Crowdfunder Update

Follow-up to my earlier post today:

Rose from Crowdfunder replied before 9 am. Someone who obviously likes to start the day by clearing the crap off her desk. Good girl.

Hi Richard

I'm sorry you're having trouble with the site, we do take payments via credit card but it works through the Paypal interface, so if you continue with the button that says "pay by Paypal" then it will take you to paypal and you can pay by credit card and you don't require a paypal account.

I will go through the FAQ's and make some amendments, thanks for pointing this out.

regards
Rose

I love the logic. To pay by credit card, you must act as if you are paying by Paypal (and there's nothing to tell you that this is what you are not doing) and then do a last-minute swerve. It's utterly counter-intuitive.

At least she is looking at the FAQs.

If I feel strong later today I will have another crack at it.

UPDATE:

I clicked the Paypal button and, sure enough, you can pay using a credit/debit card this way. But you have to accept all of Paypal's terms and conditions to do so, and the amount still includes a Paypal charge of 6.6%, so I suspect you will still be paying the eeeevil capitalists at Paypal however you choose to donate. I have emailed Rose for clarification.

Am I making a fuss over nothing? I don't think so. As Joe Public says in tbe comments to the previous post, the first rule of selling is you make it easy for the buyer to buy. If you solicit donations and then start whacking charges on top, you should not be surprised if people recoil. Let me be clear: I have no problem with Paypal making money by doing what Paypal do, and I think the 'crowdfunding' idea is an excellent one. But Crowdfunder already have a revenue stream, in that they claim a success fee from projects that meet their targets. They claim that they do not make any money from Paypal charges, so I conclude that they are only using Paypal for the convenience of their potential donors. I have often used Paypal to pass small amounts of money to people, and have done so free of charge. I can't see why this should be any different.

And Paypal, as a high-profile representative of the greedy capitalist global consumerist banking tax-avoiding military-indistrial complex, is hardly likely to be a popular choice with the kind of people who go around dropping money on obscure artistic projects. It's put me off, and I am a card-carrying capitalist!