Scripter's Scrapbook and PayPal problems

[Wilhelm Sanke]

Dear Hugh,

as others may be also affected by the way PayPal handels transactions I 
send this post to the use-list, too.

I remember having had similar problems with PayPal some time ago.

Following the half-price link in your offer to this list I read on your 
web page that a number of credit cards are accepted, from Visa to Solo - 
9 in all including American Express.
On the order page of Paypal for the Scrapbook, which at first appears in 
English, I see that these credit cards can be used, but as soon as I 
choose "Germany" as the country option the text changes to German 
(including some spelling mistakes) and asks for my bank account for 
"manual" transfer of the price. Happily, there is still an option button 
"credit cards", which however offers only the choice between Visa and 
Mastercard.

I looked at other countries and see that from Great Britain or Austria 
you can indeed use American Express with PayPal, but not from France and 
Germany. What is the reason behind such a differentiation between 
countries? Is it maybe a corollary of the opposition of France and 
Germany against the Iraq war? Very strange. Or maybe it has to do with 
George W. Bush's dislike of "weapons of math instruction" (see the 
article recently posted to this list)?

O.K., I followed the option of Mastercard for my order, tried about six 
times and was never accepted because PayPal was not to be convinced that 
my account number is correct. The validity of my Mastercard is from 2005 
to Dec 2008. I have made a number of online purchases with this card in 
the last months and nobody had so far complained about a wrong number.

Then I again switched to the English page, choose U.S.A. as my country 
and entered my Florida address and phone number and my American Express 
details. This has worked before when buying from firms like CompUSA, 
Radio Shack, or Circuit City.
PayPal accepted my AMEX entries, but did not like my U.S.A. address - 
maybe because this address is not sufficiently connected with my German 
bank account from which AMEX payments are withdrawn.

I consider asking American Express to honor my American address as also 
connected to my German bank account; this would also enable me to profit 
from the considerably lower prices RunRev charges from its customers in 
the U.S.A.-

Next, I found a button "my PayPal account", and indeed I appear to have 
used such an account before as they listed my correct address.
However, at this point even the options for Visa and Mastercard were 
gone! Only manual transfer from my bank account was left as a 
possibility. For safety reasons in such an unstable and dangerous 
country as Germany?-

Without entering anything I chose a "proceed" (or something similar) 
button, and shortly afterwards got a transfer receipt  - without any 
indication in which way the money was going to be transferred.

Your Scripter's Scrapbook registration key arrived about an hour later. 
One problem occured when entering my data into the Scrapbook: The 
registration form does not accept the "@" directly from the keyboard (on 
Windows XP), I had to use ALT+64 to place the @ into my email adress.

At last PayPal indeed informed me in a new post  I had to go to my bank 
and transfer the price manually. So although I have already got my 
Scrapbook key you will have to wait for a few days until my money should 
arrive.

PayPal says somewhere on their pages to address customer support (or the 
like) in case of problems, but nowhere could I find a link to do that.

I recommend that you - as a customer of PayPal - should inform PayPal 
about these problems. I will do so myself once I have found a PayPal 
address to voice my opinions about inedaquate programming, a widespread 
nuisance of which we - as programmers and Revolution users - are 
sufficiently aware and annoyed.

I frequently use my credit cards for online buying of books, software 
etc. and almost never have run into problems. The only other firm I had 
trouble with was Apple when I bought a Quicktime Pro license two years 
ago: They accepted my AMEX payment immediately and got their money, but 
failed to deliver the registration key. It then took five weeks, 10 
emails, and two international phone calls until they finally succeeded 
to send the key I had paid for more than a month earlier.

Best regards,

Wilhelm Sanke
<http://www.sanke.org/MetaMedia>