[Finance] Fw: PayPal reminders suggestion

[David Kaufman]

Thanks Martin,

Forwarding my reply to the finance list, since the BCC'ed message is
still on hold awaiting moderator approval:

-dave


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Evolt Treasurer" <treasurer at evolt.orgTo: "Mark Groen" <mark at mgwebservices.caSent: Friday, April 22, 2005 7:14 PM
Subject: Re: PayPal reminders suggestion


hi Mark!

Mark Groen wrote:
> Just thought you might like to know, not sure if it's a Paypal thing
> or something to do with the button code on the site.
>
> I signed up for a monthly support payment, but when going to the
> Paypal page after clicking the button, they only allowed me to pay by
> eCheck which costs moi bank fees. I had to cancel my subscription and
> have paid manually (the one time button) so that the funds are taken
> out of my Canadian account dollar balance converted to US funds.

First and foremost... Thanks for your donation to evolt!

And second... I have been trying to figure out why this inconvenience
happened to you, and what we can do to prevent it from happening in the
future.  We have such an international membership (readership, and
"visitorship") I'm sure you're not the first person to run into this
annoyance.  It's just been a bit tricky for me to reproduce because I'm
in the U.S... would you mind helping me fix it?

First, I looked at the documentation for "How do automatic subscription
payments work", and it says: "Funding Source: Payments are always
debited from your PayPal balance first. If your balance does not cover a
scheduled payment, the funds will be deducted from your default funding
source chosen when you signed up for the subscription. You can change
your default funding source from your Subscription Details. Changes to
your back-up funding will affect the back-up funding source for all of
your pending and future transactions.  Note: If your PayPal balance
covers part of the payment, only the remainder is taken from the default
funding source, unless your default funding source is eCheck. The full
amount of the eCheck will be debited from your bank account balance."
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_help&eloc=1731

And you said "after clicking the button, they only allowed me to pay by
eCheck".  So I assume you didn't happen to have $10 USD in your Paypal
account balance, right? (neither do I -- I keep it empty!) and so your
choice of "default funding sources" was limited to one choice:
eCheck --not much of a choice!

Just to be thorough, you don't have a balance in your Paypal account,
right?  I'm not saying you should, just making sure that I can tell
people that one workaround to this problem is to "Add Funds" to their
paypal account before subscribing.  Though that would be annoying too,
to have to remember to do that each month before the renewal date in
order to avoid the eCheck charge.

But when I click on the "$10/month Subscribe" link on
http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/ (from here in the U.S) I get a
page that says: "Make Your Payment" and at the bottom,

  Source of Funds:

    Instant Transfer: $10.00 USD from My Bank Name XXXXXX1234
      Back Up Option: Visa XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-1234

with a link to "More Options" leading to another page where I can choose
"Instant Transfer", "eCheck" or "Credit Card", with the first two
showing my "Confirmed" Bank Account.

Maybe "Instant Transfer" is only available from U.S. Bank Accounts?  I
always use that option, because it's free to me (ever since I
"confirmed" the bank account by telling paypal how many pennies they
deposited into it for me when I first added it).

One more question, do you have a credit card linked to your Paypal
account, or just a bank account?  If you do, I'm surprised that wasn't a
"funding option" for you.  If not, it's good to know that maybe we can
add an explanation to the link on the support page that non-U.S.
subscribers would need a credit card linked to their Paypal account to
avoid eCheck fees... your bank changes you that fee, not Paypal, right?

Finally I see that you *were* able to make a one-time "Payment Type:
Instant" payment after you cancelled your subscription request... very
odd.  So I checked into our payment preferences, and the only thing I
could see that might have an effect on this was a preference that said:

  Block payments sent to me in a currency I do not hold:
    1.) Yes
    2.) No, accept them and convert them to U.S. Dollars
    3.) Ask Me

This setting was still set to the default "Ask Me", so I just changed it
to "No, accept them and convert them to U.S. Dollars".  Maybe this will
fix your problem, since you mention that the currency conversion might
have been the problem.

Another thing I just did was enable our Paypal account to "maintain a
balance" in other currencies besides USD, rather than requiring funds to
be converted to USD at payment time.  Our account will now keep your
Canadian dollars in their pristine Canadian state while they stay with
us! ...until, that is, we have to pay our Texan hosting company :-)

So we're now accepting US, Austrailian and Canadian Dollars, as well as
Euros, Ponds Sterling and Yen (at least I *hope* we are...).  And I hope
everyone with non-US money can now donate it to us as easily and
painlessly as possible :-)

If you'd still like to make a monthly donation, Mark, then by all means
please try it again, now that I've tweaked these settings, and let us
know if it works better for you that way.

> Maybe with the new CMS, you could set up a cron to send out monthly
> reminders for those that have/are paying manually, if that's not
> being done already?

Yes, that's certainly what we'll do if we're not able to get the
currency transfers smoothed out with Paypal subscriptions.

Thanks again for you help!

-dave

David Kaufman, Evolt Treasurer <treasurer at evolt.org