[hackerspaces] wikileaks - switching from paypal

[Matt Goodman]

A lot of these places (paypal/amazon) make money on the sum held in escrow.
 Basically, their only interest (every pun intended) is holding your money
as long as possible.  Exactly the opposite of what you want.  Burning Man
had a huge blowup with paypal (for holding an undisclosed amount of
megabucks), and I suspect they may not use them this year.

PayPal is scraping for cash, because they know they are going to be
regulated soon.
--Matthew Goodman

=====================
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On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 12:01 PM, Ben Brown <ben at kwartzlab.ca> wrote:

>  Kwartzlab originally started with just post-dated cheques and money
> orders, but we setup on Paypal shortly after. About 1/3 of the membership
> (including myself) uses their recurring subscriptions.
>
> I'm totally aware of the un-excellent politics/policies that is Paypal,
> however we figure it's more important to make it easy for members to pay
> online. We also looked at merchant services (but vetoed them for the
> expenses involved), and the other online payment systems we checked out at
> the time didn't allow Canadian bank accounts as a payment source.
>
> Cheers,
> Ben
>
>
> On 12/13/2010 11:51 AM, Matthew McCabe wrote:
>
> The ATX Hackerspace uses a Bank of America merchant card processing
> service to accept credit cards.  We also use an online payment gateway
> that works with our merchant account.  All in all, it works well
> though BOA charges a lot of fees.
>
> It is also fun to talk to a credit card representatives when they do a
> fraud audit on my personal account: "oh, what is this charge for the
> ATX HACKERSPACE??"  That must be fraud, right?  lolz.
>
> -Matt
>
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Adam D Bachman <adam.bachman at gmail.com> <adam.bachman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Baltimore Node (the space Matthew was talking about) was frozen out of
> Amazon too, for the same reason. Accepting "donations" while being a
> non-profit (as recognized by the state of Maryland), but not a 501c3
> non-profit. Amazon also had terrible customer service. It took us a month or
> two to get almost $850 back from them.
> We're on Google Checkout now.
>
>
> - Adam
>
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 10:43 AM, Tim Saylor <tim.saylor at gmail.com> <tim.saylor at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Strangely, we had that same problem with Amazon and we switched to Paypal
> because they told us not having 501c3 wasn't a problem.  I guess you can't
> trust anybody.
>
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 9:42 AM, Matthew Forr <matthew.forr at gmail.com> <matthew.forr at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>  We've had problems with Paypal far before Wikileaks and had our account
> frozen twice. Apparently if you ask for donations anywhere on their site and
> Paypal finds out they freeze your account and ask for proof that you're a
> 501c3. There customer service is terrible and I can't recommend against
> using them enough, that said, I'm not surprised they froze Wikileaks account
> and I feel their pain.
>
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 10:37 AM, Tim Saylor <tim.saylor at gmail.com> <tim.saylor at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>  We had a minor drama bomb on our mailing list about using paypal and our
> general conclusion was that the space shouldn't get distracted with politics
> and take an official stand on the matter.  If people want to pay us with
> paypal, great.  If they want to use another method (and if enough people
> want us to support something else) that's great too.
>
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 9:26 AM, Christopher Pilkington <cjp at 0x1.net> <cjp at 0x1.net>
> wrote:
>
>  Don't hackerspaces use actual bank or credit union accounts?  I would
> have never considered using PayPal, even before the wikileaks fiasco.
>
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Alexandre Girard<alx.girard at gmail.com> <alx.girard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  We've remove the paypal button on homepage for monthly membership
> subscription, and since we meet once a week, it was not so useful.
>
> We've got the bi-annual financial meeting next wednesday, we've got
> accounts on Flattr or WePay it people need this
> online-membership-payment feature back.
>
> Alex - tetalab.org
>
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Barry Coughlan <barry at 091labs.com> <barry at 091labs.com>
> wrote:
>
>  Has any space switched from Paypal due to Wikileaks? If so, what
> alternative
> are you using and how do you find it?
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>  --
> -Matthew
>
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