I have a website where I offer graphics that I make, for free download to those who want to use them in their graphic creations. The site costs a fair amount to keep up between hosting and the purchasing of new content in order for me to keep adding new graphics.
So as a result rather than charge membership fees or subscriptions, I have a "Pay Pal Donation" button on my website so that those who do use my website can contribute something to the cause if they want to, in order to help me defray the costs associated with keeping my site online because it was becoming a financial burden, especially since I've been off work.
However, I've never gotten a single donation through my website over all of the years that I've had it up
Last month I told a friend of mine that due to my finances that I was going to have to close my site, so if she wanted anything from it now was the time to download it. She loves my site, probably even more than I do, and she was more upset about it closing than I was. So for Christmas she wanted to pay for 6 months of hosting for me so that my site stayed online not only for me as my artistic outlet, but for all of those people who have come to rely on my site for graphics that have few terms attached to their use.
It was only when she tried to send me money through my site that I found out that there was something wrong with the donations button access. The button took you to Pay Pal, but for some reason the person couldn't login to make a donation. I didn't know that because there was no way for me to check that myself because you can't send money to yourself using Pay Pal.
So that donation button hasn't been working. So who knows how many people tried it and couldn't get it to work and just moved on
I had tried getting help from Pay Pal through email, but aside from the one response where I was told to reverse some characters in the code (a code that PayPal generated!!!), their other responses to me came back as "it should be working!" LMAO Yet it clearly wasn't.
Today I called them! OMG! Talk about a lesson in frustration. When you call they have an automated voice recognition feature where they ask you a bunch of questions and you have to speak to answer them. IE: Type of Pay Pal account; last 4 digits of your bank account tied to the Pay Pal account; Telephone number. At the point where it asked for my phone number it kept looping back to the very beginning again to the "type of Pay Pal account". Finally after 3 times of this nonsense, I was taken to a main menu and a whole bunch more automated voice stuff asking me to pick from various menus etc.
I got so frustrated that I hung up and called back and this time didn't say a blasted thing. Usually when that happens you are directed to a customer service person. But NOOOOOO! Not in the case of Pay Pal! For over 5 minutes I sat here listening to an automated voice tell me a variety of options and ask for my response. When I didn't say anything, it tried again only this time it asked me to press a number. Then when I didn't press a number, it started to talk to me about suspicious Pay Pal emails and once that was done it asked me to press a button if I received one of those emails. When I didn't press a button I was then asked if I had opened a suspicious email and clicked on a link, and then asked to press a button!!
Finally I got put through to someone who was dumb as a door knob! He wasn't in tech support and was a go between between me and tech support having to put me on hold each time. And each time I asked him something he laughed and replied "for me to do that I would have to put you on hold and go check with tech support" GRRRRR! I told him to do whatever he needed to do in order to get this fixed, even if it meant putting me on hold! What a yo-yo!
I started to suspect that the problem might be the fact that the Pay Pal page was opening up inside a frame on my website instead of it's own separate window. Plus someone who was trying to make a donation to my site and encountering problems was nice enough to contact me to let me know that it still wasn't working and suggested to me that it might be better to have the Pay Pal page open up in a separate window so that the person could see the Pay Pal link in the address bar and know it wasn't a hack or scam.
I tried to do that but couldn't because I didn't see a link in the code that PayPal generated for the button, so I had no idea of the address for the Pay Pal page being opened. So I asked the guy to please tell me the address that the Pay Pal button on my site is linked to so that I could make that window open up outside of my website. It took me about 10 minutes of rephrasing my question in order to get him to understand that I wanted the address of the page that the button was taking me to! He said he didn't know that information and would have to ask tech support!
I asked to speak directly to tech support since he obviously wasn't in a position to help me. He said that they don't allow customers to talk directly to tech support!!
After 40 minutes of this garbage I was told that Pay Pal doesn't support Frames Pages, which is what my website is. I had contacted tech support by email several times about this issue and no one ever mentioned that there was a problem with Pay Pal and my frames page.
He told me that I would have to redo my website and take out the frames!!! LMAO! Like that is going to happen! My website is 1.28 gigs in size, consists of more than 500 pages, has over 23,000 files and almost 1000 folders! There is no way that I'm redesigning my web for a Pay Pal button! I told him that all I need is the address that the button is linked to, so that I could add some code to my site to make the Pay Pal window open up outside of my website instead of inside a frame.
Finally he comes back after having put me on hold for about the 7th time and has me go to back to Pay Pal's site and regenerate yet another new button. Apparently their "email" area is actually the link that the person is taken to when they click the "donate button" on my website.
So once I had that address, I created a "new window" code and the Pay Pal site page opened up into a separate window. And I didn't even have to redo my website *wink*
I stayed on the phone until someone at PayPal tried it and verified to me that it was working.
Of course this wasn't a toll free number. It was regular long distance. I'm afraid to open that telephone bill when it comes. I do have a long distance plan, but I rarely call long distance and never during "prime" business hours like today, and I certainly never for 40 minutes!!
PayPal is a convenient way to make payments, but trying to get any kind of customer support is next to impossible.
So as a result rather than charge membership fees or subscriptions, I have a "Pay Pal Donation" button on my website so that those who do use my website can contribute something to the cause if they want to, in order to help me defray the costs associated with keeping my site online because it was becoming a financial burden, especially since I've been off work.
However, I've never gotten a single donation through my website over all of the years that I've had it up
It was only when she tried to send me money through my site that I found out that there was something wrong with the donations button access. The button took you to Pay Pal, but for some reason the person couldn't login to make a donation. I didn't know that because there was no way for me to check that myself because you can't send money to yourself using Pay Pal.
So that donation button hasn't been working. So who knows how many people tried it and couldn't get it to work and just moved on
I had tried getting help from Pay Pal through email, but aside from the one response where I was told to reverse some characters in the code (a code that PayPal generated!!!), their other responses to me came back as "it should be working!" LMAO Yet it clearly wasn't.
Today I called them! OMG! Talk about a lesson in frustration. When you call they have an automated voice recognition feature where they ask you a bunch of questions and you have to speak to answer them. IE: Type of Pay Pal account; last 4 digits of your bank account tied to the Pay Pal account; Telephone number. At the point where it asked for my phone number it kept looping back to the very beginning again to the "type of Pay Pal account". Finally after 3 times of this nonsense, I was taken to a main menu and a whole bunch more automated voice stuff asking me to pick from various menus etc.
I got so frustrated that I hung up and called back and this time didn't say a blasted thing. Usually when that happens you are directed to a customer service person. But NOOOOOO! Not in the case of Pay Pal! For over 5 minutes I sat here listening to an automated voice tell me a variety of options and ask for my response. When I didn't say anything, it tried again only this time it asked me to press a number. Then when I didn't press a number, it started to talk to me about suspicious Pay Pal emails and once that was done it asked me to press a button if I received one of those emails. When I didn't press a button I was then asked if I had opened a suspicious email and clicked on a link, and then asked to press a button!!
Finally I got put through to someone who was dumb as a door knob! He wasn't in tech support and was a go between between me and tech support having to put me on hold each time. And each time I asked him something he laughed and replied "for me to do that I would have to put you on hold and go check with tech support" GRRRRR! I told him to do whatever he needed to do in order to get this fixed, even if it meant putting me on hold! What a yo-yo!
I started to suspect that the problem might be the fact that the Pay Pal page was opening up inside a frame on my website instead of it's own separate window. Plus someone who was trying to make a donation to my site and encountering problems was nice enough to contact me to let me know that it still wasn't working and suggested to me that it might be better to have the Pay Pal page open up in a separate window so that the person could see the Pay Pal link in the address bar and know it wasn't a hack or scam.
I tried to do that but couldn't because I didn't see a link in the code that PayPal generated for the button, so I had no idea of the address for the Pay Pal page being opened. So I asked the guy to please tell me the address that the Pay Pal button on my site is linked to so that I could make that window open up outside of my website. It took me about 10 minutes of rephrasing my question in order to get him to understand that I wanted the address of the page that the button was taking me to! He said he didn't know that information and would have to ask tech support!
I asked to speak directly to tech support since he obviously wasn't in a position to help me. He said that they don't allow customers to talk directly to tech support!!
After 40 minutes of this garbage I was told that Pay Pal doesn't support Frames Pages, which is what my website is. I had contacted tech support by email several times about this issue and no one ever mentioned that there was a problem with Pay Pal and my frames page.
He told me that I would have to redo my website and take out the frames!!! LMAO! Like that is going to happen! My website is 1.28 gigs in size, consists of more than 500 pages, has over 23,000 files and almost 1000 folders! There is no way that I'm redesigning my web for a Pay Pal button! I told him that all I need is the address that the button is linked to, so that I could add some code to my site to make the Pay Pal window open up outside of my website instead of inside a frame.
Finally he comes back after having put me on hold for about the 7th time and has me go to back to Pay Pal's site and regenerate yet another new button. Apparently their "email" area is actually the link that the person is taken to when they click the "donate button" on my website.
So once I had that address, I created a "new window" code and the Pay Pal site page opened up into a separate window. And I didn't even have to redo my website *wink*
I stayed on the phone until someone at PayPal tried it and verified to me that it was working.
Of course this wasn't a toll free number. It was regular long distance. I'm afraid to open that telephone bill when it comes. I do have a long distance plan, but I rarely call long distance and never during "prime" business hours like today, and I certainly never for 40 minutes!!
PayPal is a convenient way to make payments, but trying to get any kind of customer support is next to impossible.
