PayPal has recently banned internet marketer Anthony Aires Gomes from using their system.
I got wind of this yesterday from another internet marketing friend who forwarded me an MP3 recording of the chat he had with PayPal about their decision to close all his accounts.
A 20 mins phone call proved fruitless and PayPal blankly refused to reinstate his accounts.
I believe Anthony to be a respected marketer. I personally don’t know the guy but reviews and product feedback seem to reinforce he runs a legitimate operation.
Unfortunately losing PayPal as a payment processor means that he may have to close down his entire operation.
PayPal have become the Google of today. And if for any reason they feel that you’re too high of a risk – that’s it, BAM! Shut down.
After all, they DON’T need your business do they? There’s plenty more fish in the sea.
In fact I have another Internet Marketing friend who had his UK PayPal account shut down last year.
From the 20 minute call Anthony had with PayPal (US) and what my friend reported; they both had products listed on the Warrior Forum when PayPal struck.
What I gather from the conversation with PayPal where they distinctly reference Warrior Forum and the products being sold on there as being “rehashed”, offering no new value to people that are already struggling to make a buck.
I get their message. But Anthony also puts a good point across back to PayPal (listen the the audio to hear).
However, PayPal’s response is very “generic”, almost scripted. Do we expect anything different?
Here’s an extract from the full article take from PRWEB.
“I’ve spent years building a team of dedicated and professional staff. However, I now have no way to pay them. The only option currently open to me is to terminate their employment – lowering the risk that the business will be forced into bankruptcy,” Anthony explains.
So that’s it. Anthony doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong but PayPal have decided that’s he’s “high risk” and have suspended all his accounts.
In tough economic times should payment processors like PayPal be allowed to shut down merchant accounts where people’s livelihood depend on it? Not only Anthony’s, but also his employees.
If no “rules” are broken, why be penalized? I’m not biased in any way but Anthony does state this in his argument to PayPal. Only to fall upon deaf ears.
Honestly, I was a little skeptical about such severe actions being taken without warning so I decided to go check out one of his products sites: http://www.prosperitypublishers.com
By selecting of of their products (http://www.WPMasteryTraining.com/) and attempting to checkout I was greeted with the PayPal message below:
“The recipient is currently unable to receive money.”
Testing more of their products revealed the same results!
This is a severe word of caution to anyone within the internet marketing space that PayPal do not like internet marketing products. It seems even more so apparent they don’t like sales generated via Warrior Forum.
I’d like to hear your take on PayPal’s decision:
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Comments (14)
Add a commentGood timing on the post, Mark – I just finished listening to the call when your email came in!
Here’s how I look at it…
Paypal reserves the right to do business with whomever they want, and not do business with whomever they want. Which, incidentally, is one of the things that a lot of internet marketers like about our business.
If they feel the risk is more than they’re willing to shoulder, that’s their choice. I thought the rep was pretty clear why they were shutting down the accounts – they felt they were too high risk.
That would be frustrating if you were on the receiving end, since it doesn’t really give any specifics, but that’s really all they need to say. It’s their ball and they can make the rules.
As the Paypal rep said, there are plenty of other payment processors out there so it’s not like they’re the only option. They just happen to be one of the only *easy* options to get set up. Most merchant account providers have much stricter guidelines. In fact, many of them wouldn’t even consider our type of business, probably for many of the same reasons Paypal felt Anthony was too risky.
And I can totally see how the WSO area on the Warrior Forum might spook them. It’s a bunch of marketers selling stuff to other marketers, a lot of which is rehashed to some degree or another. And some of those sellers use money they receive via Paypal to buy yet more from other marketers. If you look at it from an outsider’s perspective, I can see where it might look like some kind of big pyramid scheme.
It’s a good lesson in not letting any third party having too much control over your business. Google, Paypal or whatever – if you *need* them to stay in business, you’re just one decision away from going under.
Sheesh, where’d all my line breaks go? I really didn’t intend to spit out one giant paragraph
Ummm, don’t know. Maybe a theme upgrade is needed
Valid points.
Yes there are many other payment processors out there. However PayPal is on of the easiest and peeps feel the most comfortable using.
Possibly as some people already have some funding in there. The real downside is that he isn’t allowed ANY transactions through them, not even to purchase.
But the point is; never put all your eggs in one basket!
Thanks for the post!
Hi Mark,
the paypal rep is on robot mode. Anthony really put across a valid argument.
From what I understood of the call, his accounts haven’t actually had high refunds, complaints etc. they’re just banning him just in case.
That might be ok if he didn’t have a long history with them or if his account had many complaints/refunds but that isn’t the case.
They should have an option for reviewing individual accounts that put forward a good case like Anthony’s i.e. the paypal rep. should be able to say ‘you know what Anthony, I’ll take this on board and discuss with my supervisor and call you back’ or something to that effect.
But that’s not going to happen. Paypal have the power here and they’re treating a good customer (based on what we heard in the call) like muck.
It’s offensive. I agree with John about not letting on a single third party have too much control over your business.
Hey David!
Yes, I think they could have reviewed the account a little further or taking it higher, but you could tell from the start that there was no chance of that happening even though Anthony put across a good argument.
It just wasn’t going to happen. As I’ve said previously; if he was an ethical marketer he didn’t deserve to be shut down completely without warning when there are many worse out there.
Business is about risk.
Google is EXTREMELY HIGH risk – irrespective of whether it’s Adwords, Adsense or Search. Why expose yourself/your business to that unnecessarily?
We’ve known for some time that PayPal is VERY HIGH risk, especially if you do well and strike accord with a market.
There are others – like hosting services who shut you down and don’t even have the manners to advise you.
There’s no law in the world that I know of that sentences you to death without a “fair” trial. Yet these services play god.
Good advice – “Never bite the hand that feeds you!” It seems they haven’t heard that but it will be there downfall eventually. May take a while but that behavior spawns opportunity for more respectable competitors who will in the end, snatch their meal from under their noses.
What goes around…..
I noticed that Google recently got its hand smacked really hard by a major country’s National Unfair Business Practices body. GOOD! Google lost & had to pay. But the adverse publicity across the press etc over several weeks would have done a ton more damage to their reputation.
Lesson: Get your country’s unfair business practices watchdog onto them. If enough do, they will eventually pull back and rejoin the ranks of honorable, respected citizens and desirable business partners, rather than high risk, barely tolerated, faceless *****.
Hey Kel,
Thanks for your post. I totally agree with you: “Yet these services play god.”
The problem is; they seem to get too big for their boots (as the old saying goes) and don’t need the business.
That’s the attitude Google & PayPal have taken. I remember when fist joining MSN (BING) for PPC advertising and had a problem, they called me to see how help get my advertising running, optimized and working on their network.
I respected that from them. They took time to help the “little guy”. They didn’t threaten or shut down my account, they “helped”. They understood/understand the value of customers and what those customers say about them.
Google has got a very poor reputation over the last few years for “banning” people on their network without any specific reason. It looks like PayPal is heading the same way. It’s a shame that they don’t value customers.
But, what goes around comes around. Just make sure whatever you do, you have backups in place.
Hi Mark,
Here is an extract from an email I received a few months ago from someone who had his account restricted. It may be a bit difficult to read without line breaks in your comments section.
I hope your Paypal account never gets shut down
like mine did last week, but if it does, here’s what to
do.
Send them a letter that scares the pants off of them.
That’s what I did yesterday morning, and I actually
got a call from a Paypal employee telling me that it
was all just a terrible mistake, and that the “limitation”
had been removed from my account.
She went on to tell me that I was a very valuable
customer, my account was in good standing, and
that I once again had full access to the $5110.28
in funds that would have otherwise been trapped
in there for the next 180 days.
To be honest, I was astonished that this email
message that I sent (attached) was actually recieved
by a real human, opened up and read at all.
But it was, and to my complete surprise it resulted
in a woman named Rebecca from the “Office of
Executive Escalations” (whatever that is) calling me
at my home & falling all over herself to apologize
for this huge mistake on their part.
She also gave me her employee number, personal
phone number, and her direct email address, and
told me to call her at any time with any questions
or problems related to my account.
I logged back into my Paypal account, and I
discovered that the limitation had in fact been
removed, and this message showed up inside my
account:
“Your Account Access is Fully Restored
Thank you for taking the steps to restore your account access. Your patience and efforts increase security for our entire community of users.
PayPal takes the safety of your account, business, and financial data as seriously as you do, and these ongoing checks of our system contribute to our high level of security.”
So what did I do? Well, I’ve attached the full
message that I sent them to this email, but essentially
I very politely stated that their limitation policy sucks,
and threatened to notify my State’s Attorney General,
Illinoios Governor, Better Business Bureau, FTC,
and the Federal Reserve.
Hi Kevin.
Now that I’ve fixed the comments section – could you post the full email you sent to them here?
Thanks for the awesome post – very insightful and hope it will help others
Hey Guys – comments area spacing is FIXED! Whohoo!!
I will say that Pay pal do have the right to cancel anyones account if they don’t agree with the marketing methods your using, or any other threats they feel is not ethical.
I’m not saying Anthony Aires was in the wrong, but this is what happens when you don’t have any control of your business. I would have multiple back up sources If I plan on using the FREE service providers. Which also makes me wander why continue using the FREE service if your making hundreds of thousands or millions.
Paypal makes so much money, they can pick and choose whoever they want, and remember its FREE!!!!!!!!
It sucks big time that Anthony has had his account suspended; especially given the number of people he had employed in his business. But this is a warning to us all. Paypal is bigger now than it was 5 years ago and online marketing, privacy and the regulatory environment has changed significantly. Marketers are now slowly being reigned in and selling ‘anything’ via a payment link is frowned upon for good reason. And the fact that sales generated through the WF are frowned upon shouldn’t be surprising. One look at any day’s offers in the WSO section would make anyone cringe. There’s hardly anything of value there anymore–just lots of empty promises veiled as the ‘next big thing’. Paypal perhaps grew tired of handling refunds–that is perhaps one of the biggest hazards of selling information products and large volumes of refunds must be an administrative nightmare for Paypal. It seems no-one on the WF bothered to consider that a Paypal rep may one day take a look at the forum and the quality of products selling on there. Paypal or no other payment processor will risk their reputation facilitating scams–even if there are processing fees involved.
Anthony must take a serious look at his offerings. There are things we can’t see by just looking at his sales page; things only he can appreciate about what might have made him a high risk. Once he finds these things and makes the necessary changes, I am sure he’ll be able to get his business going again.