PayPal Has No Regrets

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You may have heard about the kerfuffle caused by PayPal recently when they blocked a gift exchange initiative for 200 children organised by Regretsy.

According to Regretsy:

"We took many applications, vetted them carefully and set about creating a giant gift exchange program, where you could buy a gift for the over 200 children we're helping.

We raised so much money that we found ourselves in a position of not just being able to send toys, but to send a monetary gift to the families as well. We hoped it might help them make their holiday dinners more special, or maybe pay a pressing bill.

Paypal shut it down.

Apparently we made the mistake of using the "Donate" button, which Paypal is now claiming is only for nonprofit organizations to use.* They froze the account, which also includes Zazzle money that we use to make emergency gifts. That money isn't in issue, but what the hell! Might as well keep everything!"

You can read the full account, including a jaw-dropping phone conversation with a PayPal representative here.

After Regretsy publicised this and the web caught whiff of what was happening, Paypal reached out to Regretsy again to discuss the usage of the Donation button and to clarify that the information that they'd been given before had been false.

The upshot of all this is that PayPal has now agreed to send a $100 donation to each of the families that Regretsy was planning to send gifts to this Christmas.

Regretsy is the fail blog of hand crafts. Almost everything posted is collected from the web site, Etsy, though sometimes they feature crafting failures from other sites.

(Thanks Bruno)