiving on bitcoin miners. I'm guessing almost all pre-order miners that have ended up on eBay and never delivered certainly resulted in chargebacks. It seems it would be easy to determine what is a preorder by looking at the delivery confirmations but they are just red flagging all miner related sales. I think a manager you spoke with also singled you out after you made him work a bit.

[rezilient]

Just got off the phone with PayPal about my limited account.  They said my account was limited for a couple of reasons:

1) due to the recent influx of high dollar amount transactions in my account (the previous product I was selling averaged $300, while the AsicMiner Cubes are about $800-900 which is not a huge increase really),
and
2) due to Bitcoin related products being treated as "high risk" by PayPal's underwriting department

They are waiting for all the shipment tracking status to show as "Delivered" before they will remove the limit, and at this point I have one package left to Greece which has not arrived yet.  However she said they would consider releasing a portion of the funds right now (she will get back to me by the end of today).  

She said the best way to avoid this is to have a rolling reserve of funds in my account to cover any disputes for up to 60 days after the transactions.  I typically withdraw the money bi-weekly, leaving enough for returns to cover my 14 day return policy, since I am nervous about keeping ANY balance in PayPal.  However I'm fine with keeping a larger reserve in my PayPal account if it means preventing my account from getting frozen again.  However my gut feeling is that despite keeping a reserve in the account, my account will continue to get flagged/frozen as long as I continue to sell Bitcoin mining hardware.  I think it might just be an automated system with a penchant for flagging Bitcoin related items.

I will keep you all posted.

[vpitcher07]

Something seems...fishy about this whole story. I've never heard of Paypal having anything against bitcoins, especially the actual hardware used because it's just computer hardware.

There must be something else in that mess of a wall you're not telling people.

I agree something is fishy with this story. It's not just paypal that does this, all merchant accounts have high risk departments that hold customers money for a certain amount of time. Paypal is just one of the worst because so many of their customers are joe smo's who have no merchant processing backgrounds and deal in high risk/high chargeback businesses (like selling used equipment, and in a notoriously chargeback friendly btc field)

Best of luck to the OP suing paypal though, seriously. Good to see someone really fighting. Hope that works out well for you. IMHO, I don't think this will go anywhere, at all.

It makes sense to me that Paypal is at odds with Bitcoin, therefore have decided to use these tactics. It's believable, to me.

Why does that make sense? Paypal has nothing to gain from being against bitcoins. Paypal is not a form of currency. Bitcoins in no way threatens their profits and business model, and bitcoins is not competing against them in any way.

My guess is OP did something else to piss them off and they had no choice. I mean, if you are doing a million dollars worth of sales like you said, then all they stand to do is benefit from your service. So you most likely did something wrong you aren't telling us.

It makes sense because Paypal's business is based on processing transactions. Once more people start using Bitcoin for their transactions, Paypall will do less business. Less business means less profit. Do you see the connection?

No I don't. Paypals business is based on secure, safe transactions.  

Despite what everyone here will tell you, paypal isn't doing this because of profits. They're doing it to help combat fraud, which to me sounds 100% understandable. It says right in their policy you can't sell bitcoin miners or bitcoins, yet OP did anyways which is why they froze and put holds on his accounts.

Combat fraud?
I guess you missed the "HIT GOLD" section, and besides he is selling computers (miners) not bitcoins.

This. If they're going to ban things based on their ability to hash SHA 256 they might want to start banning all computers tablets and cell phones...

[erik777]

Something seems...fishy about this whole story. I've never heard of Paypal having anything against bitcoins, especially the actual hardware used because it's just computer hardware.

There must be something else in that mess of a wall you're not telling people.

I agree something is fishy with this story. It's not just paypal that does this, all merchant accounts have high risk departments that hold customers money for a certain amount of time. Paypal is just one of the worst because so many of their customers are joe smo's who have no merchant processing backgrounds and deal in high risk/high chargeback businesses (like selling used equipment, and in a notoriously chargeback friendly btc field)

Best of luck to the OP suing paypal though, seriously. Good to see someone really fighting. Hope that works out well for you. IMHO, I don't think this will go anywhere, at all.

It makes sense to me that Paypal is at odds with Bitcoin, therefore have decided to use these tactics. It's believable, to me.

Why does that make sense? Paypal has nothing to gain from being against bitcoins. Paypal is not a form of currency. Bitcoins in no way threatens their profits and business model, and bitcoins is not competing against them in any way.

My guess is OP did something else to piss them off and they had no choice. I mean, if you are doing a million dollars worth of sales like you said, then all they stand to do is benefit from your service. So you most likely did something wrong you aren't telling us.

Paypal, and consequently eBay, is very much at odds with Bitcoin as a merchant payment.  Specifically, they are at odds with Bitpay and other Bitcoin payment processors. 

Besides eBay being impacted because they own Paypal, until they accept Bitcoins, then people will have have a reason to switch to auctions that do.  On the other hand, if they do accept Bitcoins, then it erodes their Paypal business. 

[Kungfucheez]

Something seems...fishy about this whole story. I've never heard of Paypal having anything against bitcoins, especially the actual hardware used because it's just computer hardware.

There must be something else in that mess of a wall you're not telling people.

I agree something is fishy with this story. It's not just paypal that does this, all merchant accounts have high risk departments that hold customers money for a certain amount of time. Paypal is just one of the worst because so many of their customers are joe smo's who have no merchant processing backgrounds and deal in high risk/high chargeback businesses (like selling used equipment, and in a notoriously chargeback friendly btc field)

Best of luck to the OP suing paypal though, seriously. Good to see someone really fighting. Hope that works out well for you. IMHO, I don't think this will go anywhere, at all.

It makes sense to me that Paypal is at odds with Bitcoin, therefore have decided to use these tactics. It's believable, to me.

Why does that make sense? Paypal has nothing to gain from being against bitcoins. Paypal is not a form of currency. Bitcoins in no way threatens their profits and business model, and bitcoins is not competing against them in any way.

My guess is OP did something else to piss them off and they had no choice. I mean, if you are doing a million dollars worth of sales like you said, then all they stand to do is benefit from your service. So you most likely did something wrong you aren't telling us.

Paypal, and consequently eBay, is very much at odds with Bitcoin as a merchant payment.  Specifically, they are at odds with Bitpay and other Bitcoin payment processors. 

Besides eBay being impacted because they own Paypal, until they accept Bitcoins, then people will have have a reason to switch to auctions that do.  On the other hand, if they do accept Bitcoins, then it erodes their Paypal business. 

No, they aren't

[nimda]

Aw I didn't know Bitmit shutdown.

It's a shame, too. None of the competition provides close to what they had.

[Duane Vick]

I hope they get that manager that said it was due to you selling bitcoin hardware in a deposition so she can explain why she knows that.

[surebet]

Docket number please, I'd like to follow this on PACER.