PayPal continues to irk those in the web design industry, but the payment giant insists change is on the way. The latest anti-PayPal rumble arrived off the back of the company blocking access to the account designer and author Elliot Jay Stocks used for 8 Faces, and an account owned by Andy McMillan of The Manual.

Stocks ranted online last week about the service, railing against “numerous horror stories about what happens when PayPal’s staff blindly follow their draconian rules without applying common sense”. Stocks had suffered multiple account freezes owing to payment spikes PayPal had been pre-warned about, and was baffled by demands for postal delivery receipts for PDFs as a means to unlock the account. Prior to the latest freeze, Stocks had transferred his balance to a bank account; McMillan wasn’t so lucky.

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“Using PayPal to receive funds for your business seems to be a game of Russian roulette,” argues UX designer Aral Balkan. He’s one of an increasing number of web conference organisers who claim to have been ‘burned’ by the payment giant.

The main sticking point seems to be the way the payment company can lock accounts for significant periods of time, freezing a business’s funds – often when it most needs them.

This can cause big problems for organisers of web conferences. In Balkan’s case, a month before his Brighton event, Update 2011, a three-month freeze was placed on the conference’s accounts. “What business can survive without cash flow for three months?” he protests.

MORE:  Burned by PayPal | Feature | .net magazine.