A couple of people sued Paypal. In order to avoid a costful trial the company decided to make an agreement. But since this is a class action - when a massive group sues someone, in this case Paypal users VS. Paypal - they have to pay it to every Paypal user who had an account in a certain span of time*.
HOW DO I KNOW IF I AM PART OF THE SETTLEMENT?
On July 12, 2004, Judge Fogel entered an order granting preliminary approval of the settlement and certifying the following class for purposes of the settlement: All Persons who opened a PayPal account during the period from October 1, 1999 through January 31, 2004. Excluded from the class are any judicial officer to whom the lawsuit is assigned; PayPal and any of its affiliates; any current or former employee, officer, or director of PayPal; anyone who resides in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, or United Kingdom; and all persons who timely and validly request exclusion from the class pursuant to this notice.
Thus, if you opened a PayPal account between October 1, 1999 and January 31, 2004, and are not one of the excluded persons listed above, you are a member of the class.
This is a real situation - it’s been in the newspapers recently. I didn’t check the links you had or anything like that though. You should be able to go to Paypal and find it though.
I’ve gotten an e-mail about it, but I haven’t gotten around to doing anything with it.
The redirect domain “http://www.settlement4onlinepayments.com/” is controlled by the lawyers behind the suit. It was made recently (june 8), but its real, seeing as the law firm created it.
(they could’ve picked a better domain name though =\ that one sounds like a fraud XD)
Dude, I think everybody’s gonna end up receiving a few cents. If they pay some good amount to everyone who has a share on this, they’ll break. So it may be that it’s either a nickle or no more Paypal.
Edit: just checked Rirse’s link to Snopes. It’s $5.8 million to be distributed among those who are eligible and willing to collect their slice. Now all we need is knowing an aproximation to the amount of people who will.
