I’d love to contribute, but I have a hate-on for PayPal. Is there any way I could send a check? Or cash even? There used to be a box outside my house where I could put stuff and it would magically disappear and then reappear inside a similar box outside someone else’s house. The box might still be out there. I haven’t checked in a while…
Seriously, though. This is definitely one application I have no problems paying for- I’m on tenterhooks waiting for v3 to come out! So if there’s a way for me to fund you without it going through those butthelmets* at PayPal, please let me know.
*Apologies to any PayPal butthelmets who might be reading this. My beef is with your company, not you personally.
If he is in the United States he can get a US Postal Service money order, which is treated exactly like a check. Banks still TAKE checks, and I suspect that las has a bank account, so I have no doubt that he can handle them. I suggested a PO Box since I don’t know if las wants to make his home address available to someone he doesn’t know.
Anyway, las hasn’t weighed in on this. Can a potential donor mail you a check or not?
If you have a credit or debit card you can send the money through PayPal with having to open an account with them. Or is that still soiling your virtual hands too much?
If you have a credit or debit card you can send the money through PayPal with having to open an account with them
Did you mean without having to open an account with them?
That should be possible, although I’m not completely sure if this applies in all countries - I’ve had occasional reports of people not being able to do this when trying to buy my software, but I’ve never been able to verify the cause, and paypal have been ‘unresponsive’ to the issue.
(Personal) checks (cheques - in UK spelling…) still work in the UK too. It’s generally easy and straightforward for someone to mail a personal cheque, and for it to be processed if they are in the same country / using the same currency and recommended over putting cash in the mail, but AFAIK all manner of problems ensue for foreign currency. Paypal make all that foreign currency / payment authorisation stuff ‘just work’. The alternatives can be prohibitively complex / expensive for a small business.
Personal checks afaik is used in the US and some other countries but not i northern europe.
When I was a kid, (like 33 years ago), my father used checks but for the last 30 years or so my country have no checking system at all. When I was livin in the US ten years ago and got my first check account and asked the clerk how to use them, she really got a strange face and probably thought I was from a non developed country that still had not started using checks.
Short story, no person under age 40 have checks or know how to use them and our system most probably still accept personal checks at all.
I too would like an option to fund without using PP. Will be closing my account with them in a near future for various reasons and would like to continue my funding of this really great software.
They screwed me once, and I’ll be gosh-diddly-darned if I’ll send a dime through them even as just a CC payment processor. My assumption is that they don’t provide that service for free. So even if I pay w/o registering they’ll still take their cut.
If there’s no other acceptable method of donating, I’ll have to buckle down and learn how to compile from the source code. Which would suck because this is definitely a project I’d like to help fund.
@tillerman35: I completely understand and respect your right not to use paypal for whatever reason, but isn’t it a shame that a very worthwhile project such as ardour loses out, when, realistically, Paypal won’t even notice (and won’t care) that you haven’t used them? It’s admirable to take a principled stance about issues, but in this case I fear that such a principled stance is hurting the project you actually want to support far more than the company which you don’t.
I am not in the US but I will check if it is possible to send a check from here without ending up paying fees that’s more expensive thatn the donation. We don’t have checks but I know that there is something similar available for large payments like when buying a car from some private person. Most banks over here do not even deal with cash anymore, yes really !! There is no US postal service for obvious reasons. I guess Western Union or Forex might be possible to use for such transactions.
@ahellquist: one of the reasons that I use PayPal is that despite the many horror stories online about their customer service and treatment of people’s money, they represent the first attempt I know of to make the flow of relatively small amounts of money between individuals across currency and national boundaries fairly easy and cheap. Companies like Western Union, Forex, and others have been around for decades or longer and have abjectly failed to address this (as have regular banks). PayPal has many flaws, and some of the stories about it are really quite frightening. But I have been a customer of theirs for about 10 years, have only once had a (minor) issue with their handling of a transaction, and most importantly, at this time I know of no credible alternative to the service that they provide. I can’t wait for the day (which may, of course, never come) when there are many alternatives, and I hope that most of them bypass the banking systems that have made inter-currency transfers so expensive, but for now I am a wary, but satisfied, user of PayPal.
I do understand that there are good things regarding PayPal but quite a lot of people are fed up with the fact that PayPal is being used for political pressure to change things the way US gov want it. For instance, refusing donations to different organisations that have done nothing against the law without letting the affected organisation or it’s supporters know why. This is becoming a real issue and PP is offending a lot of people by it’s way to deal with such things. I believe this will continue go downhill and there is a need for more than one way to contribute.
