Stop sending me pennies — more bad news for PayPal

paypal1I got a call this week from PayPal Executive Escalation, which I didn’t even know existed and certainly wouldn’t have guessed would be based in Omaha, Nebraska. This was either in response to my PayPal account being restricted as I described in my last column or — much more likely — to the simple fact that I’d made such a stink about it in print. The guy who called was very polite and helpful, too, but what I learned was also disturbing enough that I feel the need to share it with you.

“Do you use an anonymizer?” asked the guy from PayPal. I don’t use an anonymizer, which masks IP addresses, and told […]

We’re PayPal immortals whether we like it or not

paypalogo

Update #2 — After a few hundred people had their penny payments to me bounce, PayPal mysteriously freed my account yesterday. Since then dollars and dollars have poured-in, all to be refunded next week, I promise. So please stop sending me money now, okay? Mission accomplished.

My favorite transfer by far was this one for a $0.01 eCheck (below), which I will make every effort to refund before I receive it, thanks:

Screen Shot 2013-04-11 at 10.09.04 AM

 

Have you ever canceled a PayPal account? I tried to cancel mine today and the company wouldn’t let me.

In one sense it’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to cancel […]

Cringely comes back from the dead… again!

Twain“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” wrote Mark Twain when his obituary prematurely ran in the New York Journal. I can certainly relate to that because it turns out I’m not going anywhere.

Regular readers will remember my pledge last year to retire from this rag and get the hell out of Dodge before all my hair falls out or I starve to death, whichever came first. Well something happened while we were all enjoying those 8000-word blog posts that constituted my serialization of Accidental Empires: I signed a contract with a major publisher to write a pretty significant book that I’m not yet allowed to tell you anything about.

While you might think […]

Accidental Empires, Chapter 17 — Do the Wave

surf_board-legAnd so our two month retrospective comes to an end with this 17th and final chapter, circa 1996. I hope you have enjoyed it. Tomorrow I’ll be back to talk about the eBook version of this work as well as what I’ve been up to for the last eight weeks. It’s more than I ever expected… and less.

ACCIDENTAL EMPIRES

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

DO THE WAVE

We’re floating now on surfboards 300 yards north of the big public pier in Santa Cruz, California. As our feet slowly become numb in the cold Pacific water, it’s good to ponder the fact that this section of coastline, only fifteen miles […]

Accidental Empires, Chapter 16 — But Wait, There’s More!

MoreFive years after Accidental Empires was published in hardcover and four years after the paperback, we got a chance to do a somewhat revised paperback edition to go with Triumph of the Nerds, my Channel 4/PBS miniseries based on the book. Revision may be too strong a word, because all I was allowed to do was add two extra chapters at the end. This gave me a chance to catch up with some of the major characters, correct a few mistakes, explain what had happened in the intervening half-decade and — oh by the way — finally say something about the Internet.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

January […]