Twitch streamer Froste confirmed in a Tweet on Sunday that he plans to file a lawsuit against PayPal after the company reportedly banned his account following a $95,000 donation during a charity subathon for Gamers Outreach on Wednesday. At the time of banning, his PayPal account had nearly $65,000 which is now being blocked from withdrawal for at least 180-days.
The streamer published a Tweet on Wednesday showing the banned account with $64,238 USD inside it. In a reply to that Tweet, he told PayPal "Please message me privately in my direct messages before the end of the weekend, or my lawyer will! Thank you!"
After waiting several days, PayPal support responded by permanently banning him from their service and informing him he will have to wait 180 days before withdrawing any money.
"We appreciate your interest in PayPal, and I'm sorry to hear that we've made the decision to no longer offer you access to our services," the company representative stated. "This isn't something we do lightly, and I can assure you that we fully review all factors on an account before making this type of decision. . . If there is any balance in the account, that would be held up for 180 days. This is to minimize any potential risk of loss due to disputes or chargebacks that may be filed during that period. Once that timeframe has elapsed, you'll be notified that you can withdraw any balances."
In response, the streamer had some unsavory words for the PayPal rep, and then said on Twitter "Court is it I guess."
Many Twitter users joined Frost in being outraged by PayPal's announcement, with several pointing out that they are blocking a donation for Gamer's Outreach, a 501 nonprofit organization dedicated to helping kids in hospitals cope with their treatments.
The donation in question came during Froste's charity subathon that has been running for more than nine days as of writing this article. He shattered his initial funding goals and currently has 695 hours left on the timer, but the subathon is uncapped so it could continue to go up.
There were also many who pointed out that a sudden $95,000 transfer would justifiably raise flags for PayPal, and that perhaps it would be better to directly contact PayPal rather than DMing them on Twitter.
"I used to work for PayPal back in 2016 and from what I remember they have a whole hidden system called Risk where if something happens out of the norm on the account it shoots up a red flag," asserted Reddit user GenericTwitchViwer. "It usually happens with account where they usually did like small transactions and then had one really big one, kinda like this, because I doubt he's ever gotten a straight $95,000 transfer to his account. Yeah it's inconvenient, but it makes sense, and the right course of action would be calling them and getting the issue resolved, not telling them to DM him on Twitter."
Another group pointed out that the unfortunate situation unfolding for Froste is one of the reasons why it is best not to run charity streams from your personal accounts.
"This is yet another reason why you don't use your own accounts to run charity streams,"
Reddit user Willitrom argued, "It's much easier to get a charity to sign up for tiltify or softgiving or similar than it is to both get paypal to treat your sudden increase in donations as legitimate and get the government you're living under to not tax them as income."
We reached out to PayPal for comment on this story, as of publishing we have not heard back from the company.
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Aaron is an esports reporter with a background in media, technology, and communication education.
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