You don't like PayPal? There *is* an alternative now!

[Ghost in the Machine]

I know a lot of people have had problems with PayPal and don't like using their service. I personally have never had a problem with them, but I have found a great alternative for your online payment processing needs.

Take a look at AlertPay as an alternative choice and see what you think. They have even been featured on CNN:
CNN - Sick of PayPal? Check out these e-commerce solutions for business owners

PEACE!

Ghost

[Divine Discontent]

1. what are the letters after .com on the web address? n/t

[deadmessengers]

2. Looks like a session ID

Not inherently malicious, just not necessary for a reposting.

[Ghost in the Machine]

5. It's my referral link....

It lets them know who is referring customers to them..

[Divine Discontent]

10. oh the $5 thing like paypal used to do so they'd get big

and then they eventually screwed over their members and started charging for everything, and locked up accounts. inherently, that's what all these entities will do if they get big enough and the owners sell out.

[Ghost in the Machine]

15. Well, hopefully they won't turn like that, but who knows?

All we can really do is take someone at their word, then hope their word is as good as yours(should be). I can understand having to make a few small increases over the years. As their customer base grows larger and their server needs grow with it, it's going to add to their overhead. For a small company making a very small profit, it can actually start costing them money to maintain the site.

Look how both Ebay & PayPal have grown since their inception. Their server loads have gone from a single server to server farms. Ebay started as a small site for Bay area residents and grew to a global wide corporation. PayPal has done the same. Their revenue has to come from somewhere. Advertising dollars help with that, but probably doesn't cover it all.

Look at DU's server load... now imagine over 1 million USERS per day.. that's a lot of hits and a lot of page views, not even counting the pictures being uploaded to their servers for hosting or the auctions themselves.

Ebay has just gotten greedy now, though. They recently touted their listing fee cuts but it was only a distraction while they raised their final value fees by 3.5%, wiping out any savings you'd have from the fee cuts.

I'll give AlertPay a try and see how it does. I've never had a problem with PayPal myself, but it's nice because it's also good to have an alternative in place, just in case.... also, they allow you to sell adult items, where PayPal forbids it. This comes in handy with Ebay, as Ebay allows adult listings in one section, but PayPal still forbids use of their services to receive payment for adult items.

[sam sarrha]

3. paypal sucks.. wouldnt let me in without all my bank info.. f that, and i get all

kinds of phising crap about them

[Ghost in the Machine]

7. They *have* to have your banking info if you're opening an account...

how else are they going to do it? You're basically setting up an online bank account and guaranteeing it with your real life bank account. Otherwise, how are you supposed to transfer money? Without it, it makes fraud way too easy. This way, if YOU defraud someone(not that *you* would), they can hit your account to reimburse the person who was defrauded. It's more of a safeguard for customers of the merchant using their services.

Think of it like this: You but something online from someone using PayPal.. that person never ships the product you bought.. what can you do?? You file a complaint with PayPal, they investigate, and if your claim is true, they debit the merchants bank account and give you YOUR money back...

Ghost

[populistdriven]

8. paypal ended up sending my CU 60$ to cover overdraft charges that were PP's fault

:)

[Speciesamused]

4. Now an alternate E-BAy would be good too.

[Ghost in the Machine]

6. I'm working on that, too..

I have a programmer working on an auction script for me... and I'm looking at a few others that are commercially available because I want to start my own auction site. I think Ebay's fees are ridiculous because of their structure. It doesn't cost any more to host a 99 cent item than it does to host a $10,000 item, yet Ebay charges by the price of your listing. I'm thinking in the line of charging a flat .35 cent fee for each listing, no matter what your asking price is, with up to 4 or 5 pictures.

Finding users will be the hardest part of the process...

[Divine Discontent]

9. the best I've seen LATELY

as there were others that were good, but have come and gone - is http://www.onlineauction.com/index.php

[Ghost in the Machine]

11. Checking it out now, thanks

i used to like lowbids.com, but they are gone now too... i think they became webidz.com

[Speciesamused]

14. Thank you for the link.

I was removed from E-bay because they
said a cd I had for sale was never made.
It was a European Album. Purchased when I was stationed in Germany.
I wrote them twice, their corporate headquarters and they never replied.
Keep telling me they never received any letters. So
I said I'm finished with E bay. I had 980 feedbacks 100 0/0.
I went out of my way to treat people well.
Look where it got me. Like they are musical genius's

[Angry Mollusk]

12. Since Ebay owns Paypal, isn't Paypal required if you pay by credit card?

Ebay owns Paypal- I thought if you buy or sell something on Ebay- and you use a credit card, it must be done through Paypal. As Ebay bought out Paypal, its a total monopoly for them. If there is an alternative, that's good news.

[Ghost in the Machine]

13. No, you can use your own payment processor to accept credit cards on Ebay

You do this through the payments options, then you email the winning bidder an invoice generated through your 3rd party processor and they use it to pay with their credit card.

Accepting *any* kind of credit card, or payment in general online, requires a payment processor whether it's from your bank, 2Checkout, Authorize Net, PayPal, or any number of other commercially available 3rd party payment processors.

I've been testing out a script like PayPal on one of my dormant domains, which you can check out here: http://www.maskmylink.com ... It's not a domain I would like to use for the script, but I test several scripts out on dormant domains to get a feel for them and work the bugs out before I bring them live on the site I'm going to use them on.

PEACE!

Ghost