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PayPal sucks: SA forced to refund $27K of Hurricane donations!
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Status:
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http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3186
This is horrible! To recap, somethingawful.com, whose servers were in New Orleans, collected over $27K to be donated to the Red Cross on Paypal. Paypal inexplicably freezes the account and when he's finally able to get a hold of a person there, they say the only thing they can do is donate the money to the corrupt United Way, and not the Red Cross. They do agree to refund all of the donations though.
The moral? Be sure to donate directly to the Red Cross and not through PayPal! The sad thing is he got that many donations because he offered SA merchandise to donators and most likely won't be able to get nearly as much of that money donated directly to the Red Cross by members.
Spread this around - to news outlets if possible. PayPal needs to be seriously embarrassed for this!
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jun 2005
Status:
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What I don't understand is why SA even used Paypal as a middleman. Why not donate directly to the Red Cross.
I'll still continue to use paypal though.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Status:
Offline
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RTFA! From the article:
The entire reason I chose to use Paypal was so I could collect the names and addresses of each donor and send them some free Something Awful merchandise for their contributions. Trust me, I would've rather had people donate directly to the Red Cross, but they would not provide me with the names and address of those who contributed.
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Addicted to MacNN  Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Cooperstown '09
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
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PayPal likely froze the funds because auditors presumed the site was pulling a relief scam. And frankly I don't really find that guy's explanation for not sending the money directly to be very credible. I don't know why PayPal refused to give the money to the Red Cross, however. Until now I wasn't aware of the significant corruption scandal that occurred with the United Way.
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"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
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Administrator  Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: San Antonio TX USA
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I do have to point out that if one follows the "Contact Us" link on PayPal's home page, one gets their (non-toll free) Customer Service Center phone number in about three clicks.
I've been pretty hyperventilated about some of PayPal's practices myself, but overall I think they're just too bureaucratic for their own good. Truly evil policies would be, well, evil, not just stupid. I would certainly think that it would be appropriate for PayPal to have put on extra help and done some extra setup to handle the flood of donations they could easily have predicted in the WEEK since the hurricane hit. They're not great at business, that's for sure.
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Glenn -----
OTR/L, MOT, Tx
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jun 2005
Status:
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Yeah. This isn't that big of a deal that SA is making it to be.
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Administrator Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: San Antonio TX USA
Status:
Offline
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Originally Posted by Big Mac
PayPal likely froze the funds because auditors presumed the site was pulling a relief scam. And frankly I don't really find that guy's explanation for not sending the money directly to be very credible. I don't know why PayPal refused to give the money to the Red Cross, however. Until now I wasn't aware of the significant corruption scandal that occurred with the United Way.
It was more with their management than anything else, and IIRC, they found it themselves. The United Way is a pretty good umbrella agency, and while I don't give throught them right now, I have done so in the past. At the moment my charitible donations go to targeted organizations, such as the Red Cross and the American Heart Association.
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Glenn -----
OTR/L, MOT, Tx
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: ------>
Status:
Offline
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Good for SA that they had the heart to do this in the first place. I'll be curious to see if they go back to being a bunch of a$$holes when the crisis is over.
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"'Jelly Hat' sounds silly," I told Prince. "How about something poetic, like 'Raspberry Beret.'"
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Baninated
Join Date: Jan 2005
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SA has raised money repeatedly for good causes. This is the first time they have been run over by stupidity on the part of a company like paypal.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Kyoto, Japan
Status:
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Originally Posted by awaspaas
RTFA! From the article:
The other reason, I believe, is that a lot of people have a few dollars sitting around in a PayPal account that they wouldn't mind giving up as much as putting something on their credit card. The Red Cross doesn't allow donations directly through PayPal.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 2003
Status:
Offline
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Originally Posted by ghporter
I do have to point out that if one follows the "Contact Us" link on PayPal's home page, one gets their (non-toll free) Customer Service Center phone number in about three clicks.
If you read the linked article you would read that they tried convincing Paypal that it was legit. They also have some links about United Way as well.
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"angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress"
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jun 2005
Status:
Offline
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Originally Posted by BlueSky
Good for SA that they had the heart to do this in the first place. I'll be curious to see if they go back to being a bunch of a$$holes when the crisis is over.
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