PayPal is drawing flak from the Web for almost being the Grinch who stole Christmas. The popular Etsy spoof blog called Regretsy set up a charity drive to collect donations to buy toys for children in need. In order to collect the donations, Regretsy put a PayPal “donate” button on the site. After receiving a flood of contributions, PayPal suddenly froze the account, forcing Regretsy to return the money. Why? Well, PayPal allows only nonprofit charities to use the donate button, and Regretsy is a for-profit company. Regretsy would need to put a “buy” button on the site instead. And according to two posts (this link is not safe for work) on Regretsy, PayPal also kept the transaction fees. Thousands of outraged Regretsy users commented on those two posts. Then, they quickly migrated over to PayPal’s Facebook page. This prompted an apology from PayPal, saying “We can confirm the funds have been released.” But even an apology did not stop the online venom. Thousands of people kept criticizing PayPal on their Facebook pages, vowing to close their accounts.
Furry Times 