Online Purchasing
I wonder how many of you out there have problems with online purchases while you are on the crew. I just had another payment rejected by one of the big online payments processing groups. My firewall just came up for renewal or, more accurately, informed me that it would soon be up for renewal.
I decided to make the payment then and there so I just clicked on the button and filled in the forms. After submission I got the usual email notifying me that my payment would be processed over the next 24 hours. I just got another email telling me that the process had failed.
This is far from the first time that this has happened to me and it is not the only online payments processing group that have done this. The problem is that they look at you IP address and if it doesn’t fit your billing address then they won’t approve the payment. This is to stop credit card scams and is somewhat useful, even if infuriating at times with the business we are in.
A lot of my software was purchased online and the majority of it will offer cheaper prices for renewal. The problem is that I can’t renew most of it before a certain number of days or weeks before the software runs out. If I go to the website before this time I get treated as a new customer and no discount is available. If I wait until the time is up I will most likely be somewhere on a crew and the payment will be denied. Catch 22.
Recently I purchased some domain names from Dynadot and the same thing happened there. They didn’t just send me an email saying that the payment had been denied, they sent an email saying there had been a problem and that they could approve the payment if I could scan my credit card and send the scan to them. I replied telling them that I was on a seismic crew and that I did not have a scanner available. Would a digital photo be okay?
Their reply was that they had already manually approved the credit card order. That is service! Since then I have transferred all of my domain names to them and they will get any future business from me. So far I have spent over three hundred dollars with them.
The others who don’t go the extra mile may lose my custom. If I can’t purchase their product then I will search for an alternative product and try to purchase that online.
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