Why won't you accept my prepaid credit card?

[chappachula]

I want to give you money.
You won't let me.

I have a prepaid credit card. So why won't the site accept my card? It's a PREPAID card, for Og's sake....the money is available to you, with ZERO risk.

Details:
I have a brand new, unopened, never-used Visa Gift Card. Expiration date is 07/2009.
I typed in the card number, the 3 digit CSC code, all the other info....and the site tells me that it cannot accept this card. After my 3rd attempt, it tells me my card "has been declined--PayPal could not validate the card".
What's wrong with you guys? Is taking FREE, GUARRANTEED money so difficult?
Is there anything I do to fix the situation?

Let's see how the logic works:
Money = good.
Good for Cecil, good for Chicago Reader, good for Creative Loafing, good for Bernie Madoff.

Refusing to take my money is bad.
Bad for Ch. Reader, Bad for C.Loafing...(but I suppose it would have been a good idea for Mr. Madoff.)

I want to renew my membership. You want my money. Why is this so difficult?



(yeah, I know that prepaid cards are a ripoff--that's why I bought it! I don't mind wasting 20% of my money. I'm losing maybe 10 bucks in stupid fees, but I'm gaining a lot of peace of mind by not exposing bank details.I never use a real credit card number online.....just because of stupid problems like this. Even at a respectable web site, I never feel entirely safe.)

[TubaDiva]

It's not us, we would be delighted to take your money.

It's PayPal.

Why don't they take your card? I don't know.

We can't begin to know PayPal's policies and why they're doing what they do.

You're doing this because you think PayPal is unsafe? I don't know of any security problems within the PayPal system itself -- it's used for millions of transactions.

[TBG]

I had issues with PayPal and a pre-paid card as well. Basically, I had, oh, lets just say $30 on it, and was trying to spend that $30 at a website that used paypal for their credit card transactions.

Long story short, because PayPal insisted on putting an extra $1 charge on the card to make sure it was good before charging it, the card only had $29 dollars left, and I couldn't use it at the site anymore because there wasn't enough left on it for what I was buying.

Sure, they eventually give back the $1, but this nonsense made it impossible to spend an entire pre-paid card at the site I wanted to spend it at. In the end, I wound up borrowing someone else's regular credit card and giving them the pre-paid card to use at the grocery store.

Now when I have a choice, I do my shopping at sites with real credit card transactions, not this PayPal bull.

[clairobscur]

Originally Posted by TubaDiva

You're doing this because you think PayPal is unsafe? I don't know of any security problems within the PayPal system itself -- it's used for millions of transactions.

No, I don't do it because I once read their terms of agreement and there was an item I didn't like. I would be unable to tell what it was now, but I assume I would still think the same.

Apparently, my subscription is going to expire only in two days. So, I assume I'm going to wait a little until, it is to be hoped, the issue is fixed.

[clairobscur]

Actually, my payment went through normally. I assume whatever issue there was has already been fixed.