PayPal PR mess: Company slammed for freezing Regretsy account
Twitter was up in arms Tuesday over PayPal’s apparent blocking of the popular blog’s efforts to set up a holiday gift exchange.
On Dec. 1, the site announced a plan to do a little more, organizing a gift drive for about 200 children in the blog’s community who wouldn’t otherwise get much for the holidays.
It almost didn’t happen. In a Monday post, the site’s operator (who writes under the pseudonym Helen Killer) explained that PayPal had frozen her accounts on its site because of what its representatives said was an improper use of the “donate” button.
It’s supposed to only be for nonprofits, they said.
Further, Regretsy would have to start a new website to provide the toys to the kids involved in the drive. Plus, PayPal wouldn’t allow Regretsy to send the toys to anyone but the named buyer. All the while, the online payment service kept fees on donations and toy sales.
In response, Regretsy pointed readers to a list of PayPal email addresses and phone numbers, and a fan combed through the company’s various policies. Regretsy was briefly a trending topic on Twitter Tuesday, as the link to its blog post spread through social media circles.
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