canspice.org

Love it or hate it, occasionally Something Awful pulls off something good. Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka, the guy who runs SA, set up a donation scheme for SA members so they could give money to SA that would be passed directly on to Hurricane Katrina victims. They’ve run other such donation runs before, raising over $22,000 to go towards buying armour plating for US Armed Forces in Iraq, and over $6,000 to buy toys for sick children in hospitals.

The Hurricane Katrina victim donation fund was going well. SA members donated over $20,000 in about eight hours (after seven hours the total was $19,149.69).

Then PayPal shut down the donation account. Completely locked it out, PayPal’s keeping the money. Why? The reason PayPal gave was “We have received more than one report of suspicious behavior from your buyers.” PayPal’s trying to get Lowtax to give a shipping address and proof of delivery for every transaction. Every transaction that just happens to be a donation. So how is Lowtax supposed to ship anything? They’re donations!

Understandably, Lowtax is pissed:

I guess the nice ladies and gents at Paypal are now using your funds for Project: Paypal Takes Your Money. Sorry your donations can’t go to help those in need. Hey Paypal, why don’t you head on down to New Orleans and tell people who lost everything that, well, some folks donated TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS to you, but hey, you ain’t getting it because we don’t feel like it.

That’s fine. You idiots don’t want me to run a charity drive? Fine, that’s your decision. But it’s not me you’re hurting; it’s the thousands of goddamn people with no homes, no money, and no hope fleeing a burning, flooded wasteland they used to call “home.” I wasn’t going to take a single cent of the donations, unlike Paypal, who decides that when people send money to help victims survive a national disaster, their company should still make over 2.35% of everything sent in. I doubt the CEOs of eBay and Paypal give a crap about this crappy little website and our insignificant drive to help out people in a time of crisis, but this drive meant a lot to me, and once again Paypal has completely screwed over another customer bringing in plenty of money in their ridiculous “transaction fees.”

If this is some thing where Paypal is dubious of Something Awful, fearful I’ll take all the money and buy a luxurious $22,000 house in Beverly Hills, fine, you morons at Paypal can take every cent from my account and manually donate it yourself to the Red Cross. The only reason, and I repeat ONLY reason I used your service, was because I needed a way to get peoples’ shipping addresses so I could send them free merchandise for donating. Oh my god, what suspicious activity! Since all our servers are down, I couldn’t use our credit card payment system to do it myself, so I had to rely on your lousy company. I guess I learned my lesson here, eh?

That bit about “since all our servers are down” is because SA’s servers are in, you guessed it, New Orleans. It’s servers are hosted at the same company that The Interdictor works at. Oh, if you haven’t read The Interdictor’s blog, go do so. He’s been holed up on the 12th floor of a building in New Orleans trying to keep various things up, including computer networks and sanity. It’s gripping reading.

More from Lowtax:

You guys want to close my account? Fine, close it. I’m done dealing with you. I loathe your wretched, vile, disgusting, bloated waste of a company with every last fibre of my body. You’re a grotesque, swollen parasite whose existence hinges solely on the lack of competition. You can close my account and shut me out, but you’d better take every single cent people donated and send it directly to the Red Cross. Folks from around the world trusted you with their money, and you’d better make sure it gets to where it was going, and I’m not talking about your wallets.

I fully expect you refund each and every single person who donated thinking they’d be helping, not padding your wallets. I’d advise any and every one of you using Paypal to stop, but I’ll just let their service speak for itself. If you want to support a company who acts like this, then that’s your decision.

…

It’s bad enough I’m losing money and customers every single minute of every single hour I have no business. All of that is very crappy. But this charity drive, having Paypal step in and shut it down… that just makes me beyond angry. I can’t stop writing about this crap, and I’m afraid I’ll be here venting my fury at this despicable corporation until my wife saws off my arms. I’m going to stop right now, because I’m just repeating myself at this point.

Here’s all I want: you people at Paypal send every single dollar donated to the Red Cross. Then you give me these peoples’ mailing addresses so I can reward them for donating by sending them free merchandise, which I pay for out of my own pockets. That’s all I ever wanted to do, and I’m sorry you won’t allow this.

Damn skippy. I’m pulling all the money I’ve got out of my PayPal account (all sixteen cents of it) and am closing it immediately. PayPal’s been evil before, but this takes the cake.