PayPal Update: Did The COVID Blog® force the company to quietly remove all references to its $2,500 per violation of its Acceptable Use Policy after arbitration ruling?

By Brian A. Wilkins
Editor-in-Chief – The COVID Blog®
June 26, 2023

I’m so sick and tired of these people and their arrogant, high-priced little lawyers. Let’s just get that out of the way.

PayPal stock has continued its perpetual plummet since reaching a peak of $308.53 per share on July 23, 2021. The company is struggling big time, with its stock now selling at $66.94 per share as of writing, down a whopping 78% from its peak just two years ago. The stock was at $76.48 on January 6, 2023. Thus PayPal stock is down 12% in 2023 alone.

But at least they can still afford high-priced lawyers to defend their RICO rackets.

An 80% drop in stock value in two years is unheard of, unless a nuclear explosion or across the board stock market crash happens at the same time. PayPal is on life support, and it’s hilarious. This is what happens to financial institutions that believe they are arbiters of free speech and truth.

As most of you know, PayPal banned The COVID Blog® from its platform on August 9, 2021. This was shortly after the company teamed up with the liberal Zionist Anti-Defamation League and Google to “fight extremism“…and just before the company started taking direct orders from House Democrats to ban websites that “spread COVID disinformation” (or “misinformation” or whatever propaganda term they use).

PayPal (and Venmo) could have just left me alone. We could have went our separate ways and lived happily ever after. But these people decided to continually send me spam emails saying things like “You can’t have your money” and “You didn’t get your money” for months after terminating our business relationship.

I told them to stop three times. All 96 spam emails were not only violations of California law and public policy, but also violations of PayPal’s own Electronic Communications Policy. Each spam email provides statutory damages of $1,000; or $96,000 in total damages.

We last wrote about this PayPal saga in October when the arbitration proceedings were taking place.

RELATED: #DeletePayPal: company backtracks after misinformation, Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) leak of $2,500 per violation, but is enforcing said policy in my ongoing arbitration (October 11, 2022)

 

The short of it is that the arbitrator ruled against my spam email claims. I have now filed a federal petition in the Northern District of California, asking a federal judge to vacate and correct the arbitration decision. But the arbitrator did get one thing right. And PayPal found a way to even slither out of that.

Arbitrator: PayPal’s $2,500 per violation of Acceptable Use Policy is “not proper or valid…cannot be enforced”

Remember back in October when #DeletePayPal and #BoycottPayPal were trending all over social media? It’s because PayPal foolishly placed a spotlight on its long-existing, fallacious $2,500 penalty per violation of its Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). PayPal used all the usual, lying fact-checker websites to say “there is no $2,500 fine” and/or the policy update to fine “misinformation” was “a mistake.”

The fact remains that PayPal’s AUP, dating back to September 2021 and further, had this $2,500 per violation of AUP provision. This provision was also listed in the PayPal User Agreement. But while I was researching and preparing my federal petition, I notice something very interesting.

First, the arbitrator in my case versus PayPal, ruled on February 23, 2023 that the PayPal $2,500 per violation liquidated damages claim is derived from a policy that “is not a proper or valid liquidated damages clause. The PayPal customer agreement is a penalty and cannot be enforced.”

You can read the full decision here. Thus any former or current PayPal customer who had their money stolen from them based on this frivolous provision, can likely recover their money in arbitration or federal court. However, PayPal lawyer, Tara Z. Hall, sweet-talked the arbitrator into removing that paragraph from the decision a month later due to “clerical error.” That’s part of what’s being challenged now in federal court. You can read that full federal petition here.

RELATED: Mailchimp is latest tech company, affiliate marketer to censor The COVID Blog (March 12, 2021)

 

The PayPal $2,500 per violation of AUP provision still appeared in its User Agreement as recently as February 27, 2023 – which was the last reported update to the policy…until recently. PayPal’s latest update to its User Agreement, on May 17, 2023, removed all references to the $2,500 per violation of AUP language.

Now did I really cause a corporate giant to make drastic changes to its policies to save their hides? I can’t say for certain. But there are certainly no prior precedential rulings that, for all intents and purposes, struck down PayPal’s illegal $2,500 per violation provision.

I’m asking a federal judge to say all the foregoing for me. And if she obliges, then it opens the floodgates for all current and former PayPal customers who were robbed by this RICO racketeering company. And this all could have been avoided, again, if they just stopped sending me those annoying, illegal, harassing spam emails after I told them several times to stop.

Just like arbitration, I fully expect to lose the federal court proceedings too. I’m writing a book. I have several blogs, COVID Legal USA™, and my other business endeavors. I truly have no time for this. But PayPal started this fight and could have ended it long ago. And I’m too stubborn to just go away without fighting until the bitter end.

I’ll update you all again in due course.

Stay vigilant and protect your friends and loved ones.

 

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