How to become a paying member of FaunaClassifieds (revised edition)

[WebSlave]

Since changing over to the new XenForo platform, obviously a lot of things have changed. Paying for the elevated levels of membership is just one of the changes. So I will detail how to accomplish that task right here in this thread.

First off, find your member login name in the upper right hand corner of the page while on this site.

Click on your member login name.

That will present you with a small page showing several optional clickable links. One of which will be "Account Upgrades".

Click on that option.

That will then take you to a page showing all of the options available to upgrade your account on FaunaClassifieds. This includes the Paid Memberships as well as various forum sponsorships that are available. Click on the button that says "Purchase". As of the current time, only PayPal is being accepted as payment. I can accept money orders or checks, but only for the 2 upper level memberships of $100 or $250 per year. I will be looking into adding other optional payment vehicles that this XenForo platform may offer, but that will not happen immediately.

Clicking on any one of the Purchase buttons will take you to your external PayPal account, where you can log in with PayPal and make payment.

Please ignore that section that shows $1,000,000.00 per day. At the time there was no facility to be able to segregate these options into logical categories so I had to fudge things to make it work. But if anyone REALLY wants to pay me that much money per day for nothing, well, no argument out of me. Have at it.

 

[Burzum999]

Is it possible for You to accept any other form of payment (exempli gratia, Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, Apple Pay, Square) 'outside' the site and then be able to link it to my account? I want to contribute, but I do not have PayPal. Thank You.

 

[WebSlave]

Well, the problem I have is that it appears that all of these sites REQUIRE that I give them information that nearly all security oriented sources tell me NOT to give to anyone online in order to protect myself from identity theft. Things like social security number, date of birth, checking account routing numbers, etc., etc.

So the question that comes to my mind is, are there really enough people being inhibited by my NOT having those alternative payment vehicles to be worth the risk of my giving out that kind of information to sites that have the potential of being hacked and that information possibly causing me damage?

So a show of hands, please, of those people who would fit into this category.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

I do not have PayPal anymore despite 20 years of using it.

I have Zelle set up so that I only have to give people my email address for them to have enough information in order to send me funds.

 

[Burzum999]

Well, the problem I have is that it appears that all of these sites REQUIRE that I give them information that nearly all security oriented sources tell me NOT to give to anyone online in order to protect myself from identity theft. Things like social security number, date of birth, checking account routing numbers, etc., etc.

So the question that comes to my mind is, are there really enough people being inhibited by my NOT having those alternative payment vehicles to be worth the risk of my giving out that kind of information to sites that have the potential of being hacked and that information possibly causing me damage?

So a show of hands, please, of those people who would fit into this category.

While I understand Your concern to some minor degree, I overall have to heartily contend Your statement.

Id est; in the ≈22 years I had PayPal—I just lost it on 17 October 2024, the story is in a Post Scriptum below—I had more fraud attempts and other issues on that Transaction Processing Operating System (TPOS) than all of the aforementioned TPOSs combined in the <6 years I have had them all (Venmo, maybe a little longer).

To corroborate my claim, other people, such as a good Client who just had ≈$2,300 between multiple transactions taken from his checking account via PayPal in December 2024 (he just got reimbursed after a ≈1-month investigation), have had major issues with PayPal. There are reasons companies like Fascination Herp / Erik Keyster & Kristin Bennett and Good Guy Reptile Guy / Domenic Curcio gave up PayPal years ago.

Honesty to the gods, and knock on wood / fingers crossed / not to jinx it, I, personally, have never had an issue with any other TPOS—only with PayPal. Exempli gratia; just this or the other week, >3 months after losing my PayPal account, I have been receiving PayPal Push Notifications—correct: Not just emails, and yes, I still have the app on my iPhone 14—to pay a McAfee Antivirus bill! For one, I haven’t had antivirus software in years (they create most of the viruses after all…), and Norton was the last one that I had. Secondly, I, again, haven’t had a PayPal account since 17 October 2024. That’s how glitchy, infected and corrupt PayPal is! Again, not just emails, but Push Notifications for this false bill are coming through! (Also, this isn’t the first time such a false McAfee bill has come through.)

Aside from a few Clients having a hiccup with Cash App, I cannot recall anyone ever having issues with TPOSs other than PayPal neither. And frankly, having been <6 years with those other TPOSs, I cannot recall any of them requiring such sensitive information, at least not Social Security Numbers (?), or no more sensitive of information than PayPal would have required.

The reason I came to accept ‘every TPOS known to man’ (PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, Cash App, Square, Apple Pay, Facebook Pay) was for versatility and accommodation in regard to my Clients, to accept whichever they have or whichever their preference is, for the sake of business. And I strongly encourage You to do the same. I understand You appear indifferent to keeping Fauna Classifieds (FC) going, and You have essentially put us, Your users, to the test to see how much we value and appreciate what You have put into the site for decades, via contributing, and I want to show my appreciation for all of the business FC has generated for me over the years, in hopes that FC will be around for years, but my hands are tied with You only accepting PayPal. I humbly and respectfully request that You reconsider accepting other TPOSs as methods of accepting contributions.

Thank You,

Timothy Gould / Obscure Gems Reptiles, LLC

Post Scriptum. Here is the story I said I’d share of how I lost my PayPal account on 17 October 2024 after ≈22 years.

I presumably lost it due to downloading a VPN just two (2) days prior on the 15th and occasionally forgot to turn it off when accessing TPOSs, raising a red flag to these systems. Lo and behold, PayPal dropped me like a fly without any investigation or reaching out to me, while every other TPOS kept me. The only other hiccup was Apple Pay initially prohibiting a Client from paying me, giving them some fraud warning, but once I turned off the VPN, they were able to pay me although they still received this warning from Apple Pay:

Fraud Suspected

This request has been flagged as suspicious and may be a scam. If you send money, it will not be refunded and transactions cannot be reversed.

Send Anyway Don't Send

(Screenshot upon request, sent from my Client of course.)

I had called and actually got ahold of someone at PayPal in an attempt to confirm or receive a more definitive answer as to why they permanently disabled me, but to no avail. The “back office” was supposed to call or email me back within 3-5 business days with more information, but they never did, and I gave up. Only one (1) Client since then has only had PayPal, so he wound up paying cash (I am an animal and pet transporter and travel all around the nation monthly, so Cash On Delivery [COD] is common and perfectly acceptable for established Clients, but not for New [id est, First-Time] Clients).

 

[syk0607]

Do you mind sharing how much is it to maintain this website? I'm a developer and may be able to help.

 

[Burzum999]

In response to Your latest update on July 14…

“Well excuse me”, too, and All of Us who don’t have PayPal. I wrote You pretty extensively above, months ago, about accepting alternative payment options. You’re worried about security and giving too much information, but now, You’re not getting paid enough and are upset about it.

My comments months ago spoke on behalf of dozens if not hundreds of businesses in the hobby. Erik Keyster & Kristin Bennett / Fascination Herp, Sean & Bonnie Trimbach / Best Exotics LLC, Domenic Curcio / Good Guy Reptile Family, and so many others all lost their PayPal accounts years ago. PayPal has a very strict policy against selling animals, and You’re basically asking everyone to utilize a transaction processing operating system (TPOS) that they have lost or are at risk of losing.

I, again, lost my PayPal account on 17 October 2024, presumably due to downloading a VPN just two (2) days prior and forgetting to disable it every time I accessed my TPOSs, but maybe it was for selling the occasional animal.

Alas, since my last comments here, I have also lost Venmo, Cash App and Square, unbeknownst to me why:

PayPal on 17 October 2024 (>16 years)
Venmo on 20 May 2025 (<5.5 years)
Cash App on 06 June 2025 (>4.5 years)
Square on 14 June 2025 (9 years)

After years of loyalty and never having an issue, they dropped me and won’t tell me why, so I refuse to apologize. It is a BS situation that cannot be helped, rendering my hands tied.

If You want to accept Zelle, Apple Pay or Facebook Pay, I will be glad to pay for the top membership right now—I am sure this speaks for Many of Us.

 

[Martin Nowak]

I would join if Zelle is accepted.
Frankly, I have nearly stopped posting very much due to restrictions on non-members' ability to delete or edit their ads.
I have totally stopped posting on the info threads (especially Herps in the News) same reason. I looked that the total "reads" of my informational posts on these threads and such exceed 150k over the last 24 months. Any (ANY) business would like contact reads of such magnitude because of the halo marketing effect.

 

[WebSlave]

Point taken. I did briefly look into this, but seemed like more headaches than I was willing to subject myself to, at least at that time. Maybe I am in a different frame of mind now and will readdress it. Just a note, a brief examination of the three most recent payment options may have their own problems associated with implementing them here.

Zelle - "a convenient way to send money to friends, family, and others you trust". Well, that could be problematic. That gives me heartburn in that it implies that this would not be a safe platform to use with people I do not actually know, much less trust completely.

Apple Pay - limited to Apple devices only for use. Which means I would STILL have android users complaining about being discriminated against.

Facebook Pay - doesn't Facebook have strict rules about using their environment for commercially trading in live animals?

See what I mean? The devil is ALWAYS in the details.

 

[WebSlave]

For the record, the three other payment options that are included in the base coding of this new format I am using are the following:

• Stripe
• 2CheckOut
• BrainTree

How many people actually use one or more of the above?

 

[bcr229]

Stripe is just a merchant processor for businesses so customers can pay with a credit card. If you've ever bought something online and used a shopping cart to check out you probably have used it without knowing it. My invoicing system has it as an option.

 

[WebSlave]

Oh, and I just thought about something concerning the Apple Pay option. Would that mean that I would need to purchase an Apple device to even set up an account to receive payments?

 

[WebSlave]

Well, was bound to happen. I am changing the price structure of the paid memberships and sponsorships. Going from a yearly payment plan to a month by month. Mostly because PayPal takes a chunk, and they chunk is bigger the smaller the amount, so the total YEARLY price will definitely be higher. Why am I doing this? Well honestly, because I don't want to be committed to keeping this site afloat for any longer than a month after the last contribution was made. And just as honestly, I haven't raised prices on anything since the inception of this site, despite the raging inflation that has taken place all along.

So my off the cuff calculations of the new prices are as follows:

• Contributor - $10/month
• Benfactor - $20/month
• Endowment - $30/month
• Sponsor - $15/month

I believe the banner ads are already run by the month, but I will check on that as well.

 

[WebSlave]

Well, likely no one has read the above, or gives a crap anyway. Must have been some sort of glitch with Google Adsense on the 3rd and 4th of this month. Revenue is double now what it was those 2 days. No explanation why. Not that this is saying much. Still just barely enough to pay the server lease.

Some days I think God is just toying with me.