What.cd Paypal Frozen?

noticed today when I clicked on what.cd's donation page I got this

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Unfortunately, the service we used for donations has decided to freeze our main account, and we will no longer be processing our donations through them. Please bear with us while we work out a permanent solution.

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noticed this has been happening to more then a few trackers as of late?...if there anything these sites can really do to stop people from donating and then trying debate the charge?

http://funkyimg.com/u2/372/134/PPS-Cartoon1.gif

Not unless you chuck the traders and sellers who donate for invites and then try and claim the cash back.

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Originally Posted by ca_aok

Not unless you chuck the traders and sellers who donate for invites and then try and claim the cash back.

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Pretty much.

And people wonder why trackers hate traders so much..

if tracker dont want sell invite, remove it from donation benefit

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Originally Posted by HDBits

if tracker dont want sell invite, remove it from donation benefit

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I would have thought that simply stating that it is a bannable offense would have been enough.:ermm:

are invites even a donation benefit at what.cd? i know they arents at waffles

@HDBITs - while i agree offering invites as a donation benefit isnt exactly right imo as it is kind of like them selling useable invites which if anyone did personally we would all consider wrong i do have to add that if the trader/seller or whatever wants the invites than donating the 10 euros or whatever isnt that bad... if you cant afford it dont donate but its just wrong to go contest it and get their money back after theyve already gotten the invites/ul credit/vip status or whatever... doing this puts the tracker in danger and i think it will eventually lead to a sight many of us enjoy(i dont have any idea which one i just feel as if its gonna happen) being shut down... i think even you could agree that you wouldnt want that couldnt you?

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Originally Posted by chrisbeebops

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Originally Posted by ca_aok

Not unless you chuck the traders and sellers who donate for invites and then try and claim the cash back.

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Pretty much.

And people wonder why trackers hate traders so much..

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It has nothing to do with traders. Normal people will want their money back if they donate to a cause and then get banned from it days later. I think if a tracker bans someone who has donated within the last two weeks they should refund the donation.

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Originally Posted by anonymous0711

are invites even a donation benefit at what.cd? i know they arents at waffles

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You get two invites upon donating. I think only the first time you do so.

As for giving invites in exchange for donations... technically it's invite selling... but at least the money goes towards the tracker and not some "unofficial" agent.

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are invites even a donation benefit at what.cd? i know they arents at waffles

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Well when I donated to waffles I got two invites just like I did at What.CD.

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Originally Posted by anonymous0711

are invites even a donation benefit at what.cd? i know they arents at waffles

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I did get 2 invites at waffles after donating.

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Originally Posted by backie

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Originally Posted by chrisbeebops

Pretty much.

And people wonder why trackers hate traders so much..

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It has nothing to do with traders. Normal people will want their money back if they donate to a cause and then get banned from it days later. I think if a tracker bans someone who has donated within the last two weeks they should refund the donation.

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Noone donates and gets banned randomly a week later. The people who are getting banned are cheaters who think donating makes them immune to the rules, traders who want something else to use for barter, and sellers trying to turn a profit off their donation.

Even if a tracker does issue a refund every time someone who donated gets banned and complains, paypal can still arbitrarily lock the account and put it under "investigation" for a few months after a few complaints.

Ok my bad guys i havent donated at waffles if you want me to be honest i just didnt see anywhere in the rules or FAQ that you got invites upon donating so i didnt think thats how it was(maybe i missed it idk)

Either way i still oppose the idea that users(not traders/sellers/or anyone else specifically) would participate in this bull$#!%... ok if you donate and then get banned within a certain period you should have the right to request your money back if it is unjustified but how often does that happen? Seriously guys this exact problem has threatened the very existence of several trackers in the past few months and i cannot see why ppl continue to do this. What happens when it actually takes down one of the trackers? how many ppl here would feel the effects of losing what.cd? i feel like that would be a huge lose to the BT community, and for what, a couple of dollars or invites you just couldnt live without? this is ridiculous... i cant even put how this makes me feel into words... i guess a miture of pity, disgust, and general embarassment to be in any way involved with the kind of people who would actually go through the effort to do this...

@Idol - i kind of understood the feelings you described in the beginning of your irony giveaway but now i fully understand what you mean... this is pitiful
I thought hadnt been around the BT world long enough to be disgusted with it already but unfortunately that doesnt seem to be the case...

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Originally Posted by backie

It has nothing to do with traders. Normal people will want their money back if they donate to a cause and then get banned from it days later. I think if a tracker bans someone who has donated within the last two weeks they should refund the donation.

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You really are an idiot aren't you :lol: I know you love leaping to the defense of traders, but in this case you're simply wrong.

I can tell you first hand that the number of returned paypal claims from newly banned members is miniscule compared to the number of claims from traders and sellers. Note that the former demographic is generally filled with traders and sellers, since they get caught and banned, and that's generally why they try and claim their money back. It's fairly rare to get a claim from an innocent member, especially since generally they will only be banned for ratio or inactivity, neither of which tend towards donations (unless you donate for ratio credit in which case that'd prevent your ratio ban).

Quite simply put, this is by far one of the greatest tangible problems with invite traders and sellers. Generally this means you should limit invites for donations, as many sites do by simply giving you invites on the first donation or not releasing invites for donations at all. It's a fine line between coming up with tangible benefits that donors want and protecting the security of the site.

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Originally Posted by ca_aok

It's a fine line between coming up with tangible benefits that donors want and protecting the security of the site.

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I was actually looking for a way to say just that, well said ca_aok. Unfortunately i feel like the quality of your statements and even the logic behind arguments are irrelevant when dealing with certain members(not mentioning any names :whistling ) here... to me it feels similar to dealing with radical politicians(both far left and right) and/or illogical religious freaks(and no this doesnt mean every religious person but we all know ppl who take it to far and dont think for themselves) in that no matter what you say or how stupid they may look in their arguement they will never consider re-evaluating their position... Call it arrogance, ignorance, closed-mindedness or whatever you choose but in any circumstance it makes you look like an idiot(again not directed at anyone in particular :whistling )

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Originally Posted by SeX

Donations Closed
Donations are temporarily down, they will be back soon.

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Seems SeX may have a similar issue.



Anyways, PayPal (PeePee or PP) seems to be freezing a lot of accounts, which have a lot of e-cash stored in them. ScT supposedly made $100000+ dollars (with just 20000~ members, over 4 years), whilst What has 5 times as many members, and been around for 3 years... they must've had a lot of money in that account - though I don't wish to speculate.

So this got me thinking; in UK it's illegal to take money out of circulation... ie damaging coins, or burning notes. I know the majority of a country's currency is simply non existent... it might be "digitally" held or is simply traded around until required. However, PeePee freezing these accounts means that a lot of money is no longer usable, and is kept frozen in the banned account... it's there, but can't be accessed. Largely, I doubt this has any effect on the economy... but is this not illegal for PP to do?

Nah, banks and credit cards can freeze assets if they find suspicious activity on the accounts. Legally they could probably force PP to give them the money if they told them what was going on, but that would of course lead to legal problems for the torrent site itself.

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Originally Posted by backie

I think if a tracker bans someone who has donated within the last two weeks they should refund the donation.

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Yeah they really should, or for however long that transaction stays in the donors paypal history. Sites losing funds is all too common.

Or to be completely straight, I don't think they should not ban trader donors at all. If your site is gonna get taken down from legal action, it's gonna get taken down. Hunting traders will do absolutely nothing in the laws change, the only important thing you can do is host in a friendly country and hope no ruling that goes badly sets a precedent against you. It's kinda silly how much time the volunteer staff must spend on something so trivial. If they meet the ratio requirements, they won't harm your tracker. If they do not, then go ahead, refund them and after refunding them ban them.

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Originally Posted by TrueSounds

Yeah they really should, or for however long that transaction stays in the donors paypal history. Sites losing funds is all too common.

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Neglecting the fact that frequent refunds also looks suspicious to the paypal folks, I'm not seeing how a donation should be refundable. Might want to look up "donation" in a dictionary. No one forced you to send the money in the first place, if that was the case (like if the site charged everyone $10 to sign up), that should be refundable. A donation is freely given from one person to another. Let's see you donate to a charity and then ask for a refund a few weeks later because you don't like what they're doing.

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Originally Posted by TrueSounds

Or to be completely straight, I don't think they should not ban trader donors at all. If your site is gonna get taken down from legal action, it's gonna get taken down. Hunting traders will do absolutely nothing in the laws change, the only important thing you can do is host in a friendly country and hope no ruling that goes badly sets a precedent against you. It's kinda silly how much time the volunteer staff must spend on something so trivial. If they meet the ratio requirements, they won't harm your tracker. If they do not, then go ahead, refund them and after refunding them ban them.

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It's their choice to trade/sell, just as it's the staff's choice on whether or not to hunt them. It's all a matter of choices, and if you make the wrong ones, it's a matter of suffering the consequences. Don't QQ to me when you donate for invites, get banned for selling them on an auction site, and then try to claim your money back. You spent the money, you received the bonus. You misused your account, you got banned. Two separate but linked instances.

It's not illogical to want your money back if you get banned. We're not talking about donating to an AIDS kids charity here, there is not really any moral weight involved in reclaiming your money, which you seem to be implying there is.

Trackers should give back money before banning as a good business model and a safe precaution. Why would anyone donate to a tracker if there is a big chance they money is gonna be frozen and lost. It's pretty greedy and irrational not to refund a 'donation' in my eyes.

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Originally Posted by ca_aok

It's their choice to trade/sell, just as it's the staff's choice on whether or not to hunt them. It's all a matter of choices, and if you make the wrong ones, it's a matter of suffering the consequences. Don't QQ to me when you donate for invites, get banned for selling them on an auction site, and then try to claim your money back. You spent the money, you received the bonus. You misused your account, you got banned. Two separate but linked instances.

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Exactly, and its a trackers choice not to refund before banning. I don't even feel bad for trackers that get their funds frozen because of this. It was their choice, they shouldn't QQ to their users for making the wrong one.

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Originally Posted by TrueSounds

Trackers should give back money before banning as a good business model and a safe precaution. Why would anyone donate to a tracker if there is a big chance they money is gonna be frozen and lost. It's pretty greedy and irrational not to refund a 'donation' in my eyes.

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Right, because it's not greedy and irrational to expect to profit off something you were explicitly told would get you banned, and then whine about it afterward. Of course if we didn't have people selling invites, we wouldn't have to worry so much about accounts being frozen, but that's a chicken and egg scenario right there. And as I already stated, frequently refunding funds looks just as suspicious as frequent claims against the account.

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Originally Posted by TrueSounds

Exactly, and its a trackers choice not to refund before banning. I don't even feel bad for trackers that get their funds frozen because of this. It was their choice, they shouldn't QQ to their users for making the wrong one.

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Enjoy watching your trackers go down the drain then, as I'm not aware of any of them that implement this policy (or it's certainly not made public if so).

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Originally Posted by ca_aok

Enjoy watching legit donors continue to needlessly waste money, as I'm not aware of any of them that implement this policy (or it's certainly not made public if so).

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correction.

PS I'm not justifying or contemplating ethics behind trading. If you ask me, trading is more of a hassle than giveaways considering the opportunity costs of the anti-trade climate, ie the lengths staff go to protect against it. You are a fool to be trading or doing random public giveaways in the first place, but that has nothing to do with trackers taking needless risks with their money by being overly stingy.

I completely agree that in an ideal world, that'd be fine. They get their money back, and they and the folks they invited get banned. What I'm saying is that PayPal will examine your account if you're constantly refunding people because they'll assume there's some sort of issue occurring.

I'm also saying that the money give was indeed a donation, it wasn't forced out of you. Whatever your pretenses may have been for giving the money in the first place, I think it's unreasonable to expect the money to be returned to an extent. While this may not be the same thing as donating to a charity, it's also not a piggy bank where you can add and remove your money at any given time.

Does paypal record them as transactions or as donations? I know paypal puts the onus on the seller, so I assumed users always purchase donation rights, they are not infact donating. But technicalities are aside from the point, because you're still talking about an ideal that does not exist in the real world.

Don't know if refunding purchases will get your paypal business locked or not, but that seems kind of absurb. And are there really THAT many donors that donate solely to trade who get banned? Maybe switching the donor privs will curb that, it doesn't seem worth the risk of losing all your funds, especially if you keep a big balance in there.

If Paypal is the method that will at the end of the day result in the most funds whether a percentage of it is lost or not, I guess that is how this will stay.

I know the knee-jerk reaction is to band traders, but I'd bet some of these issues arise from either the sites being reported by antipiracy authorities or hell, even one individual scener or other douchebag filing reports of illegal activity. Maybe PayPal notices suspicious trends of donations and taking a look into the site's purpose.

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Originally Posted by TrueSounds

Does paypal record them as transactions or as donations? I know paypal puts the onus on the seller, so I assumed users always purchase donation rights, they are not infact donating. But technicalities are aside from the point, because you're still talking about an ideal that does not exist in the real world.

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Technicalities here are skirting the real issue. But yes it appears to PayPal as if you're purchasing something. It also appears to PayPal that you aren't a large filesharing site accepting donations.

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Originally Posted by TrueSounds

Don't know if refunding purchases will get your paypal business locked or not, but that seems kind of absurb. And are there really THAT many donors that donate solely to trade who get banned? Maybe switching the donor privs will curb that, it doesn't seem worth the risk of losing all your funds, especially if you keep a big balance in there.

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Switching donor privs certainly helps. On most gazelle based sites that tend to leave the default donation schemata from What intact, the 2 invites usually aren't that big of a deal, especially since it's a "low value" site. But it still happens and it only takes a few of these infractions for PayPal to get suspicious.

On a site like SCC where this sort of thing more routinely happens and P2Invite is clearly the mentality, it's much more frequent. I sort of recall a post made here a few months back where some moron dropped 100 euros on invites, sold/traded them, got banned, and then whined about his money. If he hadn't been trying to flip them for a profit, he wouldn't have lost anything. I see trading/selling as both a huge and unnecessary risk, and if you're willing to take that risk then you need to be willing to accept the consequences/losses along with the reward/profit.

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Originally Posted by TrueSounds

If Paypal is the method that will at the end of the day result in the most funds whether a percentage of it is lost or not, I guess that is how this will stay.

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There really aren't any mainstream alternative solutions. Donation schemes where sites offer alternative methods generally see a tiny percentage of use compared to PayPal. There would need to be a large and conscious shift on the part of several large trackers to move towards another service for this to take off.

Thank goodness we've never had that problem. We've never really had that money donations for that to be an issue, nor have we ever been all that concerned over traders and sellers. We just have bigger problems. Like that stupid domain...