You can get a custom title by using the Custom Title subscription in the UserCP under “Paid Subscriptions.” No muss, no fuss, it’s totally automated.
You can also get a Custom Title for being a Friend of Cecil and making a donation. Some people like to have both the Member designation AND a custom title, see Cazzle’s profile for an example. You can have that too with a FOC donation. I have to fiddle with the settings a bit, it’s not automatic, but I think I give you what you want when you donate.
This is all totally optional; if you don’t want a Custom Title or a Friend of Cecil title to show on your profile, that’s fine too. Just send me an email (TubaDiva@aol.com) and tell me what you want.
FOC will also get a small gift as soon as I get my hands on some merchandise.
The FOC time period is set to a short period of time so you can donate as often as you like.
I’ve asked STM to put a tip jar/Feed the Kitty kind of thing on the Straight Dope front page. That way you don’t have to be a Member of the board to make a donation; you can be anyone looking at the site. I hope to have a link to the same thing somewhere on the board as well, but currently this is an option I can’t make happen through the vB software. Nothing happens instantly with STM, so I’m doing what I can with what is available to me now and asking for these changes as they can hopefully approve and install them.
While not a perfect or particularly elegant solution, this is something I could do right now. For the longest time people have offered to throw money at the Straight Dope and at the SDMB but it was not an option for management. That was then and this is now and here we are. I can only hope people put their money where their mouth is. So to speak.
The time period is short (originally I set it at one day, then one week, I may go back to one day) because I want you to be able to donate through Friend of Cecil as often as you like.
The PayPay mechanism that processes transactions here was originally set up by the Reader.
In all these years that hadn’t changed. But we were always part of the Reader, even through all the sales.
Now we’re not.
I would imagine it should and will change, especially now, and I can only assume it’s one of the things STM will get to at some point. With the sale of the Reader a lot of things are changing and it’s a work in progress.
While it says “Chicago Reader” the PayPal account is actually controlled by STM and they schedule transfers from that PayPal account to STM. So it ultimately gets to the right place.
It has been many years since we had a mechanism where people could send checks or money orders. Most companies nowadays don’t have people or facilities to process paper transactions.
Every company I do business with accepts cash, I honestly thought it was the law … “This note is legal tender for all debts, public or private” …
So there’s an improvement to these boards going forward … let people join who maybe don’t have good credit, like young folks … I gotta tell you, this smells like elitism in the extreme, why on Earth does an internet message board need members to have good credit scores? …
I thought you’ve raise rates to bring more customers in … I’ve been a businessman for more years than I like to admit … and one truism I’ve found is that when we raise rates, for every person who walks away, two other people will come forward … look at your own membership tallies, been going up since you announced this increase? …
If a PO Box or private box is too expense in your area, the Post Office will accept mail for you as “General Delivery” … I live in one of the biggest metropolitan areas in all of North Jefferson and the Post Office here will send this out to me with the regular delivery …
Nope. Businesses can refuse to accept a form of payment if they choose. Hence all of the establishments that won’t take $50 or $100 bills, which is relatively common. Businesses can also choose not to accept cash at all.
You can use cash with PayPal–direct debit from checking account. Unless you don’t have a checking account… in which case, I’m wondering if do *business *by barter? You probably can’t ship a crate of chickens to that Chicago address either.
Anyway, anyone can post here without being a member or paying anything. TubaDiva is asking for fees not to increase membership per se, but to increase revenue to run the board. You know that it costs money to host a ginormous website, right?
Locally (DC area) some walk-in businesses are no longer accepting cash. It’s already the case for most internet businesses in my experience. Cash is expensive to handle and difficult-to-impossible to track.
You’ve never used PayPal? You don’t need a credit card. I think if your concerned that “young folks” won’t be able to join through lack of credit history, maybe you should talk to some actual young folks who manage to make online purchases all the time, with or without good credit history.
It’s a different world in 2018 – access to credit cards (or the basically-the-same-thing-not-going-into-details equivalent, debit cards) is generally unrelated to credit score.
Although … even 30 years ago, it was easy as pie to get a bunch of credit cards as a teenage college student.
Honestly, this is the first time I’ve come across this, never even heard of this before … I do business with plenty of people who don’t take plastic, and many others that slap on a surcharge … y’all make it seem I live out in the wilderness …
Oh …
I guess I do live out in the wilderness … my apologies for bringing this up … beer it is then …
