September 28, 2004 5:44 AM

Tool of the Devil?...or just another out-of-control corporation with visions of world domination?

Paypal becoming more user unfriendly

She Who Endures My Myriad Eccentricities and I have had a small eBay business on the side for some time now. Well, OK, to be honest, she does the lion’s share of the work, but nominally we’re in it together.

Doing anything on eBay can be a trip down the electronic rabbit hole, particularly if PayPal in involved. Given that PayPal is now owned by eBay, it has it’s fingers in virtually every transaction. It has become the defacto 800-lb gorilla, and the company is not afraid to throw it’s weight around. Steve brings us the story of how PayPal is now beginning to use it’s dominance of the electronic payment market to exert control over weblog content.

For those of you that take donations via Paypal, you might want to know that they are starting to censor bloggers. They recently sent Daily Pundit a threatening letter regarding their web content.

This site being 100% funded by the Staff Writers, is not subject to Paypal’s terms and conditions. That means we maintain the editorial freedom to “promote hate, violence, or racial intolerance” for your reading pleasure….

Could you imagine if your credit card company fined you $500 after a night out at a strip club? Personally, I think enforcing their new “terms and conditions” may be their downfall. And in today’s litigious society, I cannot wait until they fine themselves into a lawsuit.

Remember the car rental company that decided to start fining renters for speeding. The government doesn’t take kindly to private companies trying to horn on their racket.

I wonder how long it will be until PayPal will be hit with a class action suit or even possibly a federal antitrust suit? OK, so that may just be wishful thinking, but it would be nice to see these morons taken down a few notches. If Susan and I had any option at all, we’d refuse to do business with anyone who uses PayPal. The problem is that eBay goes out of their way to make it difficult to use anyother electronic payment system BUT PayPal. Refuse to take PayPal, and you might as well shutter your electronic store. No coercion here, eh?

My own personal protest is that whenever I buy anything on eBay, I send a money order. If someone only takes payment via PayPal, I don’t bid on their item, no matter how badly I might want it. Now that PayPal seems to be venturing into electronic censorship, I’m wondering…there has GOT to be some way to get these maroons by the short hairs.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on September 28, 2004 5:44 AM.

The answer to the question, "So, why DO guys like beach volleyball so much??" (Exhibit C) was the previous entry in this blog.

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