Something Wicked This Way Comes Part 3: "CardLauncher"!

[StanKindLee]

You have to be logged into DR to see bug reports. If you ARE logged in, they the system is set up to only show bug reports to the reporter, because mine were #16, #17, & #18, and they are the only reports I can see.

Here is the actual bug report:
"Debit card authorizes more than in account & shipping calculator issues (new)

So I pledge $999 and selected tiers $1, $2 ans $4 and got a total of $1017, so $18 shipping for 7 decks. Oh, I made the pledge using a debit card which doesn't have nearly $1017 in the account. Then I opened another CL account, and pledge $999 and pledged at every tier level for a total of $1015, so $15 shipping for 39 decks and an uncut. It looks like it added NO shipping for the tiers, but did add the $15 special shipping/handling of the one tier. BTW, I used the same debit card to make the pledge on the second CL account."

[montecarlojoe]

I posted this on DR while beta testing was occurring (days ago), and for all I can tell, nobody has even seen it since it is still marked as new and not assigned to be acted on, marked a duplicate, or marked a non-issue.

http://www.deckrefinery.com/tracker.php?p=1&t=17" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;..

I clicked on your link above, and it says there is no information on that ticket.

In the meantime, tried to pledge on Brimstone, and this time, it got the shipping right... but errored out with no useful error message when I clicked continue to confirm the totals.

Again, I've cross-posted this for the sake of making sure it is seen. I'll stop cross posting as soon as it's confirmed which forum is being looked at first.

Allan, The threads are private, so only StanKindLee and CL support can see it. You weren't in that group. I just added you Shermaine and Kai to that group so the link will work for you now.

Stan: I've responded to the ticket, it's not officially official, but it should give you some idea of the things that can and can't be done about the issues you highlighted.

tldr of saud response is this:
-Payment platforms won't be able to tell if there are insufficient funds until they attempt to charge. Even if they had that info, it would be illegal to share it. (Also just because there are insufficient funds now doesnt mean there will be when charged.)
-Shipping tables are (hopefully) fixed.
-payment platforms cannot share info, or use info for anything other than the stated purpose (Data Protection law) therefore detecting the same card being used across different accounts or payment platforms is impossible. It could also be legitimate - people have shared bank accounts.

[rousselle]

Allan, The threads are private, so only StanKindLee and CL support can see it. You weren't in that group. I just added you Shermaine and Kai to that group so the link will work for you now.

Stan: I've responded to the ticket, it's not officially official, but it should give you some idea of the things that can and can't be done about the issues you highlighted.

tldr of saud response is this:
-Payment platforms won't be able to tell if there are insufficient funds until they attempt to charge. Even if they had that info, it would be illegal to share it. (Also just because there are insufficient funds now doesnt mean there will be when charged.)
-Shipping tables are (hopefully) fixed.
-payment platforms cannot share info, or use info for anything other than the stated purpose (Data Protection law) therefore detecting the same card being used across different accounts or payment platforms is impossible. It could also be legitimate - people have shared bank accounts.

After seeing this, I re-attempted to pledge for Brimstone. This time, it worked exactly right. I also tried to modify my pledge for Venexiana to correct the shipping (I have no desire to punish the designer for a mistake by the software), and this time, the shipping worked exactly right ($11).

However, this led to two more interesting issues, which I know have been reported before, but are still issues:

1) I cannot see what the number of available pledge tiers are for this project, so I couldn't see if any Early Birds had opened up (I tried to modify to that, and got an error message that it was sold out, so I guess that's okay), but I *also* couldn't see how many half-bricks were still available, and that would have impacted my decision on whether to stay at 4 or up to 6. (Because, I'm crazy that way.) I stayed at 4, FWIW.

2) After modifying my pledge, I looked at my profile, and saw that I am now pledged for Venexiana twice: once from before (with the $0 shipping) and again for the revision (with the correct shipping). Since I was modifying my pledge, shouldn't the previous version have gone away automatically? Do I have to manually cancel the previous version every time I update my pledge? Won't this mess with the total count of how many people have pledged for a given tier? Inquiring minds want to know.

Happy to see the quick turn around on these issues.

Incidentally, as a data point: I had also pledged for the Candiana deck during my first round of pledging, and it worked just fine (one EB deck). I didn't mention it at the time, because it wasn't a problem, but it occurs to me now that I should have mentioned it, to help with debugging. Sorry about that.

[StanKindLee]

So if I used a CC instead of a debit card, and the card was maxed out, it would still authorize?

Amazon Payments & Paypal will not allow the same account (bank or CC) on multiple user accounts.

[rousselle]

Amazon Payments & Paypal will not allow the same account (bank or CC) on multiple user accounts.

I can't speak to the first part of your post, but regarding Amazon, I do know that they will allow the same credit card on more than one customer account. At least, they have for me in the past, both for a known business credit card account, and also for a joint personal credit card (my ex-wife and I used to have a couple of joint credit cards that had the same number on both cards.)

Edit: although, come to think of it, since the shipping address was the same as the billing address, and both were the same for both user accounts, that may have made a difference. Not sure. And, again, policies may have changed since the last time I did this.

[StanKindLee]

Actually for Amazon, this just may be a business side thing - when setting up the account for receiving KS payments, I thought it barked at me when I used a bank account that was already tied to another Amazon account - maybe it is just bank accounts and not CCs and I wrongly extrapolated things out to CCs too.

[montecarlojoe]

Remember that the T&Cs we never read will often give permission for specific uses of data. I'm sure that the "one bank account per identity" rule and safeguards is in there somewhere

[Coastal Pete]

I lost out on early birds due to errors & the long processing with WePay. I was unable to pledge for The Brimstone deck for some hours. I pledged for a brick of Venexiana but when I viewed the end process, it showed "no decks", so I switched my pledge to the six pack, and it showed up as six in the end process.

I've little chance currently of getting popular early birds, so hopefully Paypal will be added soon, & errors/glitches are ironed out. At least I got pledges on three campaigns!

[nECr0MaNCeD]

I hope this helps. I pledged for a brick of Venexia and added a six pack when I got to the check boxes. I forgot to add the corresponding added amount and got an error. (It might be nice for the future if the total was automatically added the extra cash for added tiers/decks) I clicked back, corrected the amount and when I got to the end everything looked right. Total was $136 and shipping was calculated at $17. SO all in all it looks to have worked for me.

[Mike Ratledge]

Executive Summary / TL;DR - It's working, with a couple of glitches that will be fixed today

Obviously, my intent of it being 110% before we went live got swept under the table, but everything is working - except "Cancel" seems to have gone south - yet again. I don't know what to think about that one, since it was fixed no less than three times during the beta testing over a six week period - more now. Sad to see that one little nit be so darned pernicious that it seems to come back every time something else is fixed or tweaked, but it's there - again. All it really needs to do is the exact same thing I do when I click on the "Void" button on any transaction from the "admin" side. Seems simple enough to me, but I'm not doing the coding.

The other and I'll say only major problem is that - at the last minute - the software vendor 'undisplayed'' the available items once you are pledged and added back a list of items that you have pledged. The other related problem is that even when Modify was fixed not to give the "Sold Out" error if you already had something that was actually sold out, it doesn't show you the available quantity of things that are only available for a certain fixed quantity limit.

Those two work pretty much together, and that's the only code they are working on today. I suspect that it will be working this afternoon, but if not I can assure you that it will be working as it should tomorrow. I can already here the groans in the crowd and someone getting ready to ask why it wasn't fixed before we launched: the fact is that until the day before it worked differently, and it was too late at 2PM yesterday to add another log onto the fire.

All in all a VERY successful first 18 hours and I'll clip the progress as of 8AM onto the bottom of this message.

We need to get out and evangelize, no doubt about that, the timing might not be convenient for everyone, but yesterday having vendor tech support in their offices starting at 8AM was a key to getting everything straight before launch, and we still had a couple of problems with Brimstone and Venexiana Dark.

The reason V Dark kept calculating "Zero" for S&H costs is that the number of decks for each tier was missing. I'm not sure if Lotrek is reading that wrong or what's going on, because Sher had already fixed it one time, and he asked if it was OK to edit the project about 2 and of course I said "sure". I didn't go look behind him and check it tier by tier - which I admit - I should have done. I did hear about the various pledges going through with $0 S&H total, and went looking and found that the "# decks" for every single tier was 0, so you can add all the zeros you want together and you'll still get 0 and weight computed is 95 grams per deck, so shipping nothing in general costs nothing - but it's been fixed, as were the missing "expected delivery" dates for some tiers. I'm not sure why they weren't all there, but they are now.

Just a heads-up for campaign creators: we 'broke' the paradigm too well: if you don't specify "Special Handling" for an item it HAS to have "number of decks" set correctly in order for automated S&H to calculated costs. If it comes up with 0 grams, it's of course going to tell you it costs nothing to ship nothing. There are a number of pledges that were made early - before we even officially opened at 3PM and those even until around 3:45 when I went and manually adjusted V Dark's pledge tiers so that it would calculate correctly need to be fixed, but - not today. That one issue where it doesn't show the quantity left available for limited items is critical to the whole system working because right now, as DragonSoul pointed out, you can't tell if an Early Bird (or any other limited quantity tier) is available. You could on Saturday, but 'fixes' changed that.

We _did_ adjust all S&H prices down, especially for overseas and moderately for Canadian shipping, and at least $1 for every US shipping rate as well. Is it perfect? Of course not. Is it much better than before - yes - much better and some S&H prices are as much as 25% lower than we first used. Those rates will 'learn' from feedback as they actually ship packages, but for now they are very good rates considering that we went with the "everything express shipping" method, the only exception being 3 decks or less in the US, and to "get under" the S&H pricing there, we had to stick with "First Class" - and it - in the infinite wisdom of our U S Postal Service - is only available for up to 13 ounces, which means even 4 decks won't go that way. That's why there is a 'jump' between 3 decks and 4. Pretty much it costs the same to ship 5 or 6 as 4, and the "up to 8" tier is even more economical, but I understand from reviewing many campaigns after the fact that a lot of people pledge for those minimal tiers.

It's going to be an interesting day when they hit the office and see what we did overnight. We need to get the traffic moving and let's just give it a day or two to settle down and get that one major issue resolved. If you think it's frustrating, imagine how I feel. It's been a long strange trip, and we're finally at crunch time. Did I mess up a bit? Of course, I always do - I'm only human and so many people were calling for their decks to be pledged I couldn't see any reason not to open.

In retrospect would I change that decision? Actually - no, I would not. Do I wish that we didn't find things "after the fact"? Of course! That's a silly question, but now that I have time to breath, we'll get that one major hole plugged - today, I expect. The 'cancel' not working is a flaw, but to date I have only had one person actually ask to cancel a pledge, and it was only because they had two showing. In that case, it's never going to process the older one, but I cancelled it anyway, because it affects the numbers for the funded amount. Here's what I saw this morning about 90 minutes ago now:

[Widdee]

I ordered six Vex's, got an e-mail confirmation with $0 shipping. How will this be reconciled? Is my order legit? Will the shipping be tacked on or do I have to attempt to cancel my order and place it again?

[Mike Ratledge]

I ordered six Vex's, got an e-mail confirmation with $0 shipping. How will this be reconciled? Is my order legit? Will the shipping be tacked on or do I have to attempt to cancel my order and place it again?

Somehow - and we still don't know why - the "number of decks" per tier got zero'd out yesterday for backers #58 to #78 for Venexiana Dark. Each person that got a $0 shipping rate needs to "Modify" their pledge and select the same things - and "Continue" and it should compute the amount correctly. I think those were the ones made between about 2:30 and 5PM yesterday.

And - we DID finally hear back from PayPal: they locked our account and said they "Need More Information" again - and asked for the exact same things we already gave them back in the June 12th - June 19th time-period before they originally approved it on June 20th. I'll be working on it here shortly, I'm at my day job for the time being.

[rousselle]

When will the "Cancel" functionality get worked? I see in your earlier post that it's a known issue, but then you say that the other major known issue is the only one getting worked today. When will cancel be back?

[Mike Ratledge]

When will the "Cancel" functionality get worked? I see in your earlier post that it's a known issue, but then you say that the other major known issue is the only one getting worked today. When will cancel be back?

Cancel can be done manually by Sher, Kai or myself. It will work soon, but I'd rather have the display of items and numbers available showing for limited tiers. They have a good idea why it won't work, and it has been fixed three times already during the 6-week process of weeding out problems. Not really certain why it comes up again now. It worked just fine until about ten days ago, and we've been chasing other things in the meantime. It is on the list, just know it's something we can do manually and that makes it a lower priority item for now. I suspect all of the problems will have been dealt with by tomorrow, and they'll go looking for the issue - again.

In most cases, "Modify" replaces cancel, unless you see two (or moe) pledges for the same campaign - in which case it really doesn't matter, but we'll "Void" it just in case. It should never process anything other than the latest pledge for a campaign. Now, that being said - it should never allow more than a single pledge - but I have seen it happen.

[Widdee]

Thanks Mike, got it fixed!

[WillHart CthulhuWho1]

Mike and Everyone During the CardLauncer Grand Opening,

After being there for all of the false-starts, pounding my F5 key into submission, with the hope of getting Early Birds, and to get a chance at being one of the Lucky 30 to win both of the bonus decks, or at-least one of them, plus going in during the Beta testing to try and help with the Bug Hunt, and finally getting a pledge in Sunday for Dark Venexianas, I haven't read anything more about those who actually managed to get the Early Birds, or to win any of the bonus decks.

And in light of all the discussions here lately over prices being charged for decks, I also haven't seen any comments on the $25 per deck price (plus shipping?) for the bonus decks, for those who went to the Deck Refinery site to buy them instead of hoping to win them on CardLauncher.

I really hoped to "win" one of the Number 17 decks, and held off on spending $25 for a deck while I was waiting to find out if I was "in-the-running;" so I assume I have now missed out on a chance to own one of the decks, because of lack of information on bonus decks status.

Am I alone in feeling frustrated over basically being bumped in-and-out of my "place in line" during the "Black Friday" Grand Opening of the several launch attempts of CardLauncher?

I'm looking forward to the Dark Venexiana decks, but I truly wish the Unlimited decks had been released first, before the Limited Edition.

Will Hart
Fullerton, California

[Cbkimble]

Mike and Everyone During the CardLauncer Grand Opening,

After being there for all of the false-starts, pounding my F5 key into submission, with the hope of getting Early Birds, and to get a chance at being one of the Lucky 30 to win both of the bonus decks, or at-least one of them, plus going in during the Beta testing to try and help with the Bug Hunt, and finally getting a pledge in Sunday for Dark Venexianas, I haven't read anything more about those who actually managed to get the Early Birds, or to win any of the bonus decks.

And in light of all the discussions here lately over prices being charged for decks, I also haven't seen any comments on the $25 per deck price (plus shipping?) for the bonus decks, for those who went to the Deck Refinery site to buy them instead of hoping to win them on CardLauncher.

I really hoped to "win" one of the Number 17 decks, and held off on spending $25 for a deck while I was waiting to find out if I was "in-the-running;" so I assume I have now missed out on a chance to own one of the decks, because of lack of information on bonus decks status.

Am I alone in feeling frustrated over basically being bumped in-and-out of my "place in line" during the "Black Friday" Grand Opening of the several launch attempts of CardLauncher?

I'm looking forward to the Dark Venexiana decks, but I truly wish the Unlimited decks had been released first, before the Limited Edition.

Will Hart
Fullerton, California

Are you signed up for the CL newsletter? Mike sent out a few so far and I know the beta tester 5 winners and the first 10 "every 25th" first 30 have been listed. Check out their blog here:

https://www.cardlauncher.com/en/blog" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You can always scroll to the bottom of CL and click on blog as well.

[montecarlojoe]

I'm looking forward to the Dark Venexiana decks, but I truly wish the Unlimited decks had been released first, before the Limited Edition.

This is more a comment for Lotrek, I guess, and how he wants to manage the campaign.

It has a certain logic to it - deal with the known quantities first, drum up the initial interest with the lure of LE, and open yourself to the potentially larger unlimited pledges (and more dangerous to the campaign if canceeled) once you are already passed your goal.

In the end though if you want some of both what's the difference?

[dogbone72]

Oh man, my pledge went missing. i was just about to change my pledge but did not complete the action because something came up then poof...it dissappeared from my account.

[dogbone72]

Just figured out what happened. It seems that if you select modify pledge and did not complete the transaction, it will still remove you from your pledge and leave you with nothing.
At the project page i still have the modify pledge button but in my account it is missing from my supported projects.

I had to select modify again and complete the transaction and the new pledge showed up.

[SuicideKing]

Just figured out what happened. It seems that if you select modify pledge and did not complete the transaction, it will still remove you from your pledge and leave you with nothing.
At the project page i still have the modify pledge button but in my account it is missing from my supported projects.

I had to select modify again and complete the transaction and the new pledge showed up.

Not for me... Changing my pledge, I ended up with 2 pledges.

[Strag]

Just figured out what happened. It seems that if you select modify pledge and did not complete the transaction, it will still remove you from your pledge and leave you with nothing.
At the project page i still have the modify pledge button but in my account it is missing from my supported projects.

I had to select modify again and complete the transaction and the new pledge showed up.

Well at least it looks like there's now a way to cancel. I change mine to $2 and no reward.... then when it took me to credit card page I backed out and looks like I have now cancelled my pledge.

[WillHart CthulhuWho1]

[quote="Are you signed up for the CL newsletter? Mike sent out a few so far and I know the beta tester 5 winners and the first 10 "every 25th" first 30 have been listed. Check out their blog here:

https://www.cardlauncher.com/en/blog" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You can always scroll to the bottom of CL and click on blog as well.

[/quote]

I'm registered on Card Launcher, and I keep getting notices, but I have not received the newsletter that is at the Blog link above; and I've searched high and low on Card Launcher and Deck Refinery, but I can't see any place to sign up for the Newsletter. Where do you sign up?

And where and when can anyone find out if they are out of the running for winning any of the bonus decks, so they will know if they need to purchase them for $25 a piece plus shipping on Deck Refinery?

Will Hart

[Cbkimble]

[quote="WillHart CthulhuWho1"
I'm registered on Card Launcher, and I keep getting notices, but I have not received the newsletter that is at the Blog link above; and I've searched high and low on Card Launcher and Deck Refinery, but I can't see any place to sign up for the Newsletter. Where do you sign up?

And where and when can anyone find out if they are out of the running for winning any of the bonus decks, so they will know if they need to purchase them for $25 a piece plus shipping on Deck Refinery?

Will Hart[/quote]

I'm not sure about that. You can send an email using the contact us link or here:

cardlauncher@gmail.com

That's the best I can help with.

[Mike Ratledge]

Are you signed up for the CL newsletter? Mike sent out a few so far and I know the beta tester 5 winners and the first 10 "every 25th" first 30 have been listed. Check out their blog here:

https://www.cardlauncher.com/en/blog

You can always scroll to the bottom of CL and click on blog as well.

I'm registered on Card Launcher, and I keep getting notices, but I have not received the newsletter that is at the Blog link above; and I've searched high and low on Card Launcher and Deck Refinery, but I can't see any place to sign up for the Newsletter. Where do you sign up?

And where and when can anyone find out if they are out of the running for winning any of the bonus decks, so they will know if they need to purchase them for $25 a piece plus shipping on Deck Refinery?

Will Hart

Will, it's supposed to be automatic when you log into CardLauncher, but I guess I better check again, eh? I know that I did about a week ago, but don't recall trying in the past 5 or 6 days. I'm betting that link isn't working? I'll cross-check the registered user database emails only vice the Newletter mailing list, add anyone that's missing. Sorry - it had always been automatic?

There is an external one with a short link here: http://eepurl.com/0-Zib

Chris ("Strag") stumbled upon a way to cancel a pledge that shouldn't work and likely won't later, but for now you Modify pledge, "Browse Projects" when you see the WePay page. It does still show the "Modify" button on the project page, but otherwise you are starting over at that point. Don't ask me why, and don't try it with a limited tier you want back, there's no way to be certain it will be there. I don't know why it works - it just does.

[Mike Ratledge]

(moved from "Venexiana Dark)

I think the card deck saturation thingie should be noted again. From the time I started following card decks (first on KS), the active project number is 3, nearly 4 times what it was less than a year ago, plus their are other crowd funding sites in the mix now too. My close to poverty artist income (read: not starving but little extras) allow me to collect a deck a month or so and maybe a couple if the price is right. LEs are out since single decks & sets can quickly blow most of my annual budget for such things. And I have sooooo many fine choices when deciding what September's pick will be.

I totally agree and understand that's the same perspective that a lot of the potential customers have, which is again why we decided to go with a very small number of projects, both to keep them from stepping on each others toes and to keep the backers from burnout. I'd love to see there be four perfect (whatever that might be, everybody's viewpoint is different, so I suspect that it's an elusive target) decks there, but - that's never going to happen. I understand Strag's lament about there being too much in a way, but to be honest the Can-eh-diana deck was funded on day one, so we're really only talking about three decks, and I think that's a very reasonable number.

I wish I had the income KS does to through at advertising, even though they don't advertise much at all, frankly. The point that they don't need to certainly isn't lost on me. We focused on a few key groups that influence other card collecting groups, especially 52+Joker which is itself a double-edged sword: many of them are dedicated collectors - of vintage and antique decks, and that's not what we're offering. We did the "profundia.com" things, we did the "betasite" things, we looked at others but none were especially 'fit' for the playing card deck collection community, and frankly - very few are.

The other side of the coin is that I could throw thousands of dollars at the problem and still not truly cover all the bases. Frankly, I don't think it is possible to do so. I have a few tricks still on the back burners that I'm bringing up front to a boil, but those are going to take a little while to get out in front of the backers. We have certain major advantages, not being tied to the six countries (or seven?) that KS allows people to fund from, in fact there are only seven that we can't allow for common sense reasons (civil wars in two) or legal - Department of State prohibitions on doing business in five. The fact is that those markets - all of which are overseas are tough to get a handle on, because they just don't interact as much as we're used to here. I'd LOVE to see this turn into a "we can do things you can't" situation, because that's where we started and that's where we are right now. We don't restrict contests either, and that's something that almost everyone asked us to change, and we did. We don't prohibit people from funding charitable decks, which is another thing that hopefully will be a major advantage, but - it's not something that we hard-core collectors really care much about, frankly - unless we happen to be "on that team", and I'm certain that some of us are. Funding in US$ for all projects, taking production and fulfillment nightmares are key to the success of the "little guys", but offering a "Guaranteed Rewards Delivery" is truly of little use for someone that's been doing it for what seems like ages and already has a very dedicated following. Everything is a balance, and we're still getting our bearings. I never expected it to be something that just rolled onto the scene and started a fire, it's a walk after you crawl, run once you have walked situation.

Do I wish certain things were done differently? Of course, you always do. Do I think I made a perfect solution? Certainly not - I think I did what I was told by various groups that needed to be different specifically for playing card decks. Are we 'stuck' on that market, no - we're seriously looking at games and technology, but we need to concentrate on the market we know best first, before we divide our efforts - and that's not happening until at least the new year. Could I use a boost from every single one of the people here that really wanted something better? Of course - I can't pay for things like that, I have to depend a lot on people spreadING the word. Our list grew from a few hundred to 1300 in one jump about a week after we opened. Obviously, people want something better, and we came through that with everything intact.

Now, separate S&H is again a double-edged sword. We unbundled that from the basic rewards tiers. We caught hell for exposing the fact that it's been going on for years and nobody except the people overseas that were really taking it on the chin because of it really saw it until now, and the unbundling or "unhiding' as I have said was intentional, but it certainly wasn't intended to cause a firestorm, it was intended to make things more transparent. In doing so we cut ourselves, though - odd that we took the beating for what people have been doing for years, frankly - simply because we refuse to do so. People in Europe (and elsewhere overseas) shouldn't be subsidizing delivery for everybody else, and they shouldn't be paying outrageous prices for their own deliveries either. There are a lot of fine lines in business that just don't become apparent until you cross them. I'd love to say it's all going to be OK, but we really need evangelists and people that are a "Passionate About Playing Cards" as the group is to spread the word. I hate to repeat myself any more, I've done plenty already, so I'll leave it there.

[Mike Ratledge]

We are trying to work things out with paypal, however they are extremely slow to respond, hopefully we will get it up asap.

I don't really understand this. PayPal has a lot of companies that integrate with them. Unless you're a big company, they don't really offer personalized support -- isnt' most of the support is done through developer forums? Also, why in the world did you hire a developer to create a commerce site without experience integrating with payment companies?

/bama

Well, you would think after looking at seven vendors that were close enough to what we needed (and wanted) that it would be obvious that I the last two were the ones that primarily focused on their support for PayPal. These companies both have dedicated PayPal API group that does nothing but integrate with PayPal, and the software is fully capable of processing PayPal transactions, with the one that ended up with the best proposal and support having "WePay" as pretty much an alternative. PayPal is the problem here, they say one thing on their developer support forums, and then go off on another tangent when you start asking questions about why they are so inconsistent. This is something that should have never happened, they approved the application (just like they have for dozens of other clients of the software vendor) now over two months ago (I kept saying 6 weeks, two more have passed at this point). It was - I think - almost curious that they decided they needed "more information" the very day before we went live, even though they have consistently been unable to present a united front between their marketing and API approval groups. PayPal is an enigma, they tell you one thing on the developer side, and then you get over to the software approval side and claim the opposite, and I'm not exaggerating. There is no unified view nor perspective.

As I have already noted, I supplied them yet another copy - the third - of some things they wanted in their "Need more information" request, and it's become apparent that even within the approval division/group they just aren't consistent at all, to the point of exasperation on my part, because all of this was WAY behind us at the point when they decided to pull the rug out from under our already approved API use. Frustrating? Beyond belief, frankly. They act like you can read their minds because even though they claim to have notified me about things like that, I can assure you they didn't phone much less even send an e-mail. I guess you're supposed to learn these things by osmosis or getting their "550001" error - which for lack of a better wording means "you can't do that yet".

[SpecialK]

Just a quick note Mike: I think the focus on WePay really overshadowed the whole thing. You focused so much on WePay as a provider versus just saying, "We're trying to get PayPal/Amazon Payments, but in the meantime we will be able to accept credit card payments."

I doubt there would have been as much focus on what WePay is. I know it was pure transparency, but sometimes simple is better. If someone asked who the CC vendor would be, you could easily say WePay, but touting it as a funding mechanism shifts the focus. Simple answer: you can pledge via CC or bank account. Just my opinion obviously, but I think you could apply this to everything that's going on.

[Mike Ratledge]

Just a quick note Mike: I think the focus on WePay really overshadowed the whole thing. You focused so much on WePay as a provider versus just saying, "We're trying to get PayPal/Amazon Payments, but in the meantime we will be able to accept credit card payments."

I doubt there would have been as much focus on what WePay is. I know it was pure transparency, but sometimes simple is better. If someone asked who the CC vendor would be, you could easily say WePay, but touting it as a funding mechanism shifts the focus. Simple answer: you can pledge via CC or bank account. Just my opinion obviously, but I think you could apply this to everything that's going on.

Frankly, I couldn't agree more. The point Strag was trying to make (amongst others) was that if you use their guest feature, you have to reenter your information every time.

We take debit and credit cards as well as direct debits without having to have an account.

[Cbkimble]

What happens if after 35 days, this is completely hypothetical, can-eh-diana is the only deck that funds and it's mainly due to it having only a $1000 funding goal. They're almost 2 weeks in and decks that should be funded and working on stretch goal aren't even halfway funded. Doesn't even appear that anything significant has happened since, technically, the third relaunch.

I went to the venexiana dark campaign, clicked the FB link and I found I was sharing a link for CL. I was trying to push a specific project, not the website.