I awoke today to read the following
email from PayPal:
We are hereby notifying you that, after a recent review of your account activity, it has been determined that you are in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy regarding your sales / offers of an ebook about escort services on blueprintforanescortservice.blogspot.com.Therefore, your account has been permanently limited.Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for certain sexually oriented materials or services or for items that could be considered obscene.
It is a trick statement as all
of my books are “about escort services” including Memoirs. All
are also sold on my website,
The Accused Madam. I only had funds from the last three sales in the
account so the balance is $30 after PayPal took its fees on the three
sales and adding the previous balance of $2.
The censors at
PayPal must not want anything sold that isn't for children. Does
Disney own PayPal or a piece of the company?
Nothing
in any book I have written could possibly be considered “obscene”
or “sexually oriented material”. My books are all intended for an
adult audience, but if they were rated they would all be PG or at
worst R. There is nothing sexual in any book I have
written.
Screw the censors at PayPal.
When I login to my PayPal account I
see the following notification:
Why is my account access limited?
Your account access has been limited for the following reason(s):
Your account access has been limited for the following reason(s):
- Jul 10, 2011: When you signed up for your
PayPal account, you agreed to our User Agreement and Acceptable
Use Policy. Because some of your recent transactions violated
this policy, we've had to permanently limit your account.
Please remove any references to PayPal from your website.
You'll be able to withdraw any money in your account 180 days after your last transaction. We'll email you when it's ready to be withdrawn.
My email response to aup@paypal.com:
Nothing in any book that I have written could possibly be considered "obscene" or "sexually oriented material". While the intended audience for my books is adult, if anyone were to read and rate any of my books they would each be a PG or at most an R. There is nothing sexual in any book.What you are doing here is incorrect, but this is the US and I respect your right as a company to not do business with anyone you choose. Welcome to Amerika, the new Disney, where everything is for children and adults do not exist except in relation to children.Screw PayPal's censorship of me and my books. So you manage to stop me from selling ebooks that are available from Google ebooks and in Amazon's US, UK, and Canada Kindle stores and as paperbacks through any bookstore. Thanks a bunch and screw you.Vicky Gallas
5 comments:
Paypal is a legal criminal organization. They routinely limit thousands of accounts per day without any reason. And if you forget to ask for your money back after 6 months they will keep it. Banks are regulated by the government (that's a joke), but Paypal gets to do what it wants when it wants.
Read more horror stories at paypalsucks.com
I'm sorry to read what happened to you, however using Paypal is just an accident waiting to happen.
I know that you are correct - it has been an accident waiting to happen for me, but not in this way or pertaining to the bullshit stated as reasoning. I have a feeling that someone that doesn't like my books contacted PayPal and pushed an agenda. Maybe Sheriff Jackass over in Polk County or maybe an angry forum poster following a recent confrontation I had on a forum. If you read any of the Blueprint books, you know there isn't anything "obscene" or any "sexually oriented material" in any of the books. PayPal took some angry crusader's word - that's why I say screw PayPal.
I had a problem months ago when some jerk-off did a chargeback on a book. Apparently he did this to various vendors, some sort of game to get free merchandise. PayPal froze his account and then took the $10 back from me. I was ticked off and the guy even emailed me numerous times with questions. Finally I told him to give me my fucking $10 or shove off. lol I was mad enough to pass on PayPal after that, but after a few days I put it in perspective - it was only $10 and not worth tossing the income completely over.
Thanks for the link - I will check it out.
Vicky
I got the same message. I put up a brand new website. I never had a website before, it was my first one ever. The website offered "incense" for sale. Before the website ever got any traffic, not one visitor, Pay Pal put the wammy on me.
Here's the (not to) funny thing. I bought the active ingredient used in the incense from a website that used Pay Pal to handle its transactions.
So, I can buy the stuff from a website using Pay Pal, but I can't sell it? I also pointed out to Pay Pal that even though they claimed I was selling something illegal I pointed out that it was sold in stores where the police shop and the district attorney shops and nobody get arrested.
So I told them I couldn't understand wtf they were talking about.
Paypal is a joke! I've seen escort agencies use Paypal as a method of payment. I guess that their just waiting until the funds reach a certain amount before they freeze the account and take the money for themselves..
I agree - PayPal is a joke. All it takes is for someone to report the account as being used for adult business and poof! Will be frozen quickly. Someone that didn't like me and the Blueprint book did that to me. I even offered to send someone at PayPal a copy so they could see that the book was not about selling sex, but it's not even possible to speak to a person that can actually do anything over there.
No doubt that the government could also use the transaction data of any escort agency accepting payments this way in a prosecution as well. It's like keeping a client list and circulating it to any law enforcement agency that wants it. lol
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