>I also want to say that I understand the compulsion to lay blame at the feet of the person being screwed over in stories like these ("They used the wrong button!" "They didn't read the TOU!"). Human nature is such that we have to find fault with the person on the receiving end of treatment like this. We desperately want to believe that if we'e very good, nothing bad will ever happen to us.
I'd say this is roughly 50/50. While Paypal's customer service is legendarily bad, and there's no excuse for not providing a method to talk to a live human, there's also no excuse for not reading the T&C and knowing what you can and cannot do, moreso if you're a business. This is a friggin' payment processor. One of your lifelines as a business. Not reading the terms is one of the dumbest possible things I can think of doing.
And this isn't a case of fine print, either. It's not hard to find Paypal's policy on preorders, or other things which you are specifically not supposed to do, and in fact agreed in advance not to do when you signed up.
You'd think that people knowing in advance that they're dealing with the devil would make them scrutinize the details that much more...
I'd say this is roughly 50/50. While Paypal's customer service is legendarily bad, and there's no excuse for not providing a method to talk to a live human, there's also no excuse for not reading the T&C and knowing what you can and cannot do, moreso if you're a business. This is a friggin' payment processor. One of your lifelines as a business. Not reading the terms is one of the dumbest possible things I can think of doing.
And this isn't a case of fine print, either. It's not hard to find Paypal's policy on preorders, or other things which you are specifically not supposed to do, and in fact agreed in advance not to do when you signed up.
You'd think that people knowing in advance that they're dealing with the devil would make them scrutinize the details that much more...