Warning: Paypal banning kava, comfrey, SJW

[Guest guest]

This is relevant to our group, since some perfumers are also herbalists, or

soapers, and they may have reference to these herbs on their websites that

use Paypal. If Paypal is starting this Big Brother activity, how long

before IFRA perfume ingredients are on their " list " ?

The following posts are from a private herb list I'm on. I have permission

from the first poster to reprint his post, the other two didn't get back to

me yet, so I've removed all mention of their names from the posts. This is

serious -- you can have your account suspended if you mention comfrey, kava

or SJW on your site:

Well, it seems that Paypal/eBay has decided to suspend the accounts of

merchants offering Kava, even if just the dried root. Heard about

this originally from Fowler of Nuka Hiva Trading Company (he has

real nice Kava; you can order by variety, and get the very nice " Isa "

variety fresh), but also recently got an email from the Botanical

Preservation Corps stating that they can only offer Kava via check or

money order from this point onward.

This is from the 'Awa Development Council in Hawaii:

" Recently Paypal decided to prohibit sales of kava. They based this on

the FDA's Alert List: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/ds-warn.html The

`Awa Development Council is working to purge this list as it is not

based on scientific evidence, is speculative, and only serves as an

official blacklist. In fact, it is rejected by University of Hawai`i

researchers.

I have also advised Paypal of their unethical practice of withholding

transfer of earned funds to their respective kava business owners.

Goods have already been delivered to customers but Paypal refuses to

allow the business owners to receive their funds.

Until Paypal engages in honest, ethical business practices and

respects kava as a legitimate nutriceutical protected by DSHEA and

giving it full rights as all other goods & services sold, I cannot

recommend to anyone of doing business with Paypal.

Mahalo,

Board Member

`Awa Development Council

a nonprofit 501©(3) public charitable organization "

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While this isn't a big issue for larger operations, I've been getting

the Kava I use direct from small organic farms in Hawaii (Nuka Hiva)

for the past several years, and most of these have relied on Paypal as

an easy means of accepting credit cards and doing business via the

internet. For these small farms, this is another tough blow at their

sustainability. I'd encourage anyone who uses Kava to look into

ordering directly from small scale organic growers to help support

their endeavor.

Fowler's company can be found here:

www.nukahivatrading.com/kava.htm

I'm sure there are others as well; 's is just the one I have

experience with. You know they're a grower and not just a distributer

if they can offer fresh root, or, whole root instead of powder.

There's a hawaiian based kava forum (search google, I don't know the

address) and people have contacted both paypal and ebay. Neither

expressed interest in listening to objections. To my knowledge,

accounts of some kava vendors were closed without any notice or

explanation from paypal, and some were closed much earlier than

others..

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next post:

Be very careful!

They have closed accounts for selling comfrey also. It was sold to

soapmakers for a topical application and was noted on the website.

Big Brother has many forms.

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next post:

Hi all,

When I read the post about the blacklisting of kava, I realized that this

weekend I'd heard another bad news story about this, regarding comfrey. I

emailed ABC of XYZ (Anya here, I'm changed the name since I didn't hear

back with permission to quote) herbs and asked her to tell the story of what

happened, and below is a slightly edited version of what she wrote to me. I

don't sell herbs, but her idea at the end about businesses banding together

and using a merchant other than pay pal and telling pay pal why might be a

good idea if enough folks who sell herbs are interested in doing that. I'd

be glad to protest by using a different company if a replacement company can

be found (or created) by someone.

Green blessings,

Hi ,

Thanks for sharing the Kava info. Sadly, I'm not surprised to see that this

has happened. I'm just waiting for my site to get shut down again for St.

's Wort.

Here is my story with PayPal:

I only had comfrey oil and a salve with comfrey as one of the ingredients

available for instant purchase on my website, with the standard disclaimer

that it's for external use only.

Dried Comfrey leaf was listed on my dried herb page, but did not have a link

to purchase. It was only part a text list of herbs to share which herbs I

can harvest.

Last week I received an email from PayPal that my account was " suspended "

due to violating PayPal's acceptable use policy. The form letter type email

said that I had to remove comfrey from my website in addition to any

reference to PayPal. People could access my website, but they could not

place an order nor could I receive funds.

Pissed off and extremely concerned about not being able to receive

outstanding payments as well as new orders, I took comfrey oil and salve off

of my Herb Infused Oils page, and removed the one mention I had to paypal on

the site. I left comfrey on the dried herbs page since I had no link for

purchase.

I also wrote a lengthy missive to PayPal telling them external use for

comfrey is allowed, etc. and asking them to reconsider their policy.

They replied that I was still in violation due to the mention of comfrey

leaf on my dried herbs page (so here I'm being censored -free speech -since

there is no where for anyone to purchase dried comfrey leaf directly from my

website). They then directed me to remove my paypal shopping cart from my

site and remove any reference to comfrey. I complied, even more pissed off,

and they relented and reactivated my PayPal business account.

As a small business owner, I made the choice to use PayPal when I researched

merchant accounts and shopping carts, knowing about problems people have

with PayPal, but not knowing about this ludicrous ban on anything the FDA

sends an alert on. PayPal was easy to start using, people were familiar

with it, and it was inexpensive since it includes a shopping cart/merchant

account and gateway all in one.

Needless to say, this week begins my research to find another reasonably

priced merchant account. Though I wonder how long before my next choice

decides to adopt this attack on herbs.

Apart from choosing not to use PayPal now for my own use, and avoiding using

them for EBAY type activities whenever possible, I'm not sure really what to

do with this, having already sent a letter to them. My feeling is that only

if enough businesses close their account with direct mention of this

acceptable use policy to make it financially inconvenient for PayPal will

they choose to relent. I think this would have to be a goodly amount of

businesses but perhaps not too much since they seem pretty greedy.

Keep me posted. I'm happy to add a letter or whatever onto anything others

are doing about this.

Anya

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