New Paypal Privacy Policy

Hi All,
Like most people, I have a privacy policy on my site that states I will not give away my customer details to anyone. However, PayPal has just decided to give our customer details to a marketing company from next month - they have explained that we have the choice of (basically) "getting lost" otherwise.

Am I the only one to be furious about that or are others (like me) now looking for a payment gateway provider with a responsible privacy policy (any suggestions)?

Hi Raineshoe,
They sent me a notification a few days ago pointing to their new Privacy Policy from 1st June that they "may disclose certain PayPal customer information" to....

"Carrenza Limited

To store user data for marketing campaigns."

and mention
Name, e-mail, address, business name, domain name, account status, type and nature of PayPal services offered or used and relevant transaction information. It is not clear whether that is just my information or my customers and I'm waiting for a reply to a complaint (don't hold your breath).

I'll be looking for the note about it. Tend not to read everything from Paypal as there is so much drivel that comes through.

However, we are signed up to the telephone preference service and fax preference service so if I start getting unsolicited marketing/advertising calls through this I shall be on it like a ton of bricks. Also, if they start e-mailing you can refer it to the Information Commissioners Office. They don't have legal powers as such, but can tackle companies about spam e-mails etc.

You may be able to complain to the Information Commissioners Office about this with Paypal.

I don't like Paypal much either as I think they favour the purchaser too much. Not that I've ever had a problem, but have heard of alleged incidents whereby buyer has claimed they've not received goods and even when the seller has proof they were posted and signed for etc Paypal still side with the buyer and refund regardless.

Like Mike said though an awful lot of customers like them. Unfortunately Paypal was quick to jump on the bandwaggon of relatively cheap international money transfer making it quick and easy. Others were too slow to follow and so they swept up the whole market. For a long time they were the only option.

This is partly why I want to try Google checkout as an option, but looking at my cart which currently takes Nochex and Paypal the clear leader is Paypal although from what I can gather Nochex would love to pinch all their customers.

Edited by raineshoe - 18 April 2010 at 8:19am

Hi Raineshoe,

We just use PayPal standard. However, once the news gets around I can see some (perhaps many) customers avoiding those sites that use Paypal (and I wouldn't blame them - I'll probably be starting a campaign with any site I wanted to use that used PayPal).

Excellent Nick.

Probably fall on deaf ears where Paypal are concerend but definitely worth a shot.

Wonder who the CEO is as that is the best place to direct complaints as he is the one that can take action.