Paypal restrict Indians use of their services

As I am sure a lot of you will know, a lot of the lower end link building market is dominated by Indian webmasters.  Last week Paypal started sending this email to people who had sent money to Indian webmasters  marked as “personal payment” or “gift”.

Your payment of $XX.XX has been returned to you. If you sent the payment with a bank account, the funds will be returned to your PayPal balance. If you paid with a credit card, the amount will be credited back to your card.

We returned the payment to you because we have stopped allowing personal payments to be sent to or from India.

If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then you may resend the payment to the seller by following these steps on the PayPal website: (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select “Goods,” and (c) provide a shipping address.

If this payment was a personal payment, such as a gift to a friend or family member, then we request that you find another payment method until we restore personal payments to and from India.

We are trying to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we’re sorry for any inconvenience.

Thank you,

PayPal

The reason for this is simple – if you send someone a “gift” through Paypal, there is no fees for the receiver. If you send a payment for goods or services, Paypal takes a small fee – that’s obviously how they make their money.

Up till now you could of course send payments for goods or services as a “gift”, allowing the the seller to receive their money without paying the rightful fee. Of course this involves a certain amount of trust – you can’t send $100 as a gift then do a chargeback because the seller never sent you something – the money was a gift after all.

It seems hundreds/thousands of Indian webmasters have taken this too far and ruined it for everyone. Paypal have had enough and brought in a blanket ban, no more gift payments to or from an Indian registered Paypal account.

Its not hard to see why. There is no realistic way that any Delhi account holder can say that $1000 that came from 5 different uk seo companies were all gifts and not payments for services

One Indian news website said:

Millions of Indian Freelancers, who rely on online money-transfer service, PayPal, has urged the government and media to step in and take up their issue at the highest level. Freelancers such as Web Developers, Web Designers, Coders, Writers and SEOs are worst-affected.

The freelancers are outraged that PayPal is causing them high inconvenience and loss of money because of this unilateral decision to stop all personal/gift payments to and from India without any notice.

This statement is bordering on ridiculous.  How can they say in the first paragraph that all the people affected are web designers and seo’s, then in the 2nd paragraph say that they are “outraged” that they can’t continue to steal Paypals fees by sending the funds as gifts?  A bit cheeky to complain about “loss of money” when they have been getting away with defrauding Paypal for so long…

Feel free to leave your feedback, positive or negative, in the comments.

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One Response to “Paypal restrict Indians use of their services”

1. Anirudh K. Mahant says:

   March 6, 2010 at 6:00 pm

   Hi all pissed-off fellow indians,

   PAYPAL IS AN IMPOTENT, SYSTEMATICALLY DYSFUNCTIONAL, UNPRINCIPLED AND AMATEUR ORGANISATION (AS UGLY AS ITS PARENT E-BAY or E-BAFIA) well said by a Pissed off guy unknown but reasonable!

   I’d like to share something. PayPal is hiding the truth! RBI I seriously bet their complaint center doesn’t know a shit about NEFT or the issues, and we live in a great country after all.

   I have posted some serious shit about PayPal and RBI on almost 40-50 Blog sites including their own blog site where they have to shamelessly Delete those comments due to the nature of the comments (PURE BURNING TRUTH). So, here are the Facts they have failed to explain or to manage the situation:

   A) Its your hard earned MONEY they are playing with. Yeah playing with, random reversals without any rational explanations or informing the concerned individuals in time about the ongoing issues.

   B) I found out about these issues on 23rd Feb since it took too long for a simple transaction that takes only around 3-4 days max. In the meantime its our MONEY at stake, but no reply from PayPal just a comforting and lying email that “we have issues”? Well explain what issues?

   C) Thank god I don’t use PayPal all the times, fortunately Moneybookers is working. Yes I was able to transfer from Moneybookers successfully even in these tough times. So RBI has some special rules against PayPal and not against Moneybookers? I’d suggest you guys do the same split up your Money, don’t give them another chance to play games with your hard earned Money. Ask clients to pay you directly into your Bank Accounts if that is possible or use Western Union transfer which doesn’t take as much time as this piehole PayPal and gives you better exchange rates.

   D) These issues started from about 26th January and I bet none of us were informed in the first place from PayPal officially. Oh how can they? They don’t give a crap about your Money. Its only then when you take the pain to contact them, and even with that they reply you with some diplomatic answers. Okay, so the second and the most biggest mistake is that they are not contacting you to choose some other Payment methods while they are having these issues, so does it mean we just want your money in our filthy hands while knowing that we can pay you out in time?

   E) Is this alarming? Yes India and Indians Rising! So, is that a problem with you? Yes its a problem to RBI and the Indian Government more than PayPal. To all the smiling semblances at RBI and at the assembly “WE PAY OUR TAXES” to you don’t we? and where does all our hard earned money comes to? INDIA.

   Its still not over yet, these are just shocks, the aftershocks these events will have will be much more to PayPal and RBI. Don’t give your hard earned money in the hands of these liers, cheaters and stealers anymore! Its evident from these events that they DON’T CARE.