We hear from vendors pretty often these days about the problems they had with PayPal before they switched to FastSpring. Here is the most recent one, about a pretty concerning situation, one that we’ve heard about a few times recently:

“I log into my PayPal account and what do I see? ‘For my protection’ they have limited the ability of my account to withdraw or send money but most severely, they also disallowed the account to receive payments! Frantically, I go to MacGraPhoto’s buy page, click buy and see a message ‘The seller can’t receive payments at this time’. At about the same time I get an email from a potential customer that says that he can’t buy the bundle. In the server log I see other people trying buy the bundle and leaving. Lost sales. Not good. Not good at all. My PayPal’s page lists lots of things that I need to provide to PayPal regarding my personal identity and regarding the sales. Some requests are totally not relevant to the case or to our business. And, it’s totally impossible to directly talk to the people who actually decide… I receive another email from PayPal. The subject was new: ‘PayPal appeal denied’. So, now the money (most of which is not even ours but of our bundle members) is held for 6 months. Sure, they are ‘making every effort to minimize any disruption to your business’. Sure, no disruption at all… Needless to say, I didn’t get any response: not after 72 hours, and not after a week. I called support again and was told that they won’t respond me because my appeal was denied and they don’t reopen cases. I won’t be using PayPal to sell anything from now. They have grown too big to be efficient and caring for their customers. [They are] quick to make totally disruptive decisions and to dismiss legitimate businesses without really taking a look at what it is.They took the liberty to totally halt our business, to cause lots of lost sales and a major cash flow blow only because we got successful with one promotion, after being their customers for a long time. Right, they ‘regret any inconvenience this may cause’. They are ‘making every effort to minimize any disruption to your business’. If you’re selling anything and use PayPal as your only payment option, I urge you to reconsider. They can cut your oxygen supply right at peak of your success, of course ‘for your own protection’. We decided to leave PayPal as our payment processor at Apparent Software and moved to FastSpring.”

We did an earlier post that covered some other complaints we’ve heard about, which you can view here: http://tinyurl.com/oxbs9r

With that said, I’m sure there are plenty of satisfied PayPal clients out there as well. This is just info on some of the unsatisfied ones that help you have a better idea of what potential pitfalls to watch out for if you do use PayPal, and of course it helps explain how FastSpring can be a tremendous alternative for PayPal vendors who sell digital products. As it is, we do support customers paying for vendors’ products via PayPal in addition to our other payment methods, but through FastSpring you don’t have to deal directly with PayPal and expose yourself to these types of potential issues.

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