sounds like a paypal issue.
I READ ALL THAT SHIT
I WANT A COOKIE
Every time I see something like this I'm still shocked at how blatantly Steam end-run around the credit card chargeback consumer-protection system. I mean, at least act a bit embarassed about it.
If only Valve would bother to answer PayPal's emails, a lot of problems could be avoided.Originally Posted by Nalano
http://www.reddit.com/tb/d79n8
Why you people insist on using a middleman is beyond me, especially when it's a known issue:
Steam wants to close a fraud ring where-in somebody makes a new account, buys a bunch of games, sells the account, then charges back all the games. So, Steam hates chargebacks.
Unfortunately, Paypal has a bunch of automatic chargeback policies because they're fuckwits, and people use Paypal as a middleman because they don't trust Valve to run away with their credit card info. So, Paypal accounts get knocked out more often than most.
It boggles the mind. Why use a middleman? Doesn't that just double the number of places shit can go wrong?
The guy on the previous page didn't use paypal.
And if there are chargebacks, then just take away those games, rather than the whole account.
I take it you mail directly money to Steam? Or better yet, why insist on a middleman, why not go straight for the developers?
The fact is, Valve has piss-poor communication. Abysmal, even, as the database breach might have indicated. To me it would seem that Valve systematically ignores emails from PayPal. Seeing how PayPal is quite a large entity, one could imagine that to provide a good service they'd do everything in their power to ensure a pleasant experience to their customers, by taking the needed actions - replying to PayPal or even perhaps not offering PayPal as payment option if it's such a big hassle for them.
He did. Read the backlog.
I don't know if you're taking the piss or not, but seriously: Shitibank -> Valve has half as many places to go wrong than Shitibank -> Paypal -> Valve. You add middlemen for convenience (I certainly didn't get a bank account for the interest on my average balance of $laughable) and when they turn out to be inconvenient, then why do you insist on muddying the issue?
As far as I know there's no way of paying Valve without using some kind of middleman, whether it's PayPal, a Credit Card company, DIRECTebanking or whatever. I'm not trying to muddy the issue; just pointing out that whatever method you use to pay Valve involves some intermediary between your bank and Valve. PayPal may be more likely to cause problems (although in my experience they're no more or less troublesome than Visa are) but to say "just skip the middleman" is pointless.
Based on my reading of it, he only used Paypal after his credit card got banned by Steam due to the chargebacks. So unless Paypal have invented time travel, they're nothing to do with the chargebacks that got his account suspended. (For once.)
Not that I disagree that involving Paypal when you have any choice in the matter isn't a good idea. Especially when dealing with a company that apparently has such a violent allergy to chargebacks that they will shut down your account at the merest hint of a disputed payment.
My guess is that the problem lies somewhere with Valve's payment processor.
Practically speaking though, there's no difference between the CC company and your bank. I've never had to deal with Visa, since everything's implemented by and through my bank. Paypal does add a distinct layer that I have to deal with.
I've not had any issues with PP either, but I read about them often enough that I certainly wouldn't use them if there's a direct CC option.
Eh, yes and no. The typical credit transaction is (this is speculation, but it's informed speculation based on time working in the financial services sector) going to be something like this:
You -> Your financial institution (either your bank or your credit card issuer which will certainly have a bank of their own, but that's not particularly relevant here) -> their payment processor -> the payment network in question (Visa, MasterCard, Johnny's Discount Credit Card Shack, whatever, and there may be more steps in here that I'm not aware of) -> Valve's bank's payment processor -> Valve's bank -> Valve
So more like a small army of middlemen, no matter what.
Where someone like Paypal complicates things is that, they're only kind of a financial institution; you need to get your money to them from somewhere (whether your bank account or a credit card, or someone sending you money via Paypal). So they're not a replacement for your bank so much as an additional link or two between your financial institution and the payment network.
So yes, saying "cut out the middleman" is a bit simplistic, but it's effective shorthand for "cut out middlemen 3 and 4 out of 17", or whatever.
As opposed to my bank -> PayPal -> Valve's bank? Yes, I'm eliding organisations like SWIFT or whoever handles the actual transfer of money from my bank to PayPal's and PayPal's to Valve's, but I still don't see that paying through PayPal involves any more third parties than through another payment facilitator.
Edit: and the reason you deal with your bank rather than directly with Visa is that the bank does the talking-to-Visa so you don''t have to. And they do that because Visa have been around for so long. In all likelihood your bank will do the same thing with PayPal eventually, but as with most industries they're still about 10 years behind the man in the street.
I don't use PayPal for Steam, but I do use PayPal for a number of other transactions simply because of their buyer protection policy, which I've had to use twice because a company was faffing around. PayPal might not be ideal for all sellers (and I think their negative attention on RPS is mostly because of a certain indie studio who didn't read the policies), but as a buyer it's often preferable to alternatives.
But not with Steam. But then again we've seen Steam has had an intrusion, so although Valve isn't going to steal your details, the potential still exists for someone else to do so.
2 weeks for Shitibank to mail me a new card < 3 months to get Valve and some bank in Aussieland to talk to PayPal.
Sort of. If you take out all the processors and such, it's the difference between your bank -> Valve's bank and your bank -> Paypal -> Valve's bank. Which, to you, probably isn't going to make any difference at all; all this stuff is designed, when things go well, to be pretty much invisible to the end user (on both ends).
I don't have a lot of respect for Paypal as a company, but, realistically, throwing them into the mix may add one extra point where things can go wrong, but it's not likely to make a huge difference, in the end.
Hi,
Just to clarify, my previous post was just using a credit card. I did have to use Paypal to purchase the $5 credit they wanted out of me as they had burned my credit card in their system after it was flagged with the "chargeback".
My biggest complaint was the fact that I was presumed guilty until I could prove my own innocence, and the 3-4 day average response time. Also, there were a few times where I waited 4 days for them to reply with "We've already given you all the info you need".
Steam Support's customer service is the worst I have ever experienced, bar none.
I thought it would be best to bring this up here:
Steam has blocked me from buying, trading/gifting games due to a chargeback from Paypal. Now I've contacted Steam support and Paypal to find out why this happened as there was money in the account. Only conclusion is that there was a transaction error but I was able to play the game in question (Arma II + Dayz) for several days before it got removed.
Steam have said contact Paypal to get the funds resent to them and after speaking with Paypal they advised to forward the money using the send money function. It turns out that this is incorrect as Steam have now told me I need to get the chargeback reversed. Everyone I speak to at Paypal says this cannot be done so Im stuck without being able to activate any games. What makes this worse is I had pre-ordered the Civ V expansion and so Im going to be unable to use this.
Have anyone had any luck with a similar scenario with the chargebacks?
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