• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

PayPal abuse

WebSlave

WebSlave

It is what it is, but certainly not what it was.
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Today I received a couple of emails showing that a member here had filed a credit card dispute against two automated PayPal charges for forum sponsorships they have on this site. At no time prior to this was I contacted about any sort of problem or issue. The automated subscriptions can be cancelled at any time by either the member as the payer, or myself as the payee (if requested to do so). I have also had situations where members have double paid because they had forgotten about the automated process of payment, and I refunded those overpayments as soon as I was made aware of it by them.

So this member has now put two black marks on my PayPal account because of the way this was handled. I take this quite seriously, as this sort of thing can get a person's PayPal account blocked and frozen by PayPal. In some cases the account could be terminated completely. Of course this would cause me quite a financial hardship, so I take this sort of thing quite seriously.

In the past I have banned members who have done this sort of thing, and I believe I may have also filed a BOI claim about their actions in one or more instances as well. And I will continue to do so now and in the future. I will contact the member first to see what the problem is and to try to get them to handle this the correct way that doesn't make ME look like some sort of bad guy to PayPal. If that does not happen, then I presume that this was done maliciously and with intent to do harm to me.

Quite honestly, I take this sort of thing as a genuine slap to the face, and I will respond in like kind if it becomes necessary to do so.

So if YOU find yourself with an overpayment of subscription snafu, PLEASE contact me first about it. I will try my best to get it resolved promptly. But if you screw up, and try to screw me over in the process, then clean out your desk here, because you are definitely going to be escorted out of the building.
 
WebSlave said:
Done.

I'll be putting up a BAD GUY thread in the BOI when I find the time.

I think some of you will be surprised at who pulled this crap.
Click to expand...

I think I know who did. I noticed a well know poster had been banned. I will hold my suspicions till I see the BOI thread.
 
Evidently the person I was referring to has been ill and had some issues with PayPal in relation to a credit card. From what I was told, PayPal took it upon themselves to initiate the claim, and the member wasn't even aware of what was going on.

So, beats the heck out of me, but I can't see creating a "bad guy" BOI thread, all things considered. And I lifted the ban, of course.

:shrug01:
 
Since when does paypal take it upon themselves to initiate a claim?
I don't buy that.
 
Visa supposedly took it upon themselves to cancel my debit card, and issue a new one...I found out when I called the bank after a purchase was declined. :shrug01:
 
hhmoore said:
Visa supposedly took it upon themselves to cancel my debit card, and issue a new one...I found out when I called the bank after a purchase was declined. :shrug01:
Click to expand...

Really?
I have never had them do anything like that. I got a phone call once regarding a charge they thought was out of the ordinary (a one cent charge) which turned out to be someone testing the number before using it but I had to cancel the card. They just notified me of something odd. Didn't do anything else on their own.
That's freaky.
 
SPJ said:
Really?
I have never had them do anything like that. I got a phone call once regarding a charge they thought was out of the ordinary (a one cent charge) which turned out to be someone testing the number before using it but I had to cancel the card. They just notified me of something odd. Didn't do anything else on their own.
That's freaky.
Click to expand...

I have had mastercard do something like that .... cancel my card & issue a new one.:ack2:

My bank also blocked/cancelled our debit card one year during Christmas time. Took forever (seemed like it any way) to get it straightened out.

Sometimes, card companies jump the gun when looking out for their customers.
 
I can see a card company doing it but paypal?
When has paypal ever done something proactive? They don't even issue refunds when you get stiffed on a purchase.
 
The reason I am accepting this at face value is because the same thing happened recently from a long term member over on my CornSnakes.com site. The guy didn't know anything at all about PayPal initiating a dispute, and it appeared to be actually an issue between PayPal and his credit card company. So apparently PayPal tries REAL hard to keep from losing any money themselves, and I guess this is the way they handle it.

Anyone who works with PayPal will likely take some lumps from them sooner or later. However there really aren't any feasible alternatives for financial transactions on the net. Burning bridges with PayPal in a snit is really not a wise idea, in my opinion. So you have to treat them like an eccentric rich old uncle who acts irrationally at times, but for the most part is handy to have around.
 
KORBIN5895 said:
Have you ever thought of email money transfers?
Click to expand...

If it's not handled automatically via the coding of vBulletin, then no, that is not an option. I've got enough to do just trying to keep spammers out of here, handle "I forgot my password!" emails, and trying to point people in the right direction when they ask "Why can't I post replies in the classifieds?" :rolleyes:
 
WebSlave said:
If it's not handled automatically via the coding of vBulletin, then no, that is not an option. I've got enough to do just trying to keep spammers out of here, handle "I forgot my password!" emails, and trying to point people in the right direction when they ask "Why can't I post replies in the classifieds?" :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Touche.
 
WebSlave said:
If it's not handled automatically via the coding of vBulletin, then no, that is not an option. I've got enough to do just trying to keep spammers out of here, handle "I forgot my password!" emails, and trying to point people in the right direction when they ask "Why can't I post replies in the classifieds?" :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

lol... at least you arent manually resetting peoples passwords... i seem to forget mine ( i have like, eight?) all the darn time. The only way i can access things most of the time is if the machine im using remembers it for me. :thumbsup::rolleyes:
 
Mooing Tricycle said:
lol... at least you arent manually resetting peoples passwords... i seem to forget mine ( i have like, eight?) all the darn time. The only way i can access things most of the time is if the machine im using remembers it for me. :thumbsup::rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Heck, years ago I was offered a job to do network administration and I turned it down flat. When asked why, I told him that I just did not want to have to deal with having people contact me all day long because they forgot their password or otherwise could not log in. So much for that....

Seriously, I will get emails from people who will say nothing more than, "Hey, I forgot my login name and my password. And my email address has changed. Can you help me?" Yeah, I'm supposed to be psychic and pull that information right out of thin air. Lately I don't even bother to respond to them. Well, once I did. And I just replied back, "Yeah, sure, here you go. Have a nice day." And nothing more. Sorry, I guess I just snapped..... :rofl:
 
I had a similar issue with PayPal where they took it upon themselves to "protect me from potential fraud" by blocking me from sending money to the same person I had been sending money to for weeks with a payment plan. Even when I called they refused to lift the "protective block" and the only way I could send that person money through PayPal was to buy one of those stupid MoneyPak cards, load it and send it that way.

As if that somehow was going to protect me.

Even now they refuse to let me send money to that person. They claim they cannot override it.

I hate PayPal.
 
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