Paypal grudgingly caves to public pressure

[Ken]

19th May, 2004 : Paypal grudgingly caves to public pressure

We received a seemingly automatic message from Paypal indicating that our account has been restored:

Thank you for taking the steps to restore your account access. Your patience and efforts increase security for our entire community of users.

Unfortunately, it seems that the steps they refer to involve being a sufficiently high-profile project that it generates potentially damaging publicity, and our concern about Paypal extends beyond those people that are capable of generating significant levels of negative attention.

Our feeling is that in the absence of an explanation or apology from Paypal, we will not continue to advocate usage of their service. Paypal may have a legal right to discontinue service to its customers, but it has a moral obligation to offer a reasonable explanation for its actions, particularly where a faithful and profitable customer such as the Freenet Project Inc is concerned.

Source

[Shawn]

There is nothing so inspiring as people who do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

[Bombardier]

There is nothing so inspiring as people who do the right thing for the wrong reasons.

You got that right :rolleyes:

[MoonMan]

Read up, they apologized.

24th May, 2004 : Paypal apologises

Today we received an email from Amy Stohlman, an AUP Supervisor at Paypal. She said:

I sincerely apologize for the difficulties you have encountered with your PayPal account. The company values your business, and I would like to offer my apologies for the inconvenience you may have experienced as a result of the limitation placed on your PayPal account, as well as an explanation for the reason the limited access occurred.

Your PayPal account [...] was placed under limited access on May 17, 2004, when a review of the website from which you were accepting donations indicated the use of an anonymizing proxy, which is a violation of our user agreement. Often, when there are issues with a PayPal account, the account is limited in order to protect both buyers and sellers.

Further review of your PayPal account in conjunction with your website indicated that while you were accepting donations for this service, you were not using an anonymizing proxy to access your PayPal account. Accordingly, full access was restored to your account on May 18, 2004. [...]

We feel that this is a fair response to our concerns and have restored Paypal donations. Our only regrets are that it took so long to get to this point, and that Paypal's initial reaction was that there could be no appeal against this decision. We would like to extend our thanks to everyone that helped to persuade Paypal to take a closer look at our case. I responded to Ms Stohlman with some suggestions for how this situation can be avoided with other customers in the future - Ian

Edited May 24, 2004 by MoonMan

[Ken]

Thanks for the update Moony.