PayPal is becoming toxic to small business

Internet giants must start treating small business owners as human beings or they will lose their juiciest revenue stream, says Milo Yiannopoulos.

PayPal's enthusiasm for placing withdrawal restrictions on its customers' accounts is the stuff of legend. 

But while it would be easy - and no doubt gratifying for readers who have been on the receiving end of these poorly implemented anti-fraud measures - to recount horror story after horror story of ruined enterprises, today I'm going to concentrate on the most egregious failure in PayPal's systems: the total absence of anything remotely resembling customer service. 

Our story begins with Aral Balkan, founder of the Update conference. Balkan recently experienced something many conference organisers have: his PayPal account was limited, due to high sales volume, and then blocked after inspection by PayPal staff, apparently because conferences are deemed "high risk". 

As a consequence, he could continue to take payments but was unable to withdraw any money. PayPal asked Balkan to submit some documents to prove his identity, which he duly did, and, after two weeks, his account was unlocked. A little annoying for Balkan, but nothing most of us haven't had to deal with at one time or another.

But that's not where this story ends...

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