Hi everyone,
Apparently Paypal has been cracking-down on gambling using PP funds. Some sellers have had their accounts suspended because the word “lottery” has been red-flagged. I have reworded all of the references to “lottery” in HC to “drawing”. As pointed out by one of our sellers, this is actually more technically correct as
The definition of lottery is:
1 a: a drawing of lots in which prizes are distributed to the winners among persons buying a chance.
Whereas drawing is:
: the process of deciding something by drawing lots
So, lotteries are now drawings. I would suggest that you no longer use the ‘lottery’ terminology lest PP suspend your account as well.
This also has implications for running charity raffles (where buyers do purchase chances to win). I won’t be monitoring this, but be aware that Paypal is not tolerating usage of their service to support gambling of any sort, including raffles and lotteries.
If you see the word lottery left over on any of the HC info pages, please drop me a line at support [at] hyenacart.com so I can get it fixed, thanks!
Also, there’s been a bug in the auctions and lotteries that was preventing them from showing up correctly in shoppers’ purchase histories and checkouts. I just fixed this bug, so it should no longer be an issue moving forward. If any of you have shoppers that would like their purchase histories corrected, please have them contact the support desk at support [at] hyenacart.com with a link to the item they won.
Thanks everyone 🙂
Brilliant. Thanks Karen. 🙂
Thanks Karen That is a great Idea. Thanks for fixing the bug!
I was wondering when someone would catch this. In many states, if you have to buy a chance to win something, it is considered gambling. This is against the law in quite a few states, if not most of them, and is still illegal in many states unless you are registered with the state as a gambling entity. It could lead to really big problems, even if you are not a resident of a state in which it is illegal. Unless you specifically refuse entrants from every state in which it is illegal, you are at risk of prosecution by those states. This is why so many sweepstakes entries say “not valid in states in which this is not allowed by law.”
thanks Karen for fixing this.