PayPal and E-Online troubles might sink NAEB, an E Ink hardware buyer’s club inspired by Jim Baen’s e-book dreams
Inspired by the late Jim Baen, the legendary sci-fi publisher who hated DRM, a bunch of Baen customers banded together to make E Ink machine available for like-minded readers.
The name of their project told the story, NAEB, short for Not Another E-Book. The organizers discovered it would be easier to piggyback on Bookeen’s Cybook and go the buyer’s club route rather than create their own tablet from scratch. Not exactly a scam here—in fact, the opposite: a bunch of idealists trying to help others.
So why are PayPal and E-Online making life hell for NAEB CEO Pamela Gadsden and her people—and perhaps jeopardizing NAEB’s existence? Apparently they don’t understand the buyer’s club business model, which Pam says they regard as too “hinky” to be trusted.
I’m going to reproduce in full the statement that Pam has posted on the NAEB site. Meanwhile the NAEB ad will remain in the upper right of the TeleBlog. You bet I’d have taken it down in a flash if I did not believe in the good intention and intelligence of the people behind the company. Yes, if the worse happens, NAEB intends for people awaiting their Cybooks to enjoy full refunds. But let’s hope for the best. Baen and Bookeen, if they haven’t done so already by now, should back the NAEB people to the hilt here and write supportive notes for Pam to show to payment processors.
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January 24, 2008
NAEB is in a bind, a major one, and it’s going to be determined within the next few days whether or not we just return your money to all of you or continue in business.
As you know we’re a buyer’s club.
We perform like one for the purpose of buying ebook readers.
What this means, in the rarefied world of PayPal and E-Online is that we’re just too “hinky” to be trusted.
PayPal just thinks we’re weird. To quote their representative ” We’re not comfortable with your business model.”
E-Online has done us the stunning compliment of bouncing us over to their Loss & Recovery people; they think we’re running a scam. Both have frozen our accounts.This means that they will refund your money, minus their processing fees, if we agree to close up shop and go away.
Neither is willing to let us actually pay Bookeen.
Of course if we can’t pay Bookeen, and get the ebook readers to deliver, we’re proved as an untrustworthy lot who planned to defraud our club members.
If you’re thinking Catch-22 you have it about right.
We have a limited number of ways to get out of this.
One would be with a LoC (Line Of Credit) from the Bank Of America. We can’t use that option. It would put NAEB on a debt treadmill that would destroy it almost as soon as we began and it could mean personal bankruptcy for whoever co-signed for it.
The other is with an appeal to Bookeen.
Not all the money is tied up with either E-Online or PayPal as those of you who have paid with Discover or Amex cards, as well as those of you who have trusted us enough to send checks, are not caught in this.
So we will be asking PayPal and E-Online to accept proof of payment and delivery of the ebook readers paid for with those funds as proof of our honorable, and competent, intent even though NAEB doesn’t look like the retail merchant they’re used to dealing with ( Hmmnnn…. Could that be because we aren’t ?).
We will be asking Bookeen to change the terms of payment for this reason.
Instead of the 1/2 when ordered and the other 1/2 when shipped we’re going to ask them for NET15, which means we owe them the full amount for the first lot of orders within 15 days so we can ship them to buyers and then we’re going to use the proof of that to pry the rest of the money from PayPal and E-Online.
PayPal and E-Online, if they decide to let us do so, may then just cut us off completely or they may decide that we’re legitimate after all and allow us to continue.
This is where we are at present.
If it they accept and allow us to continue, we’re back in business and will continue to ship ebooks till we get to 1000.
If it they don’t, well we tried and if you don’t get a reader you get your money back.
What the attendant delays have done to NAEB’s chances of on going survival; how many people didn’t sign with us since you can’t run an online buyers club without on line means of payment or because they just didn’t want to take the chance; well, I’m sure it’s nothing good.
We’ve turned it around before and we’ll do our best to turn it around this time as well.
Pamela Gadsden
CEO, Not Another E-Book
January 24th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
You know, if Paypal has any actual evidence of wrongdoing, they should step forward with it, but ‘we’re not comfortable with that buisness model’ isn’t really a good enough reason to be holding onto other people’s money.
I understand Paypal’s desire to prevent fraud, but for crying out loud, a buyer’s club is hardly a new idea.
Just goes to show, I guess, that one can’t depend on an unregulated bank.
Some other folks who’ve had problems with paypal over the years:
http://attrition.org/~squido/paypal/ (has lots of links)
http://www.aboutpaypal.org/
http://www.paypalsucks.com/
http://www.paypalwarning.com/
Oh yea, lots of unhappy paypal customers.
I wish there were something else that was half as convenient, but at the moment these guys are pretty much it.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:23 am
Hey, them’s the breaks if you’re dealing with Paypal. NAEB knew that going in.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:45 am
I have full confidence in the NAEB board, who have been working hard to make this happen. My payment went to them (or, apparently, just to their CC processer) very shortly after they got the CC processing set up, and I’m hopeful that I’ll still see my eBook reader before the end of February.