Factorio Forums

I would like to avoid any confusions regarding our issues with PayPal. Please read this before you start bashing PayPal:) I am not defending them, but I would like you to know the full story.

The setup:

We didn't have a choice of different payment method. Our campaign was fixed funding and that allows only PayPal to be used for money transfer from Indiegogo.

I started a PayPal account shortly before the Indiegogo campaign started. The account is connected to my bank account in the Netherlands (I used to live and work there). In the Czech Republic the currency is CZK and PayPal fees to convert from euros / dollars to CZK are just ridiculous. And we need the money in euro anyway (we pay for a lot of freelance work in Euros). My bank account in the Netherlands is valid and I have passed the PayPal validation in this regard as well. However I don't live in the Netherlands anymore so I filled in my old address where I used to live.

We don't have any company / studio or anything. We did the Indiegogo because we desperately needed to verify whether this whole project has any meaning at all. And we spent long time in full time development without an income and burning through our savings. Therefore the PayPal account is simply a Premiere account (not business / merchant / etc.). We haven't looked up enough information about the whole problematics. I feel responsible.

The main act:

Soon after our Indiegogo goal was met we started actually receiving the payments on the PayPal account.

Yesterday (1st of March 2013) in the evening we have received a note that our PayPal account has been blocked. This message was automatically generated. They haven't told us we are fraud. They simply locked the account and we are not allowed to withdraw / send any money. We can still receive the money though. They said this is according to the EU regulations and that we are supposed to further identify ourselves once the incomes on the PayPal account surpass 2500€ / year. I don't blame PayPal for this, however I find the whole process rather unfortunate. Also we haven't received any personal email or anything. It all came from the system.

I went through the automatic verification procedure. However it failed in the step when I was supposed to verify my Passport / ID against the address. I have contacted the PayPal support by email and explained them the whole problematics and asked them to contact me as soon as possible to resolve this situaiton. I haven't heard from them since. I have also tried calling them but their phone support works mon - fri 9 - 5. I suppose the timing couldn't be worse (last 48 hours + the weekend).

So we sort of panicked. We read a lot of horror stories when PayPal users had their money blocked for 180 days or accounts were simply deleted. We made an update and asked the users not to back the project at the moment. We were getting a lot of contributions on the Friday. For us the worst case scenario was actually the project getting loads of attention in the last 48 hours, raising reasonable amount of money and then those money ending up being locked / taken by PayPal.

The aftermath:

We will be looking into ways to setup the payment on our site to allow users pre-order Factorio. We have actually already implemented the system to use PayPal. However after this experience we decided to scrape it. Even if the things go well at the end. Having the account suspended without a personal note and no follow up is something I don't feel comfortable with.

We are happy for any inputs / ideas you guys might have regarding this issue.


EDIT (March 9 2013):

Ok the story continues

A week ago our account was blocked for the first time. Then it was released on tuesday or so. And yesterday it was blocked again. This time for a different reason. Namely because "they need to make sure we will be able to provide services we promised to our customers". We were asked to provide information regarding our business model (what goods / services we offer, expected monthly payments for the next 6 months and what delivery method we will be using).
It is funny that they want to make sure that we deliver to our customers and do that by blocking our funds which effectively means we will have troubles delivering to our customers.

We are sorry if this information is not officially looking, but the whole thing looks like a joke to us. Anyway we have spent a good deal of time on the phone explaining to their support how Indiegogo works, what are we doing, what the game will look like, etc. The lady at the support was very helpful and might even download the demo She promised to escalate the matter to the appropriate department immediately.

We will see and let you informed about how the situation unfolds. To be fair PayPal gave us a chance to withdraw the funds collected in the indiegogo campaign (there was like a 3 day window when our account was not blocked). However we couldn't do that for the legal reasons - we can't accept any transfers to our bank account before we get "a bussiness license" (which should happen next monday).

We are sure we will be able to resolve this issue as well. It is a bit painful to spend energy on things like these however. Please don't take this update as a reason to start PayPal bashing discussion:) We announced it because we want to keep you informed what is happening with the funds you guys provided us. And also the information "leaked" somewhere else on the forum so we though it would be appropriate to announce it here.

Sorry to hear you have gone through so many problems with Paypal.

Amazon Webpay or Dwolla are two of the many better alternatives to Paypal.

Here is a good article on the subject. You have our support, good luck.

http://lifehacker.com/5821634/why-you-s ... ople-money

I hope you'll be able to fix this problem. It is not a small amount.

If you do not manage to solve that, I think you can trust the community to continue supporting you. You are making a good game, you are truly investing yourself in it, and we want to support you for all this reason. So do not despair, you are not alone !!!

Hope everything goes well. I know PayPal likes to steal money and cause problems (from personal experience), but it's used almost everywhere. A good alternative, that I can think of is Payza.

Mark wrote:A good alternative, that I can think of is Payza.

I just did a quick Google search of "Payza reivews" and there are half a dozen comments about the company ripping off it's costumers.

slpwnd wrote:[...]Our campaign was fixed funding and that allows only PayPal to be used for money transfer from Indiegogo.[...]

Minor correction -- according to Indiegogo's help system, the fact that the campaign is in euros is why you have to use PayPal. If it had been in USD, you would've had credit card processing through their system, with PayPal as an alternative.

Other than that, yeah, don't use them for anything serious -- too many horror stories. Google Wallet for business is an option, for instance, though navigating their site seems... interesting, at best.

orbito wrote:

Mark wrote:A good alternative, that I can think of is Payza.

I just did a quick Google search of "Payza reivews" and there are half a dozen comments about the company ripping off it's costumers.

Didn't have any problems with them.

Doing research for something like this is important. From what I've read, Payza is just as bad as Paypal.

Amazon and Google both have payment services and good customer ratings. The article I provided also has plenty of good payment services.

The big red warning about Paypal on the Indiegogo page is gone, but there is no post about any evolution of the situation.
Is it solved or not ? I hope it is, or my 10 euros went to waste this evening...

Staxxy wrote:The big red warning about Paypal on the Indiegogo page is gone, but there is no post about any evolution of the situation.
Is it solved or not ? I hope it is, or my 10 euros went to waste this evening...

If you paid, they'll either get a copy of the alpha or refund you. They wont let you loose money due to Paypal.

Staxxy wrote:The big red warning about Paypal on the Indiegogo page is gone, but there is no post about any evolution of the situation.
Is it solved or not ? I hope it is, or my 10 euros went to waste this evening...

We haven't heard from the PayPal yet. However couple of people assured us that the things will be fine and this is a standard procedure on the PayPal side. I don't like account blocking being a standard procedure nevertheless. But I suppose the PayPal needs to protect themselves against fraud / illegal practices and these automatic suspensions are one way to do that.

We figured the big red warning was an overraction and scared a lot of people. This also triggered a wave of negative emotions towards the PayPal. While they have done some bad things in the past it is too early to tell what is going on now and we really want to avoid any premature conclusions. So we took the warning down. Sorry for disturbing you.

We will let you know once we manage to get in touch in them / hear from them back.

We have contacted the PayPal today and they asked us to submit some documents for verification. We have done that and now we wait

After quite some communication with PayPal our account was reactivated today. That is a big relief. We have to say that they were really nice to us at the PayPal and even though it looked scary in the beginning it turned out to be just a standard procedure on their part.

Now there is nothing in our way to using those funds on further Factorio development.

Excellent - Now you can focus your energy on development, the things you really want to do, instead of having to stress over this. I'm happy the things got resolved, in a reasonable time too. It's standard procedure for PayPal as you said, I remember sending them verification info on my own account, but of course, it's that much stressful when it happens in a campaign like this, and at the worst possible moment. Anyway - thanks for keeping us updated , all the best and hassle-free project from here on out

Didn't it take a week? I wouldn't call that "quick"

It took almost a week. I would call it quick