PayPal Feels Web’s Wrath After ‘Ruining Christmas’

The payments company, according to a Regretsy blog post, first froze the account due to a supposed misuse of the “Donate” payment button. The blog was told that it had to be a nonprofit in order to use the button. It isn’t, so it then attempted to collect money for toys by using a regular payment button and allowed the buyers to send purchased gifts to the 200 children.

After what the blog post calls “a very long and jaw-dropping conversation with an incredibly condescending representative,” this approach was also shut down. PayPal required that unprocessed orders be refunded — and then kept all of the transaction fees.

PayPal’s site doesn’t clearly ban the actions that Regretsy says got its account shut down. That doesn’t help the payment service’s case. Nor does the fact that Regretsy included in its blog posts damning snippets from what it says were conversations with PayPal’s customer representatives. (For example: “You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people.”)