Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

we stopped accepting paypal as a payment method about 18 months ago... best decision we ever made. I wish i could do the same with american express.

I get the occasional old person complain because the man at the computer course told them that if the site they go to won't accept paypal they shouldn't buy there and i wish them a nice day and all the best in their online shopping endeavours.

Paypal are a bunch of thieves and scammers. They will allow people to hack their customers accounts but won't protect the vendor who gets ripped off by the fraudulent purchase.

At least with a CC you can spot the frauds. with paypal you just don't know.

I think it's time to send Paypal a clear message about how they treat us as customers, once we get what we are owed. How dare they try to control who we sell to and hold our funds, sometimes companies forget where their income comes from, their customers lol. Geez if we treated our customers the way they treated us, we wouldn't still be in business.

Regarding the Cuba embargo. Feelings are still pretty strong for some people because of the Bay of Pigs invasion and also because some of them were betrayed by Castro after having fought with him to free the country. One of my college professors fell into this category. I'm not sure who owned all the casinos and businesses that got nationalized but they probably weren't to happy either.

Re - the paypal bit - they should just block sales to those countries through their service but allow all other sales. If they're not receiving any money from those countries then they don't have to worry about giving money out or reporting anyone. It's not their job to determine international opinion or compliance. I'd be curious what the credit card companies do regarding this and where they are based.

Should be moot if its just a US embargo, but I think the entire commonwealth is on some of those embargo lists. I'm not sure about Myanmar and Syria but pretty sure the others are a UN thing about human rights not a US thing. I'd check Australia's policy on the countries.

Edit: Found the Australian sanctions list, see all but Cuba. I didn't read all the details.

http://www.dfat.gov.au/un/unsc_sanctions/

if paypal are going to have a list of countries they deal with, why even make them available in the first place? surely that would make life easier for everyone?

regardless, i've given up on paypal since they wanted me to prove my identity 27 different ways just so I could pay some people. There are other ways.

Sorry to hear about this disaster

Just another example of the government screwing with peoples lives
Paypal are not really at fault here (except maybe seperating their AU and US businesses)
I blame the US government for preventing the free trade between countries.

Paypal US have no choice in this matter (except for the above where they shoulf automatically exclude the countries and separarte their business )

Modern day examples of mercantilism abound, and in actuality, are more common than the neo-free trade treaties that dot the commercial landscape of the early 21st century.

The greatest barriers to Free Trade are the sanctions programs instituted by governments, for instance the USA, (among 30 other nations), maintains, in addition to specific penalty tariffs, 16 specific nation targeted sanction programs, namely,

Balkans-Related Sanctions
Belarus Sanctions
Burma (Myanmar)Sanctions
Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)-Related Sanctions
Cuba Sanctions
Democratic Republic of the Congo-Related Sanctions
Iran Sanctions
Iraq-Related Sanctions
Lebanon-Related Sanctions
Libya Sanctions
North Korea Sanctions
Somalia Sanctions
Sudan Sanctions
Syria Sanctions
Yemen-Related Sanctions
Zimbabwe Sanctions

Many other countries and organizations (EU, Arab League, United Nations etc), impose and support sanctions and embargoes but whether or not the use of trade as a political weapon is justified or not is not the point here – it is just that in simple terms their use makes the term ‘free trade’ redundant.

A common misunderstanding occurs when discussing inter-government managed trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) which contrary to their formal titles are forms of governmental market intervention often bound by quotas, time tables and rules of trade resulting in artificial prices.

Even the World Trade Organization which some believe to be the guardian of free trade does not pretend to any such thing – its core pillars make no mention of free trade only fair trade which is an entirely different matter,e.g...................................................................

cut/paste from here: http://wp.interdasglobal.com/tag/embargoes/

cheers

"Edit: Found the Australian sanctions list, see all but Cuba. I didn't read all the details."

Most involve the trading of arms and certain types of technical assistance etc Burma is nearly off the list and southern Sudan is.

I think the point is that Paypal is holding monies belonging to an Australian individual and incorrectly applying a US Department embargo as an excuse for doing it. Curiously there are a number of countries Paypal does not deal with who are not on anyones embargo lists, so Paypal could not be used there, which leads to the question if Paypal does not deal with certain 'embargoed' countries what is their point in taking the action they did?

Joel, stop selling guns overseas and everything will be fine

Werdna, selling guns is OK. They are worried about information which reduces the hold of big companies.

You'd blame the US government for the poor weather conditions..

Yep, grass roots stuff.. But we'll find a way around them..

I wrote to them again last night with some serious abuse, it's not often that I would swear in an email, but they shut us down late on a Friday night, and then don't seem to deal with anything over the weekend, even though I complied to their wishes within a few hours.. We've now had 6 people try to make purchases, but they've been unable.. We are losing money, and probably getting disgruntled potential customers....

They fund cloud seeding don't they ?

But it IS their regulation, is it not ? (so maybe you are infact affected negatively by govt regulations, after all)

Don't mean to bring up a sore subject, but this is serious business.. How are you guys now?

Hey Jen,

We finally got the account back online Tuesday morning.. Lost a few sales out of it and had a few grumpy people I imagine who had tried to make purchases but got nowhere..

I'm still looking at alternatives..

Did you get any response as to just how US Dept rules are not only applied to a non-US person but also are applied with prejudice and so cause harm to their business?