Good point to not waste time after your complaint is not handled as you'd like to contact the ombudsman, in Australia they are really aggressive.
I've seen 8k phone bills wiped (carrier not noticing the unusual overseas data usage and letting them know), laptops replaced years out of warranty (merchantable quality). Usually just mentioning you are going to escalate it to the ombudsman is enough, they get fined just for the complaint being filed.
Weird he or she blames PayPal much more than Indiegogo. PayPal is the one who carries all the risk (if you aren't legit and people demand their money back after you fled) while IG watches this play out in their front yard over and over again and says nothing. And the reference to a rifle and other sections about physical violence being the only way PayPal will learn are disturbing.
So many paypal stories like that. Why do people still use it?
Paypal is absolutely not freezing accounts to earn interest, that's absurd.
Paypal, and other money transmitters have a business model that earns them ~1% profit for a non-fraudulent transaction and -100% profit for a fraudulent transaction. That's just the nature of the game when you're in payments. That means paypal cares ~100x more about preventing fraud than keeping you happy.
Remember me this:
"Scottish Ruby Conference 2008-2011..."
Shouldn't this just be 'Paypal: don't do it'?
Poor PayPal customer service was the reason I stopped using eBay.
I wish I knew what documents PayPal demanded.
I wish I didn't have to enable JavaScript to see anything other than an empty white browser.
Paypal: don't do it
Much of these problems can be avoided when you treat PayPal as a conduit and not as a bank. It isn't a bank. Don't trust it to hold your money.
Treat it like a dodgey money exchanger on a back street in Lima and you are much less likely to get burned.
I don't mean to sound like a pitchfork-wielding maniac, but http://letskillpaypal.com for the win. I bet they were shaking in their shoes at the prospect of something like this going seriously viral.
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It's not hard to understand.
Payment companies aren't going to give you other people's money as a free loan for selling future goods or services. From ticket sales of your first big event to crowd funding.
It violates every company's risk model. They have to hand you a huge chunk of money, allow you to cash out, and then wait for the chargebacks to come in months later. This kind of problem is spelled out in the tos.
What is the solution? Work with a company that will actually look into your financials and underwrite you. Braintree will do this. Your bank will do this. Authorize or whatever ancient CC processor will. Well, either they'll do it or tell you to move on before you've started processing with them. I think Stripe might have the same sort of instant approval, delayed rejection problem possible as paypal does here.
Don't try and use PayPal to avoid the underwriting process or prepare to have your heart broken.