PayPal Acts As Grinch Over Money Raised For Charity Using 'Wrong Button'; Finally Bows To Internet Pressure

from the does-anyone-like-paypal? dept

PayPal is pretty famous for the fact that almost no one likes it. It's why we're finally starting to see some alternatives springing up (or getting ready to spring up). And yet, it still seems to go out of its way to make bad decisions. The latest, via Consumerist, is that it completely shut down a charitable "secret santa" program that regretsy set up, all because the site used the "donate" button, rather than one of its other buttons. According to PayPal, only registered non-profits are supposed to use the donate button. Of course, rather than point this out to regretsy, it let a bunch of transactions go through, and was requiring that they all be reversed... though PayPal would keep the transaction fees (of course). Apparently, in the mind of PayPal, no one but a non-profit ever asked for donations for anything. Seriously, though, if PayPal has such strict rules for using the donation button, why not, um, make companies prove their status before they can set up a site using the donate button?

Either way, as can happen when someone in PR finally wakes up to what's happening online, the public response to this Grinch-like effort is that PayPal has agreed to back down. Of course, it shouldn't have taken a flood of negative publicity for PayPal to realize that it screwed up here.

Filed Under: bad pr, button, charity
Companies: paypal, regretsy