PayPal Holding $20,000 In Hurricane Relief Donations In Limbo From Internet Forum's Users With No Explanation.

Something Awful, one of the widest read, best organized and most popular online forum communities, has had over $20,000 in user donations earmarked for victims of Hurricane Katrina held without cause or explanation by the company thru which the donations have been collected, PayPal.

Something Awful, an extremely sharp, cynical comedy website which boasts millions of hits each day and over 50,000 active members, is a victim of Hurricane Katrina itself as its server datacenter is located in New Orleans. When the forum's datacenter went offline Thursday, the main forums page was replaced by a page explaining the whereabouts of their forums.

The founder and operator of the website, Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka, as a gesture of goodwill to those affected by the hurricane, began accepting donations on Saturday thru PayPal which would be sent to the American Red Cross. Something Awful's payment gateway, which they use to accept credit cards for subscription to their forum, was also affected by the downtime of the datacenter. Kyanka agreed that in exchange for their donations, he would send out Something Awful related merchandise to forum members as a gesture of thanks for their contributions.

Within seven hours time, the fundraising effort brought in $19,149.69 in donations (after PayPal's fees were deducted), nearly $3,500 in donations per hour -- a rather tidy sum for an internet community and one which would no doubt bring much needed relief to those still reeling from the hurricane.

But last night some time around 9pm, just after they had reached $20,000 in donations, PayPal inexplicably shut down the donation account apparently responding to some form of customer complaints -- for an action less than 7 hours old. According to PayPal, "We have received more than one report of suspicious behavior from your buyers."

To say the very least, this did not sit well with forum members or the site's owner. In a statement posted to the site last night, Kyanka cited irresponsible behavior on PayPal's part which will needlessly delay the funds reaching those in need. "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," Kyanka wrote, "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.'" PayPal, an eBay owned company, currently charges customers who receive payments from other PayPal members anywhere from 1.9% up to 3.8% in transaction fees per transaction done thru their site, regardless of the purpose of the transaction.

Kyanka insists that if PayPal will not allow him to accept any further donations using their service, that PayPal should at the very least quickly send the money to American Red Cross themselves. "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."

PayPal has been the subject of repeated controversy for their actions with regards to closing membership accounts without notice. In July of 2004, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose approved a $9.25 million settlement in a class action suit alleging that the online payment platform owned by eBay unreasonably restricted, froze or closed customer accounts.