Companies messing with our money!

[Fisher]

Heya everyone,

So I know this post may seem a bit rant-ish, but I'm curious as well as displeased by today's online payment services. More specifically, I don't like the ways that are available to get paid online. As for the curious part, I'm curious to know why that is. Here's what I'm talking about.

I've been a freelancer for the past 4 years, and I've switched various platforms, working and payment. Here's my point: all of them make you wait for your money. So you do the work, deliver it on time, customer already has the product, but you get your cash in 5 days. Or 3. oDesk makes you wait 5 days for this "security period", in case what you created is bad or fake, customer gets the chance to slap your wallet. Freelancer does payments on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's easily 4-5 days waiting, if you finish your work on Thursday night. Both PayPal and Skrill take 2 days to deposit your funds into your bank account after 2 days. When used in conjuction with certain banks, say, the only bank that gives me an android app so I can pay my bills with my phone, Skrill withdrawal can take up to 10 days. Yep. TEN DAYS. Only payment processor I found to be cool is Western Union, however, under certain conditions. If the customer pays via their website, using their card, you may or may not get payment instantly. Usually , you will, sometimes the customers bank may take a day to process the payment. If the customer, however, walks to the closes WU agent and actually gives them cash, you'll get the payment instantly. It's a bit of a hassle, since you have to tell your closest WU agent the tracking number, full name of the sender and his current location (town), but it works just fine.

We're living in the 21st century, where people can clone your organs and fly to other planets, where you can buy a 3d printer, where cellphones pack more power than computers used to just a year ago, and there's a waiting period for payment PROCESSING. Am I the only one who doesn't find that "a little bit funny"? What is payment processing anyway? Do we wait for them to engrave the transaction in a piece of rock, because otherwise, I see no point. Security wise, it makes no difference. There is no such script to run for hours, so my best guess is they (Paypal, Skrill, banks etc) have a person in charge of pressing approve button for each transaction. If that person is not in, no money for you. Which is bullshit. Let's break it down in segments and see exactly how much sense it makes.


1) Security aspect
The only viable logic would be that they manually verify your data and approve the transaction. It makes no sense. You'd end up hiring a team of people and essentially turning them into drones, doing the same work over and over again, when you could simply apply an algorithm. So I'd mark this one as invalid

2) Validity aspect
They verify every payment separately. They reach out and check everything, your account validity, senders account validity etc. Let's not joke here

3) Unreal aspect
They walk to the bank and deposit cash to your account. Are you ****ing kidding me

So my point here really is that there is absolutely no reason to hold a withdrawal for longer than 10 minutes (I'll give them lag and server processing time). At least no reason that I understand. Hey, I'm a freelancer. I work my ass off on a project and get paid, I'd enjoy buying myself something nice, but I guess I'll have to delay that for a day or ten. On the other hand, this system might work in a first world country. A country where you can use Paypal to do groceries. There, sure. But if you're making a global system, like these guys are, you have to think globally. Which they aren't doing. Paypal, if you wanna be a bank, you gotta give me more than an average bank, and right now I'm getting bunch of crap from you as well as waiting times, which is the same I get at any bank. I'm paying your fees, I'm jumping all your hoops, so give me my ****ing money.

On a side note, this is part of a much larger problem that becomes visible in this day and age, which is company responsibility, as well as their policies. Take Paypal for example. They made themselves a standard, excluding any other online payment option. Everyone has Paypal, lot of people don't know what Skrill or Western Union is, only a few actually use Perfect Money. Is it their fault? Yes. They aim for the world and they conquered it, by doing various stuff such as enabling their API to be used, making it convenient to pay or get paid online. At the same time, Paypal isn't available in every country. In Serbia, you can have Paypal and pay online, but you can't get paid. But that's not the whole problem, I understand there are law barriers to Paypal in some countries. So instead of exercising their influence and dropping some preassure on the governments of those countries to change those laws, instead of placing a section on their site that says "Hey, here's why there's no Paypal in <3rd world country here>. Don't like it? Spam your government to change it!" and fighting alongside customers to help out and enable their services there, guess what they do. Not give a shit. You want to be global Paypal and used by everyone? Gotta do better than this.

Alongside that problem, there's another one. Companies should fear a displeased customer. Paypal's huge, they can afford to have one unsatisfied customer. But what people failed to realize is, they actually depend on you. A proper shitstorm would happen if everyone stopped using Paypal. But that's a different problem. People find it more amusing to pick on each other for their differences instead of saying "**** it, let's take them down", unite and actually take them down. Remember, a company can only be as cocky as you let them. It's all up to you.

Peace!
[/endrant]
[discuss]

[Shykon]

Interesting read, but you are right...it shouldn't take this long, it should be instant or at least close to instant.

[d3rrial]

Sir, do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior Bitcoin?

[Fisher]

Sir, do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior Bitcoin?

We can only hope =) The same crap can happen with it as well, it's a better currency over what we use now, but it's still up to govt. or shops to implement the usage of it, allowing you to spend what you make instantly. Else if you sell them for cash over PayPal, or anything else, you're in the same pile of junk again. Less currency issues, more of international collaboration and the fact that banks are useless type of thing =)

[d3rrial]

Banks are a-holes :P

I recommend you look into http://coinbase.com/ or http://bitpay.com/

they're both payment processors like PayPal, but for Bitcoin. Unlike PayPal tho, they immediatly credit the received amount and send it to you in your national currency as a national bank transfer at the end of the business day it was received. They also allow you to either partially or wholly keep the amount earned in Bitcoins, to spend as you choose. That wouldn't help much with rent tho The bitcoins you keep tho, are immediatly available for you to do with as you please.

It really might be of some benefit for you

If you want some information about this, or have any questions, feel free to write me a PM on ownedcore.

Regards,
d3

[Fisher]

Banks are out of date man =)