That time of the year again...

BMF · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 11:27 pm Post subject: That time of the year again...

Hi all. It is time for our renewal of the ToE site in a few weeks. We need $79USD for 12 months or $119 for 24.
I'd like to go the 24 months deal if possible but of it all comes down to money.
This is where i ask for donations.
I know the site has kind of lost it's main focus and has become very quiet but i do not want to see the site die out in any form......Starcraft 3 is on the horizon plus who knows what lies ahead that may grab our collective eye.

Any amount anyone can donate to get us two more years worth of subscriptions would be fantastic.
I did recieve a donation a few months back that has us in good steed but i would certainly love for other members to chip in what they can.....if only a few bucks.
Just click the Donate button on the left of the main page if you can help out at all.

Thanks alot guys.....much appreciated.
BMF

mumblefratz · Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 2:47 am Post subject:

I would be happy to donate money to the cause.

What I'm not happy to do is to be required to open a PayPal account and give them information over and above what is normally required to process a credit card transaction and then have to go through a credit card validation process and thereby have to supply even more information.

If I recall correctly I went through this last year and once the transaction went through I cancelled my PayPal account.

This year it is even worse because they seem to have added this credit card verification process that requires yet more personal information.

I'm basically not willing to do this.

I do remember donating money to the Core and to Kryo and in those cases it was not necessary for me to create an account. All I had to do was enter my credit card specific information and that was it.

Apparently it had something to do with the nature of their PayPal account. I'm not sure precisely what it was and I assume that it was somehow more expensive to the vendor to maintain such an account.

Like I said I'd be happy to make a sizeable donation if it could be done in such a way that I did not have to create a PayPal account for myself.

However if it is a requirement that I create a PayPal account then it's with regret that I will be unable to make a donation.

mumblefratz · Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 2:56 am Post subject:

As a note PayPal now seems to require you to link a bank account number to your account otherwise they won't "validate" your credit card and therefore won't process your transaction.

No way in hell will I give anyone any of my bank account numbers.

Mottikhan · Co-Admin Joined: 16 Jan 2008 Posts: 964 Location: Texas

I'm not sure how to get around the online questions. I've used Western Union in the past, but they also require some info.

Perhaps an international money order. I also know that Citibank has a Visa that lets you generate a random credit card number for a single transaction to protect your info. It wouldn't work with Paypal, but it should on other online transfers. In theory.

mumblefratz · Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 7:41 am Post subject:

Actually I could use the old fashioned method of just mailing a check to BMF which would be fine by me. Of course I'd need a mailing address. This would expose the same bank account and bank routing number to BMF that PayPal was looking for but frankly I trust him more than I trust PayPal.

The easiest thing from my perspective is for the site to have a merchant paypal account versus a personal account. This would allow people to give money without requiring them to have their own PayPal accounts.

As far as I can tell there are merchant accounts that do not require a monthy maintenance but they do cost a 2% to 4% fee per transaction. I'm pretty sure this is the type of account that both the Core and Kryo used although I do know that Kryo has since discontinued his, I'm not sure why.

I guess most people just have a PayPal account and don't worry about it, but I do find this recent requirement of having to link a bank account number to your PayPal account ostensibly to "validate" your credit card as particularly onerous.

This is as bad as using a debit card which is far more dangerous than a credit card. With a debit card the burden of proof that a transaction is frudulant is on you and if something happens your money is gone until you convince the bank that they should replace it. Most banks have a policy of limiting debit card fraud loss to the same $50 limit that applies to credit cards but there's a major difference. With credit cards the $50 limit is a federal law whereas the $50 limit on debit card loss is bank policy subject to change at any time without notice.

There was recently a story on the news about someone on vacation that paid $20,000 to an unethical vendor for a shirt and his bank upheld the merchants claim and the guy was out his $20 grand. Of course at the time he thought he was paying 20,000 pesos or whatever the local currency was but the vendor submitted the transaction in dollars *not* the local currency and the bank upheld that $20,000 for a shirt was not unreasonable.

Thanks but no thanks. No debit cards for me nor will I provide any online institution with any of my banking information.

BMF · Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 11:00 am Post subject:

I certainly understand your position Mumble, and i by all means would never want any of you guys to expose yourselvs in any way, PayPal it seems, wants to do just that.
I will look into a ToE merchant account, but i am also happy, provided you are Mumble to have you send a cheque or international money order.
I have no problem sending you my address mate, should you wish to go down that route.

What about a direct deposit from your bank account to my bank account? Is that possible internationally?

If so i'd be happy to provide my banking details to enable you guys to direct deposit monies into my bank.

I'll explore other offline measures and post back.

mumblefratz · Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 4:33 pm Post subject:

Actually if it's OK with you just PM me an address and the name to put on the check. That's really simplest from my perspective. Of course there will be some exchange rate variation on your end but I would expect one bank is as good as the next.

I did call PayPal and tried to figure out what sort of "merchant account" would not have these issues or if there was some personal account that did not require a bank account number to validate a perfectly good credit card.

Yet again I was confronted with some towel head that could barely speak English and could not seem to understand the simplest of sentances.

I've come to the conclusion that I will no longer deal with any company that provides support from India or Pakistan.

BMF · Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2009 12:06 am Post subject:

No worries Mumble, i'll pm you promptly.
I know what you mean with the rag heads too....the ISP i just left had their tech support center located in India and it was a nightmare to have to deal with them...so much so i would keep hanging up till i got one that i could understand.
But not only are they hard to understand they don't like leaving that bloody script in front of them...i don't know how many times i have rung them up and said straight away that i am well versed in computers and troubleshooting my problems and just the fact i have rung you means i have already turned the router off and checked my connections...lets move ahead to page two.

9 out of 10 times you cant convince them then spend the nest 10 mins being told how you need to check your Ethernet is plugged into your PC....sigh..

Aussie tech support is far more flexible...and understandable.

anyway digression over...
I did look into Merchant Account and from what i can tell firstly the amount charged for each transaction jumps to about 4.1%, which is not too bad but it seems that still the payee still must have a paypal account.
I know there have been a lot of policy changes with paypal lately and it seems that the ability to send money without an account has been one of them.

So for those without paypal this will be an issue, one i cannot do much about, so i do apologize.

I have no qualms about pming you guys who want it my name and and address if you would like to go down that route.

With what money we have and any new donations we can get i would dearly love to hire a web guy to really spruce up the site and give us a lot more functionality....maybe even a switch to IbpPro boards, which opens up a lot more usability....

BMF · Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 6:48 am Post subject:

Just kicking this thread.

I know the site has been down on activity lately and there's a few things i have in mind that might get some attention...Game/movie reviews, What your fellow Tyrannt is playing....and some more general topic threads....

If we can all get into the games each other is playing at the moment that might trigger some more interest in the site....

Days are ticking away and i love to get the 2year deal if possible...

dystopic · Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 3:30 pm Post subject:

if i had a dollar to my name you know (i hope) i'd be helping out... A02

as for lower forum activity... i think it'll pick back up sooner or later. it's summer here and i'm sure that's bearing on how much time people want to spend at a computer. as for me, i haven't been around much over the last week. been going through nicotine withdrawal (again lol... hell, i figure if i make a go at quitting once a year, or whenever i'm poor, and i don't smoke for even just a few weeks, it's still better than if i'd smoked during that time).

BMF · Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 11:31 pm Post subject:

I understand your situation man for sure.
Just kickin this in the hope other may drop a dime or two....i should have asked two months ago i guess when the site was super active.
I just hate having to ask at all though.....

mumblefratz · Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 12:07 pm Post subject:

DethAdder · Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 5:17 pm Post subject: