I used Amazon Payments for about 6 months for little freelance projects when I was 18. I loved it. Quick deposits to my bank, super-low fees, and I convinced a lot of people to join it.
Then they started saying they couldn't verify me. There was no "Talk to support," only "try verifying again." I tried about 3 times, and then it finally locked me out. I finally found a way to call up support and they said "Okay, we'll get back to you in a few days about what's wrong."
A few days later I got an email saying my account had been banned, would not be unbanned, and any further requests for information would be ignored.
Still wish I knew what I did wrong.
In the meantime, I've never been able to support Kickstarters because I couldn't use Amazon Payments.
Somebody said the main reason to PayPal's success was their ability to limit fraud. Maybe that is true. Strict policies lead to this kind of problems. And when dealing with thin margins and small customers personal service is bad for profit.
Of course, they spent ~60 million "buying" customers to get their network effects to scale (join and get some $$ free) according to Elon Musk, so fraud limiting wasn't the whole story.
The silent majority uses it, is not interested in the workings of the system and the small amount of gone bad edge cases.
Imho it's sloth - or exactly the same reason, why all these "great leaders" (aka politicians) get voted into office time after time. ;-)
And I am as guilty as everybody else.
Then they started saying they couldn't verify me. There was no "Talk to support," only "try verifying again." I tried about 3 times, and then it finally locked me out. I finally found a way to call up support and they said "Okay, we'll get back to you in a few days about what's wrong."
A few days later I got an email saying my account had been banned, would not be unbanned, and any further requests for information would be ignored.
Still wish I knew what I did wrong.
In the meantime, I've never been able to support Kickstarters because I couldn't use Amazon Payments.