----- Original Message -----

From: "JR"

To: <compliance@paypal.com>

Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2007 1:59 PM

Subject: Re: Your recent PayPal inquiry (KMM4665928I96L0KM) :ppk

Dear Carrie.

As to my identity, if you park one of your satellites over the south coast of Australia, around 500 kilometres south of Sydney, you should be able to pick-out my property. It is the one with the sign that says "Reward – Wanted for War Crimes & Crimes against Humanity - George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld."

As foreshadowed in my previous correspondence, PayPal's refusal to comply with my request unfortunately leaves me with no alternative but to place your organisation on my "list" of sanctioned organisations, along with its parent corporation e-Bay.

Have a nice day.

John.

----- Original Message -----

From: <compliance@paypal.com>

To: "JR">

Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2007 5:19 AM

Subject: Your recent PayPal inquiry (KMM4665928I96L0KM) :ppk1

Dear John Richardson,

I apologize for any confusion and frustration regarding the previous email that PayPal has sent you. Unfortunately, PayPal is not able to release any additional information. PayPal is obligated by regulatory laws to gather additional information on our customers.

PayPal is not stating you are the same person on any "list"; we are simply trying to verify your identity. Which is outline in the Legal Agreements.

Sincerely,

Carrie

PayPal, an eBay Company PayPal Australia Pty Limited. Copyright © 1999-2007 PayPal. All rights reserved. PayPal Australia Pty Limited ABN 93 111 195 389 (PPA) holds an Australian Financial Services Licence, number 304962. Any general financial product advice provided in this email is provided by PPA and has not taken into account your objectives, financial situations or needs.

Dear John,

I have long time ago given up (actually I never used PayPal) this method of payment. On one occasion when buying something from the states, I had the choice of going PayPal or paying an exhorbitant WhichBank cheque fee. I chose the later after having investigated a few class actions in the US on Paypal... 

The US terrorist watch list includes more than 755,000 names and continues to grow, the US Government Accountability Office said Wednesday. 

The list exploded from fewer than 20 entries before the September 11, 2001 attacks to more than 150,000 just a few months later, after the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) was created in December 2003 to keep tabs on terrorist suspects, according to the GAO, the non-partisan investigative arm of Congress.

Including known pseudonyms of suspects, the list's 755,000 names as of May 2007 represents, in fact, around 300,000 people, according to TSC estimates.

Tasked with gathering data on individuals "known or appropriately suspected to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of or related to terrorism," the TSC gets its information from Federal Bureau of Investigation intelligence and passes it on chiefly to immigration authorities.

Since 2003, the list has been used around 53,000 times to single out individuals for possible arrest or to prevent them from entering the country, the GAO said. 

More Than 755,000 On US Terrorist Watch List

from Crikey ….. 

eBay to customers: we’ll handle your money, it’s for your “protection” 

Stilgherrian writes: 

Imagine that you’re Alice, proud owner of the new shoe shop at your local Westfield. Bob is buying a pair of brogues. As Bob opens his wallet, suddenly Frank Lowy appears. “There’s some terrible con-men around,” he intones gravely. “Let me handle that.” He grabs Bob’s cash and pockets a fiver. “I’ll give you the rest next Wednesday,” he says, and disappears. 

Alice, understandably, is mightily p-ssed off. 

Sellers on eBay have been mightily p-ssed off overnight too, because the world’s biggest online marketplace has just pulled the same stunt. From 21 May, all eBay sellers must offer PayPal as a payment method. And from 17 June — unless the buyer is physically collecting the item from you or for a few big-ticket categories like real estate and motor vehicles — they must pay you via PayPal. 

eBay owns PayPal. So apart from their fee for handling the sale, they’ll now also get a PayPal transaction fee. Meanwhile you don’t get your money for days. Unlike an overnight bank transfer, moving funds from PayPal to your bank takes 5 to 7 working days — despite being more expensive. You could leave the funds with PayPal, but you don’t get paid interest. 

Now PayPal isn’t necessarily evil. Indeed, for small businesses setting up an online presence, it is often the most cost-effective way to accept credit card payments, and the easiest to set up technically. But clearly there’s a big question here about anti-competitive behaviour. 

PayPal also has a poor reputation for dispute-handling. The internet is littered with stories about people’s accounts being frozen without warning, about consumer credit rights being ignored because PayPal claims its terms of service override them — at paypalsucks.com and here for starters. 

eBay is spinning this as being “for your protection”. Their announcement uses words based on “safe” six times, “protect” 12 times, and “secure” twice. But then bullies demanding a percentage of your business takings has always been called a protection racket. 

Requiring customers to use other services which you own? ACCC, are you watching? 

Maybe this anti-competitive change by eBay is just the leg-up that Australian online auction house OZtion needs.

Dear Amber. 

First off, thank you for your prompt response to my scream & thanks also to Monica for calmly sorting-out my purchase of Not the Costello Memoirs. 

Whilst I’m more than satisfied with Crikey’s service, I remain very angry & upset with my dealings with PayPal & this latest experience simply serves to remind me of my previous experience. 

As expressed in my note of complaint, I cannot understand why Crikey would be associated with a company that has such an appalling record of customer service, engages in dishonest business practices & seeks to bludgeon everyone into compliance with its unreasonable demands.

Indeed, as I indicated to Monica in our phone conversation today, Crikey has previously published similar criticisms of PayPal & its parent Ebay, making their association with the organisation even more surprising. 

On April 11 of this year, Crikey ran the following piece (Crikey - eBay to customers: we’ll handle your money, it’s for your “protection” - eBay to customers: we’ll handle your money, it’s for your “protection”), which included this quote: “PayPal also has a poor reputation for dispute-handling. The internet is littered with stories about people’s accounts being frozen without warning, about consumer credit rights being ignored because PayPal claims its terms of service override them — at paypalsucks.com and here for starters.”

Why would Crikey want to tarnish its image by being associated with such a second rate outfit? 

As I mentioned to Monica, I have documented my previous encounter with PayPal (pay it forward ..... | Your Democracy), which confirms the basis of my complaints about the organisation. 

As I mentioned yesterday, I would be happy for Crikey to publish my remarks about PayPal, given that the organisation refuses to deal openly, honestly or fairly.

Moreover, if you have a point of contact with these bastards, please feel free to forward them this communication. 

More importantly Amber, I challenge Crikey to discontinue its relationship with this shonkie outfit & subject it to the same standard of public scrutiny that it readily applies to other organisations, institutions & individuals within our community on a daily basis. 

If you are not able to respond to my challenge, please refer my correspondence to the appropriate person within the Crikey organisation who can or, alternatively, please pay me the courtesy of confirming that you are not willing & able to address my concerns, which I’ll then happily circulate. 

Thank you again for responding to my query so promptly. 

Cheers, John.    

From: Amber Sloan [mailto:asloan@privatemedia.com.au]
Sent: Friday, 12 September 2008 11:53 AM
To:
Cc: Monica Maric
Subject: RE: Complaint 

Hi John, 

I understand you’ve had a conversation with Monica about Crikey’s use of paypal to process payments for Not the Costello Memoirs. 

We decided to use paypal for one-off purchases like this because we’ve found it to be the quickest and most cost effective system to set up at short notice. 

We are able to manually process a payment via the back-end of the online payment gateway we use for subscriptions, which is a completely separate system to paypal. However it doesn’t currently allow us to set up an automated “shopfront” to allow users to process their own non-subscription related payments – something we’re intending to rectify but not in time for this offer. 

I’m sorry our use of paypal for this offer has proved a problem for you – Monica will email you to confirm once we’ve processed your payment via our separate system.  

Cheers, 

amber sloan

| general managercrikey

www.crikey.com.au 

level 7, 22 william st, melbourne vic  3000 – Australia

phone: +61 3  8623 9900| fax: +61 3  8623 9975

Crikey - that thing on the internet.  Start a 3 Week Free Trial now: www.crikey.com.au/freetrial.html 

From: JR [mailto:           ]
Sent: Thursday, 11 September 2008 11:02 PM
To: Boss@crikey.com.au
Subject: Complaint 

Hi Boss. 

I’m furious that my attempt to purchase your book offer has been denied because my credit card “can’t be used”. 

Clearly this has been caused by your use of the PayPal system, even though I did not attempt to use it. 

For your information, many months ago I was engaged in a major argument with PayPal (by telephone from an unknown location & email) when, without warning, they demanded that I fax proof of my identity to a facsimile number, allegedly in the United States, because a name the same as mine had appeared on an anonymous list created by an anonymous party in the US.

In the interests of my own security, I refused to forward the requested documents & so PayPal “blacklisted” the credit card concerned. 

At the time, I pointed out to PayPal that I was an Australian citizen who owned his own home, had no criminal convictions & possessed a legitimate credit card issued by one of the world’s oldest & strongest banks, Westpac. 

PayPal were unmoved by my outrage & ultimately I had to accept their refusal to accept my credit card because the transactions up to then had arisen in the US & the laws that they claimed to be bound by were made in the US. 

The situation with Crikey is however different. My credit card was issued in Australia. We are living in Australia. The transaction that I was attempting to complete is wholly within Australia. Fascist American laws & “secret” lists that might impose restrictions on US citizens or those unfortunate enough to be in the US or trying to deal with people in the US do not apply in Australia & such outrageous requirements should not be allowed to restrict legitimate trade in this country. 

As a result of this incident, I will, if possible, be pursuing legal action against PayPal and/or its parent company Ebay in Australia.

I will be raising the behaviour of PayPal /Ebay with Westpac, asking them to take action to restore my reputation. 

During my earlier arguments with PayPal, I attempted unsuccessfully to identify the location of their physical offices in Australia, as a first step to trying to contact them here to resolve my dispute.

I could find no information on the location of their offices, nor a telephone contact number.

I would like Crikey to provide me with such information, so I can make it available to my legal advisers. 

I will also be pursuing these issues at the political level. 

And I still wish to purchase a copy of the Costello book. 

Finally, as a long-time subscriber to Crikey, I think you should consider resigning your association with PayPal, as it is clearly contrary to Crikey’s commercial interests & its reputation. 

I would be happy for Crikey to print this letter (minus any contact details) as a warning to others about the awful business practices of PayPal. 

I would be happy to discuss this matter with a Crikey representative & my contact numbers are: 

Thank you for considering my complaint. 

Sincerely,  

John Richardson.

PayPal has again come under fire, this time for ordering the buyer of an antique French violin to destroy it to get a refund - rather than send it back to the seller - after the giant deemed it a fake.

The seller says she has been left $US2500 out of pocket and without a "violin that made it through WWII" and wants to stop PayPal from ordering other antiquities to be destroyed when their authenticity is questioned.

Her view is backed by the owner of Sydney Violins, Zai Sheng, 63, who told Fairfax today that he believed the violin was not a counterfeit after being shown a picture of it smashed into pieces.

The Canadian buyer had taken the picture and sent it to the seller, a woman known only as Erica, who then wrote to Regretsy of the "heartbreaking experience".

She chose Regretsy, a site that features photos of interesting handmade artefacts, to highlight the dispute because it had recently had its own troubles with PayPal when its charitable gift buying program's account was shut down.

Erica's letter recounted how the buyer had disputed the musical instrument's label.

"Rather than have the violin returned to me, PayPal made the buyer DESTROY the violin in order to get his money back," she said. "They somehow deemed the violin as 'counterfeit' even though there is no such thing in the violin world."

She added that the buyer was so "proud of himself" that he "sent me a photo of the destroyed violin".

"I am now out a violin that made it through WWII as well as $US2500. This is of course, upsetting. But my main goal ... is to prevent PayPal from ordering the destruction of violins and other antiquities that they know nothing about. It is beyond me why PayPal simply didn't have the violin returned to me," she said.

According to Regretsy, the item had also reportedly been "examined and authenticated by a top luthier" before the sale.

Mr Sheng, who has been making violins for more than 20 years and playing them since he was a young boy, said the violin appeared authentic. He said you could "tell straight away" whether a violin was a fake by looking at the way it had been made, the varnish and discolouration.

But he said the buyer had paid too much for it. "I think it is the buyer's fault [here]," he said. "I don't think the seller is at fault. Even in a very good condition $US2500 ... is too much."

Mr Sheng said many people who bought violins online did not understand them. "You can buy from online but you have to know what you are looking for."

In a statement, PayPal said that, while it could not talk about Erica's case due to its privacy policy, it did "carefully review each case, and in general we may ask a buyer to destroy counterfeit goods if they supply signed evidence from a knowledgeable third party that the goods are indeed counterfeit".

"For example, if somebody purchased a fake handbag, we'd ask them to contact the manufacturer of the bag, or reputable distributor, to authenticate that it is counterfeit.

"Further, we then ask the customer to sign a statutory declaration supporting their claim. As always, we encourage buyers and sellers to settle disputes first before requesting PayPal to intervene."

It said the reason it reserved the option to ask a buyer to destroy goods was that "in many countries, including the US, it is a criminal offense to mail counterfeit goods back to a seller".

It said it was possible for people to buy a real item and a fake one and use the fake one to claim a refund, leaving the seller of the real item out of pocket. But it said it would "report" such activity. This kind of illegal activity has been highlighted by Rik Ferguson of online security company Trend Micro.

"This is one of the benefits of PayPal. We have a closed loop system - that is visibility (a record of personal details/transactions) of both buyer and seller. We are proud of the secure platform we have developed to enable buyers and sellers to confidently transact across the country/the globe," PayPal said.

'Heartbreaking': PayPal orders buyer to destroy 'antique violin'