Does this mean PayPal discriminates against Chinese people?

[elina]

We have a PayPal account based in China. I wonder if you have a PayPal account based in U.S. or in Europe or in other places, will you encounter this kind of things?

[skylee]

What kind of things?

[elina]

On May 25 in Beijing time, we got an email from PayPal:

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system. During a recent screening, we noticed an issue regarding your account.

We have observed activity in this account that is unusual or potentially high risk.

And an instruction showed in our PayPal account:

Please fax each of the following documents:

- Valid photo ID

• Passport

• Driver's License

• National Identity Card

- Proof of address

• Utility Bill

- Proof of sufficient inventory for the following transaction:9D1111111111

- Proof of sufficient inventory for the following transaction:4N1111111111

- Proof of sufficient inventory for the following transaction:2V1111111111

On May 26, we faxed the following:

If the documents sent by Fax are not clearly enough to see, we can also send them by attached photo files through email, just let us know which email address we would transmit them to.

This “Limited Account Access” does affect our online business, so please resolve this problem as soon as possible, thank you.

And we also faxed Passport, National Identity Card, detailed information for the above 3 transactions, including our confirmations emails to our customers, our emails informing sending packages to our customers, the sender's receipts sealed by the post office, photos with all the products in the above 3 transactions.

[skylee]

Why do you think it is discrimination?

And please forgive me as I don't know much about paypal, but could you just create another paypal account?

[elina]

On May 28 in Beijing time, PayPal wrote:

We have received your faxed documents including utility bill,copyof ID and tracking information but we're sorry, but your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this time. We need more information about your account before we can restore full access to your account. Please complete the steps below so that we may review your account further:

- Fax a copy of your driver's license/passport. Please make the copy of this as large and as light as possible.

- Fax Tracking information for the following transactions into your PayPal account.

8V1111111111

2V1111111111

7L1111111111

- Fax copies of the original bills of sale or invoices referencing your purchase or cquisition of the items you are selling along with the name and telephone number of your supplier(s)

On May 28, we faxed:

Quote from PayPal email sent today on Monday, May 28 in Beijing time:

“We have received your faxed documents including utility bill,copyof ID and tracking information”

“Please complete the steps below so that we may review your account further:

- Fax a copy of your driver's license/passport. Please make the copy of

this as large and as light as possible.”

Answer: I’m afraid that I have no a driver's license, because I cannot drive. Regarding the copy of my passport, we have faxed it on Saturday, May 26 in Beijing time. Now we fax it AGAIN today, please check it carefully. And I said in our documents faxed on Saturday, May 26 in Beijing time:

“If the documents sent by Fax are not clearly enough to see, we can also send them by attached photo files through email, just let us know which email address we would transmit them to.”

Quote from PayPal email sent today on Monday, May 28 in Beijing time:

“- Fax Tracking information for the following transactions into your PayPal account.

2V1111111111”

Answer: I’m sure we have already faxed this tracking information for 2V1111111111 on Saturday, May 26 in Beijing time. Have you seen it? Or you’re too busy to see it? Or you’re too CARELESS to see it? Please check those documents with responsibility.

By the way, in PayPal email sent on May 25 in Beijing time, titled with “Notification of Limited Account Access”, you wrote: “We have observed activity in this account that is unusual or potentially high risk”,

“Please fax each of the following documents:

Proof of sufficient inventory for the following transaction:

9D1111111111

4N1111111111

2V1111111111

What made you get this conclusion of “high risk”? Just because you think it is impossible for Chinese people to do business with the amounts respectively of USD 77.XX, USD 79X.XX and USD 10X.XX in a short time? I think there’s some discrimination here, isn’t it?

In addition, I’d like to know if we’re not satisfied with the service of PayPal staff, which department we should appeal to, please tell us their contact method, thank you. Or should we look for it on PayPal site by ourselves?

And on that day, we also faxed detailed information for 8V1111111111 and 7L1111111111, as well as some of our products' supplier's invoices.

[Senzhi]

It's not discrimination from Paypal.

However, due to the poor Chinese government regulations in protecting financial assets (esp. international transactions), as well as the organised internet crime being the highest in China and Russia, many foreign and international financial service providers will request (on a regular basis) proof of ID and/or solvability before authorising a financial transaction involving some amount of (temporary) credit coming from Chinese IP addresses.

People just want to be sure they get their money.

Even as a foreigner, I have these same kind of problems, with international orders or money transfers where there's a credit risk involved, due to my IP address being Chinese. Luckily, my European bank does a good effort in backing me up and making sure I don't get too much hassle.

So, even though it's annoying, it's not discrimination, but merely due to the Chinese government not following international financial standards yet. This situation should change for the better in the future though.

In this case Paypal seems not to trust your account. There could be to a lot of reasons for this, including a possible past identity theft relating or close to some details you provided. This does NOT mean Paypal thinks you're a dishonest person.

They are just protecting themselves, like anybody else would.

One tip: before you provide any personal and/or confidential details, make sure the request you got is really coming from Paypal and is not some phishing or other internet crime attempt! You would not be the first.

[elina]

On May 29, PayPal wrote:

We're sorry, but your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this time. We need more information about your account before we can restore full access to your account. Please complete the steps below so that we may review your account further:

- Fax Tracking information for the following transactions into your PayPal account(We did receive some tracking information from you last time, and please give the following payments' tracking information).

8V1111111111

2V1111111111

7L1111111111

- Fax copies of the original bills of sale or invoices referencing your purchase or cquisition of the items you are selling along with the name and telephone number of your supplier(s) for the following transactions:

2V1111111111

4N1111111111

9D1111111111

On May 30, we faxed:

Quote from PayPal email sent on Tuesday, May 29 in Beijing time:

“- Fax Tracking information for the following transactions into your PayPal account (We did receive some tracking information from you last time, and please give the following payments' tracking information).

8V1111111111

2V1111111111

7L1111111111

Answer: are you joking? You mean you need to know the following payments’information from us that were originally provided by PayPal, which you can simply get from PayPal’s own data?

I think we have replied every question asked by PayPal. But I’m afraid you have not answered our questions faxed on Monday, May 28 in Beijing time as follows, you won’t tell us you have not seen them, will you?

“By the way, in PayPal email sent on May 25 in Beijing time, titled with

“Notification of Limited Account Access”, you wrote: “We have observed activity in this account that is unusual or potentially high risk”,

“Please fax each of the following documents:

Proof of sufficient inventory for the following transaction:

9D1111111111

4N1111111111

2V1111111111

What made you get this conclusion of “high risk”? Just because you think it is impossible for Chinese people to do business with the amounts respectively of USD 77.xx, USD 79x.xx and USD 10x.xx in a short time? I think there’s some discrimination here, isn’t it?

In addition, I’d like to know if we’re not satisfied with the service of PayPal staff, which department we should appeal to, please tell us their contact method, thank you. Or should we look for it on PayPal site by ourselves?”

Although PayPal is a large-sized company, I don’t respect it any more, since it’s so 不可理喻 and 店大欺客。When we received PayPal email titled with “Notification of Limited Account Access”, sent on May 25 in Beijing time, we felt angry and hurt, because PayPal arbitrarily got the conclusion of “this account is unusual or potentially high risk”, even there’s no a single customer’s complaint towards our account. We don’t fear any investigation, because we treat every customer sincerely and carry out every order in time. I’m very proud that our company has a much better customers’ service than some of PayPal staff performing during this whole so-called “account access limitation” process. Now we’re calm down and not angry, since you just don’t worth it, like a Chinese saying: 酒逢知己千杯少，话不投机半句多。We’ll not 对牛弹琴 any longer, and will save the time to begin to do something more meaningful, like looking for other online payment solution. Meanwhile, we’re busy with preparing for our own forums, maybe will establish a sub-forum of Doing Business in China, on there we’ll tell others not to use PayPal, since it is not reasonable and discriminates against Chinese people.

To be frank, before we find other online payment method, we’ll have to use PayPal for our overseas customers, but I’m sure if we have a chance to change in the future, we’ll be happy to leave this disgusting PayPal service as soon as possible.

And on that day, we faxed the notification payment emails sent by PayPal to us before for 8V1111111111, 2V1111111111, 7L1111111111, also the original bills of sale or invoices referencing our purchase or cquisition of the items we are selling along with the name and telephone number of our supplier(s) for the following transactions:

2V1111111111

4N1111111111

9D1111111111

[roddy]

Hi Elina,

I'm not sure if Paypal does this more often to users in China or not, but it's not completely unusual. The same thing could easily happen to a user in the US or Europe. I don't know if they just chose you randomly, or if something about the transaction made them pay attention, but if you just follow the procedure and give them what they ask for, you should be back in operation quickly.

Something similar happened to me - signed up with ebay for the first time, ordered a low value item, and the next day got a brusque message saying I hadn't acted 'in the spirit of Ebay' or something and eventually got told to send in proof of ID and address. Don't like it, and dealing with big organizations can be very frustrating, but that's the way they work.

Discrimination against Chinese people? I guess they may be more wary of transactions with China, I don't know - it's not unusual to see people using ebay / paypal refusing to deal with people based in China and other countries due to the large number of scams (they say) happen.

I can understand it's frustrating, but asking if they are careless or discriminating is not going to help - do that anonymously, from another email address, when you've got everything sorted out . . .

[elina]

On June 1, PayPal wrote:

Your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this time. We need more

information about your account before we can proceed with the appeal process. Please complete the steps below so that we may review your account further:

Fax Tracking information for the following transactions:

Transaction ID: 8V1111111111

Transaction ID: 2V1111111111

Transaction ID: 7L1111111111

Thank you for taking the time to forward us documents related to your PayPal account. After review, it appears the invoices we received were your notification of payments received from PayPal.

An invoice is an original bill of sale referencing where you purchased or acquired the items you are selling along with the name and telephone number of your supplier. We are unable to review your account until invoices that fit the above mentioned criteria are received.

On June 1, we wrote:

Quote from PayPal email sent on June 1 in Beijing time:

After review, it appears the invoices we received were your notification of payments received from PayPal. An invoice is an original bill of sale referencing where you purchased or acquired the items you are selling along with the name and telephone number of your supplier. We are unable to review your account until invoices that fit the above mentioned criteria are received.

Answer: I think there’s some misunderstanding during communication, which is totally misled by the instruction in PayPal email, the reasons are as follows:

Quote from PayPal email sent on May 29 in Beijing time:

We're sorry, but your account access limitation cannot be lifted at this time. We need more information about your account before we can restore full access to your account. Please complete the steps below so that we may review your account further:

- Fax Tracking information for the following transactions into your PayPal account(We did receive some tracking information from you last time, and please give the following payments' tracking information).

8V1111111111

2V1111111111

7L1111111111

- Fax copies of the original bills of sale or invoices referencing your purchase or acquisition of the items you are selling along with the name and telephone number of your supplier(s) for the following transactions:

2V1111111111

4N1111111111

9D1111111111

Answer: please carefully read the first paragraph, you say: “We did receive some tracking information from you last time, and please give the following payments' tracking information”. Since we have faxed other information regarding the 3 transactions in our faxes before, so we think this time you ask us to provide the payments' tracking information about our customers transferring payments to us, that’s why we say in our later fax sent on May 30: “are you joking? You mean you need to know the following payments’ information from us that were originally provided by PayPal, which you can simply get from PayPal’s own data?” Meanwhile, although we think it’s ridiculous, we still fax our notification of payments received from PayPal on 8V1111111111, 2V1111111111, 7L1111111111.

And in addition, we also attach the original bills of sale or invoices referencing our purchase or acquisition of the items we are selling along with the name and telephone number of our supplier(s) for the following transactions: 2V1111111111, 4N1111111111, 9D1111111111, in the fax sent on May 30.

I think there’re 2 places in the instruction in PayPal email which mislead us:

1. if you want the original bills of sale or invoices referencing our purchase or acquisition of the items we are selling for the following transactions: 8V1111111111, 2V1111111111, 7L1111111111, i.e. you don’t want our notification of payments received from PayPal about the 3 transactions, why NOT you simply write your request in ONE paragraph, instead of respectively writing in TWO paragraphs?

2. if you carefully check the transactions’ numbers in the first and second paragraphs in PayPal email, you can find that there’s one transaction number in the first paragraph is the same as the other one in the second paragraph, which also makes us misunderstand you’re requesting two different kinds of things, i.e.

a). you want to know our notification of payments received from PayPal about the 3 transactions in the first paragraph.

B). you want to know the original bills of sale or invoices referencing our purchase or acquisition of the items we are selling for the other 3 transactions in the second paragraph.

And we have attached the detailed information in our fax sent on May 30, according to our understanding.

Quote from PayPal email sent on June 1 in Beijing time:

Fax Tracking information for the following transactions:

Transaction ID: 8V1111111111

Transaction ID: 2V1111111111

Transaction ID: 7L1111111111

Answer: although we have given the detailed information about the above 3 transactions in our previous faxes, today we’ll fax the entire material ONCE AGAIN, because we suddenly understand one thing:

In our confirmation emails sent to our customers, which we also faxed to PayPal before, every product’s name is in English with a hidden link to our site, so that our customers can click the English name to enter the product’s webpage on our site to see the detailed information about the product, like this: New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook (1)+DVD, but PayPal always asks us to fax documents to you, then in our materials faxed, you cannot enter our site to know every product’s Chinese name, but on the original bills of sale or invoices referencing our purchase or acquisition of the items we are selling, it only shows the Chinese names of the products, so you cannot fit the invoices to the products in our confirmation emails to our customers. Today we specially change every product’s name into this style:

New Practical Chinese Reader Textbook (1)+DVD

新实用汉语课本（第一册）课本+DVD

http://www.lovemandarin.com/book.asp?id=461

￥88

Hope this time, you can easily get the information you need.

To be honest, I think PayPal’s feedback speed is nearly as good as ours, although not that good as ours yet, we always reply our customers within 1 working day, PayPal makes feedback within 1 to 2 working days, I think it’s good enough. But regarding the service attitude showed in your emails, I 实在不敢恭维/ cannot give a compliment. I think your working attitude is inadvertent/careless without serious responsibility.

And today, we faxed the detailed information once again for:

Transaction ID: 8V1111111111

Transaction ID: 2V1111111111

Transaction ID: 7L1111111111

[roddy]

I doubt that - looks entirely plausible to me. Note they haven't asked for any bank details, passwords, credit card numbers, plus Elina's said there was a note on her account.

[elina]

Sorry, i just finished uploading, I'll be back in half an hour, going to get my son to bed.

[roddy]

Hope he sleeps well Don't forget the bedtime story about Big Bad Paypal and the Brave Mummy.

[liuzhou]

Sorry Roddy, I deleted after readiing more carefully. But I've been using Paypal for years from China and never had a problem.

I'm not convinced it is all Paypal's fault.

[mr.stinky]

since when does paypal require the name and phone number of your supplier? seems

a bit strange. and proof of sufficient inventory for one book?

unless i missed it....what tracking information are you sending? seems they want

postal receipts with tracking numbers, not receipt of payment through paypal.

[roddy]

http://forums.ebay.com.au/thread.jspa?threadID=600003956&tstart=40&mod=1137567725583

http://forums.ebay.com.my/thread.jspa?threadID=600000312&tstart=0&mod=1150425208921

http://forums.ebay.com.cn/thread.jspa?threadID=1100061734&tstart=0&mod=1177639782780

All similar cases. Although having read some of those I'm now going to go and move as much money out of Paypal as I can . . .

[elina]

but could you just create another paypal account?

Done.

One tip: before you provide any personal and/or confidential details, make sure the request you got is really coming from Paypal and is not some phishing or other internet crime attempt! You would not be the first.

I think I make sure the emails are from PayPal:

1. in every PayPal email, they address my real name, not just “Dear customer”, I remember I read the PayPal security policy before, it can distinguish if it’s a real PayPal letter or just a cheat email.

2. after log-in, our PayPal account IS limited to use.

since when does paypal require the name and phone number of your supplier? seems

a bit strange.

On May 28' date=' read my fifth post.

and proof of sufficient inventory for one book?

Not for one book, but for one order on our site, i.e. for one transaction by PayPal.

unless i missed it....what tracking information are you sending? seems they want

postal receipts with tracking numbers, not receipt of payment through paypal.

Read my third post:

detailed information for the above 3 transactions, including our confirmations emails to our customers, our emails informing sending packages to our customers, the sender's receipts sealed by the post office,

All similar cases. Although having read some of those I'm now going to go and move as much money out of Paypal as I can . .

We will do that after account access limitation is lifted.

[roddy]

I would be cautious about creating another account - if they realise you are doing that it is much more likely to look like you have something to hide.

[flameproof]

I have done a few 1000 transaction with Paypal. It's doesn't look good for you.

You have to comply with whatever is requested. Making comments in your mails is simply a waste of time. They just want facts.

Unfortunately China is the number country for online fraud. At any give seconds there are 1000s and 1000s of listings on eBay that are fraudulent. I would estimate that 90% of branded items listed on eBay with location in China are fraudulent.

Of course your items are in the very low risk category, but whatever business is done in China is watched with great suspicion, unfortunately rightly so.

I were you I would just move on. Prepare to write off the money. There is a good chance that it's gone for a while, if not forever.

Moneybookers is different. There are less strict, but it's harder to convince a buyer to use them.

I would be cautious about creating another account

Absolutely! Don't do that! Your new account will blocked as soon as they find out!

[mai tian ming]

i have a paypal in fact i have 3 i have 1 american paypal 1 chinese rmb paypal and 1 chinese/china american usd paypal and they all work with in china use bank of america bank of communication and industrial bank of china these banks with in chinese run and operated banks will accept foreign and none foreign atm cards such as you'r basic atm card master visa or american express cards usually 5 dollar international fee but i use my paypal all i am charged each atm use is 1.00 usd american dollar and that it! lol

[elina]

We’re still in the process of faxing documents to PayPal. Now we know when PayPal asks you to “add” some materials, which eventually means you should fax ALL the materials once again, because if you just “add”, then in the next email they will tell you that you have not provided something, which you have already faxed before. I think they don’t keep every customer’s all the information in one place, or maybe they keep, but nearly every PayPal clerk during this process is too lazy to check the previous documents which have been faxed before. It’s not like our company, we store every customer’s message in one file, so that either of us can easily find a certain customer’s all the information.

We have cancelled PayPal online payment method on our site:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/12909-transfer-money-through-moneybookers&page=2

Today we got an email from our customer as follows, who is a language school in Spain, whose transaction number is 4N1111111111 with the amount of USD 79x.xx mentioned in my third post:

I just want inform you that yesterday we received the two packages with the books, everything was OK. Well done, you did a good job!

I’m looking forward to work with you in the future.

I still remember several years ago, when we received the USD 31.00 paid by Western Union, which is our first payment from outside of Beijing, I felt touching. Because online store is not like a physical shop, where people can 一手交钱，一手交货/ pay on the spot. Online business collects the money at first, and then arranges for shipping. The USD 31.00 shows others trust you. And these years, we have never failed people’s confidence. Our products are good, our price is cheaper, and our service is excellent, which constitute a better competition compared with some other overseas online bookstores focused on learning Chinese language and culture.