PayPal now blocking payments for Cuba coins... [UPDATE]

LochNESS

That's right. First it was eBay, and now it appears PayPal is auto-searching the phrase "cuba" before processing any transactions. I submitted a payment to one of our forumites for a Cuba coin. As a creature of habit, I included the word "cuba" and "gold" in the subject and message body, because I always include details about what I'm paying for ... lest the dealer be confused and ship me the wrong coin! Well it took less than a second for PayPal to tell me my transaction would be "under review for the next 72 hours." I can't imagine what else this could be about except Cuba.

Such a load of cr@p pardon my French.

SaorAlba

They need to change their name to NSApay.

theboz11

Gee, why don't we send Dennis Rodman down there and get this all cleared up, so we can buy and sell them again.

RobP

Is this something specific to eBay US or is it applied worldwide? I might get the wife to test the water with a bulk lot of cheap Cuban on the UK site to see what happens.

Politicians need to stop throwing their toys out the pram as they are obviously the instigators of such a policy. Or perhaps it's a case of wishing to rewrite history - which has been done before and will happen again. No topic or material subject matter should be taboo if you live in an open society. By all means restrict access to directly offensive material within reason where aimed at individuals, but to harp on past political grievances is fundamentally wrong and means people never move on. It isn't as if a cuban coin is concerned with direct trade between the two countries.

bronco2078

I have a small lot of cuban junk silver on ebay right now. I described it as Caribbean silver and so far its still up


There is a huge appetite for them on ebay. It's only $8 worth of scrap and it has 11 watchers and 136 hits .

OldEastside

Land of the free...hmmmmmmmmmmmm

Steve

LochNESS

Update: upon my next log-in (to PayPal... this is not an ebay-related transaction...) I was directed to a "US Government affidavit" with lots of official-sounding legal jargon. Basically, promising never to do this again. There was a small box at the end of the page, above it said "type 'I Agree' into the box" so I did. The fine print said PayPal is going to investigate my business practices and take a closer look at my account regarding what I've bought/sold and what type of business I'm actually conducting vs. what it says on my account profile.

Interestingly enough, even though my account is "suspended" I'm still able to send money, receive money, withdraw money into my bank account, and basically do everything I can normally do EXCEPT close my account.

Oh, they also said I have to upload some documents but they never specified which documents. So I took a screen capture of the broken webpage and uploaded that instead.

RobP

Keep your wits about you and don't let them get you down.

I don't know if you have an ombudsman service in the US as on this side, but if you do you should be able to make hay when they screw up and decide not to act within your rights. By my referring a case to the ombudsman after Paypal refused to discuss my blocked account, they also felt compelled to offer unsolicited compensation once they realised I wasn't going to back down. It more than adequately paid for thie coin below simply because they insisted on being dictatorial.
[/URL]">Peck 1258 pattern halfpenny

RobP

Sorry, I give up trying to post an image. Doesn't work, can't edit.

Dennis88

What date was the coin in question?

bronco2078

My small cuban lot ended yesterday and the buyer paid. I think in the future I will direct payments to my personal paypal account not the main account tied to my seller ID.

SaorAlba

<< <i>I have a small lot of cuban junk silver on ebay right now. I described it as Caribbean silver and so far its still up


There is a huge appetite for them on ebay. It's only $8 worth of scrap and it has 11 watchers and 136 hits . >>



Wished I had seen it on the BST - now that Cuban coins are the latest "illegal" thing I need all I can get.

CIVITAS

We had a similar experience in receiving an attempted payment for an 1897 Cuban Souvenir Peso. The shopping cart automatically put the description of the item into the memo field for the PayPal payment and it was instantly red flagged for the buyer. He later just sent a check. The nonsense we had to go through on our end was pretty incredible. Took about two weeks to get it all cleared up. Anyway, the net result is that in order for us to keep our PayPal account, we had to either 1. Stop listing coins from Cuba and other countries on PayPal's no-no list on our website, or 2. stop listing PayPal as a payment option on our website.

We opted for #2.

We will still accept PayPal for most orders, but we cannot automatically offer it as a payment option if we have coins of Cuba, Syria, Iran or Sudan in our shopping cart. So it creates additional hassles for a customer. We may just drop PayPal altogether since most of our buyers just use their credit card or send a check.

LochNESS

Dennis, it's a 1916 piece.

Josh, yes the seller has told me that he too is now jumping through hoops of paperwork. Ridiculous. All this really boils down to is PayPal covering their own behinds, to avoid being sued in the future for "aiding and abetting in the sale of embargoed goods" or some hooey.

BTW, got an email this morning (from PayPal) saying my account has been returned to normal stature. So it seems I am the least inconvenienced in the bunch.

Steve, unfortunately PayPal isn't a government operation. If they were, then we could yell "land of the free." As it stands, businesses can get away with just about anything.

MacCrimmon

Overall, it looks like nothing much has changed in 10 years or so?

LochNESS

Mac, what a crazy website! Plenty of links to "merchant inc" ... all I'm saying is if I was trying to compete with PayPal, then I'd probably have an anti-PayPal website of my own

hey Mac, you don't own a company called Merchant Inc do ya?

BTW any luck with those bag pipes lately? Never too late for music in your life!

1509eric

This is Ebay! They want to do perfect, but they can not!
On the US page is impossible to sell cuban coins...just the word "Cuba" like you said make it that you can not list the item...
On othe ebay sites is no problem to sell them.

I tryed some times to buy german coins from the period 1933-1945 at the US site...but when the seller used the word "swastika" in his listing
it was impossible to open the page with this auction...a window pop up and say like "you watching somthing what is forbidden in your country!"
I tryed some time to contact ebay about their rules....because this is wrong! Yes that Symbol is forbidden here...but is have some exceptions like on coins and stamps and other old stuff.

So, i think this might be the same with just the word "Cuba"

;-)

rec78

Fidel (and Raul) Castro seem to be hanging on forever. I think that once the Castro regime ends, things may change fast. Unfortunately the embargo will be enforced until it is lifted. If it is lifted, even for one day, then all coins minted up to that date will be legal. Both paypal and ebay could let coins dated before 1960 which are legal, to be sold, but I guess they just blanketed them all as one to make it easier to enforce the policy.

amwldcoin

<< <i>Fidel (and Raul) Castro seem to be hanging on forever. I think that once the Castro regime ends, things may change fast. Unfortunately the embargo will be enforced until it is lifted. If it is lifted, even for one day, then all coins minted up to that date will be legal. Both paypal and ebay could let coins dated before 1960 which are legal, to be sold, but I guess they just blanketed them all as one to make it easier to enforce the policy. >>



That's bascically what I found out after an hour on the phone after they wouldn't let me list an MS 65 ABC Peso!

LochNESS

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