[Alex Pepple]

Dear Eratosphereans,

This is one those posts that I don’t make unless it’s unavoidable. As always, I’ve been running the financial end of things here solo and they’ve been at a stage that those who issue alerts would deem condition orange for a several quarters now. Of course, the challenging economic climate everywhere that has now become almost cliché has only exacerbated matters. It’s probably been too easy to miss the donate link given how little trickles in quarters apart, still I’m most grateful to those few.

Apart from the recurring fees for monthly server rental, the server and forum software license fees, the technical maintenance and upgrades which luckily I can mostly tackle with only the outlay of time, there is now a need for critical upgrade, especially of the storage due to the large amount of data for backups and stream of new data.

So, I’ll simply point out that donation link is at the top of most forum page, here . The available methods are credit card (through Google Checkout), Paypal (indirectly through 2Checkout), or check by snail mail. And every little bit helps.

I’ll leave this up for while as a sticky post -- long enough for those who might interested in helping to see it.

Thanks!
…Alex

[David Anthony]

It seems difficult to use Paypal.
Is it possible to set it up to use Autofill?

[Alex Pepple]

Hi David,

I'm not sure why you're having problem with Paypal. Maybe it's because it's going through the third party 2Checkout system. It may actually be a problem with the browser you're using. If you have more than one browser installed, then try a different one and it might work as expected. As for Autofill, I believe you can set it independently from your browser independent of the site you're visiting. Hope that helps.

Cheers,
...Alex

[peter richards]

I had a crack at paypal but it phased out after I'd punched in all my details. Not quite confidence inspiring. Is there a dirty brown envelope option?

[Alex Pepple]

Hi Peter,

Sorry to hear that about Paypal. It seems to be hit and miss because I can confirm that it's been used successfully today.

But yes, there the check/snailmail option that you're asking about is also available at here

Thanks!
...Alex

[Allen Tice]

I have a theoretic objection to Paypal that has two prongs:
(a) it was hacked a year or so ago ;
(b) when I risked it again three months ago, it wanted access to my bank account so it ease the strain of making payments-in, and when I said No Thank You, it dropped the entire transaction.

I don't know or much care what Paypal wants to represent itself as being in big promotional pushes now.

I don't use it and won't use it.

[Jones Pat]

From bad past experience, I won't use Paypal either...but I think my Visa worked fine for a donation...hope so.

Pat

[Roger Slater]

I think the Paypal problem has to do with 2Checkout. I had to abort the transaction because it got too confusing and uncertain. But I have a Paypal account that I use all the time when making internet purchases, and I find it to be easy to use, reliable, and far preferable to giving out my credit card information to individual merchants. Paypal without 2Checkout works just fine. I'm not sure why Alex has put 2Checkout into the loop.

PS--
Alex, from what I can see having looked at each of their sites, Paypal takes a much smaller fee for processing donations than 2Checkout does. It appears that 2Checkout takes 5.5% while Paypal would take just 2.9%. For an additional 2.5% (or something like that) you could even receive donations from other countries and have them converted into US dollars). I'm not sure what the deal is for you to use them both.

[Dave East]

Hi Alex

As a self employed kitchen designer, unable to work due to having a triple heart bypass, which hasn't fixed the problem, I get very little money but if some of the other members would stop posting such good competition entries in the Speccie, I would gladly donate any winnings that I may get!!

Dave

[Jayne Osborn]

I'll be making my usual donation, Alex, as I don't know where we'd be without our SuperSphere.

There'll be some extra this time, so consider it a joint contribution from my good friend Dave (above) and me.

Jayne