I’m interested in subscribing. It appears that PayPal is the only way to do so. I don’t and won’t use PayPal for anything – ever. Is there another way to pay for a subscription?
Sorry if this is the wrong venue for this inquiry. It seems the most obvious.
– ASGuy
This post says you can do it via another credit card. In at least some instances, the link mentioned does not appear, Good luck.
Regards,
Shodan
I just did this last week. Click on the button as though you were going to use PayPal. When you get to the next screen follow the instructions to check out as a guest and set up a PayPal account later. Pay using a credit card. Don’t actually set up a PayPal account. I do it that way every year; it’s always worked for me.
Unless you’ve ever signed up for a PayPal account, in which case they will insist you use your PayPal account.
I’m curious why the Dope doesn’t just take credit-card payments like the vast majority of sites, without Paypal. Although I admit I don’t know exactly what’s involved in taking payments, I assume it’s just too much trouble to take credit-card payments like most other websites, given their resources. Still seems odd though.
As someone who’s website does take credit cards, you can’t just ‘take them’. You have to set up merchant account with a processor and it really is a whole big thing*. I’m not going to get into what the OP’s problem is with paypal as I don’t really care, for every processor, someone is going to have an issue with it. For example, they could move over to Square or Chase or Paymentech and someone’s going to have a fit about it.
@The OP, if your problem is about security, you could find a place that sells PayPal gift cards and buy some of them. If it’s about something else, your SOL. It’s the only way the dope is set up to accept money from people.
*Yes, I know, Paypal isn’t really a ‘whole big thing’, neither is Square but the big processors are.
It’s a poorly worded post. Tuba was explaining how to pay, through paypal, without setting up an account. Read the entire thread, look at ZipperJJ’s imgur pictures. If the OP really and truly wants nothing to do with PayPal that’s not going to help (but I don’t think you realized that). It’s like saying you’ll never ever ever shop at John’s Mega Mart ever again, but then buying pizza from the cart out front (that’s owned by the store).
Or like what happened to me. PayPal refused to accept my credit card in direct payment (although it has accepted it in the past). And it acknowledged I don’t have a PayPal account.
So I ended up setting up a PayPal account and PayPal then accepted my payment - using the same credit card it had just repeatedly rejected.
Okay, so it may be a big deal to set up a merchant account for payments, but businesses do it, large and small. Why can’t the Dope?
The only way the OP can completely avoid PayPal is to have somebody else make the payment for them as a guest subscription and then reimburse that person with a check or something. Or just not pay the SDMB.
You’d think the administration here would consider which of these two paths is more likely to be followed.
I was at a flea market this weekend and I saw guys selling junk in the middle of a field who were set up to accept credit card payments.
Because all you need to set up a merchant account with Paypal is a checking account, an address and a username/password. They don’t have a whole lot of incentive to change other than the fact the a half a dozen people whine about it once a year. And let’s face it, a lot more people whine about a lot more things during the rest of the year and they don’t change those either. What makes you think they’re going to change the way they collect money.
For the record, on my website, I specifically started using paypal because people here were talking about how they’ll only use it, or they’ll at least favor websites that use paypal. I think since I did that two years ago, I’ve had two or three people use the paypal option.
I have PayPal, but since my account balance is currently zero I simply clicked on the credit card option. It took it, and only later reminded me that I might like to use my account next time.
Yes, I understand that. When I get to the screen that ZipperJJ captured, there is no link that says I can pay with a credit card. The only links that appear are Set Up a PayPal Account, or Log Into Your PayPal Account. Nothing else - PayPal will not allow me to do anything other than pay with my PayPal account. As Siam Sam says, once you pay with a PayPal account, the option to pay any other way is no longer offered.
Regards,
Shodan
I can see it and I always use paypal.
Pretend like you’re re-upping, go to User CP, Paid Subscriptions. Select 1 Year from the drop down box then click Order. On the next screen click “Order Using Paypal” When it takes you to PayPal’s website you’ll have the option to log in or below that there’s a link to “pay with a credit/debit card or Bill Me Later”.
If that option isn’t there, you might need to make sure you’re logged out of paypal, close the window then start the process over, beginning at the Dope again. If you’re not logged in, the paypal site won’t know if you have an account or not so it’s going to default to the screen that asks how you want to pay (with your account or with a card).
I am logged out of PayPal. ** There is no link that says “pay with a credit/debit card or Bill Me Later”.**
I have already re-subscribed using PayPal, so I am wasting your time. Please don’t take it amiss if I do not respond further in this thread.
Regards,
Shodan
I have a PayPal account and I had no problems using my CC. If you remove cookies there’s no way PayPal would know that you have an account unless you use the same CC they have on file but they won’t know that until much later in the process.
For what it’s worth, I do have a PayPal account, and for me it does display the option to pay by credit card, as seen here.
It does fill in the email associated with my PayPal account (the example in that picture isn’t it, obviously) but it doesn’t force me to log in.
Which I now see has already been covered in the other thread, so nevermind.
Ugh. You’re totally clogging up the Internet with duplicate photos. WTG.
