David Tuller crowdfund: Trial By Error: Reporting on ME/CFS and Related Controversies

Ah, i am also on Firefox but noticed it worked on chrome.
So its not my ad blocker, its a website bug

 

$19,280, 20% raised.

 

I will no longer use cards to pay for anything online after my card got defrauded 3 times within 5 years a few years ago as a result of online card transactions, despite keeping my computer locked down with tons of anti-malware and security stuff and being very careful. I won't ask someone else to pay with a card on my behalf because of any chance of what happened to me happening to them. I looked into prepaid cards but they seem hideously complicated and expensive to obtain, at least in the UK - if anyone UK-based has any first-hand advice about prepaid cards (nobody I know uses them), I'd be very pleased to hear it!

 

I've had to cancel one of my cards due to this, despite being told twice, in consecutive months, that the fraudulent transaction would be blocked in future, that it wouldn't happen again, every month since before christmas a fraudulent charge of £39.99 has appeared on the card. The simplest solution was to cancel the card.

I haven't used prepaid cards, or to be more precise I haven't obtained any myself, for several years. It used to be easy to get them (just order online) but a PITA to credit them. My understanding is that you can now just buy them preloaded from supermarkets and some 'corner shops'. ID may be needed. Once the credit runs out just buy another.

 

Thanks for that! Will see if our local Sainsburys does them. And am so sorry to hear you had to deal with fraudulent card transactions too, it is a total PITA. (In my case it was hundreds of pounds and left me overdrawn, so not going to risk putting myself in that position again!)

 

I'm very sorry to hear about this and it sucks having this happen 3 times but many (perhaps most) people already buy online from amazon or other companies so your not increasing their risk if they already use their card online. That said it would have to be someone you trust to donate the money to David and if a tax receipt is given it would end up in their name and not yours.
Also my bank replaces cards if lost for no charge, you have ME cognitive issues i assume, if you accidentally lost your card on your perhaps rare outdoor trips i assume your bank would replace it?

@dave30th is there some sort of workaround available? Does Berkeley have a PayPal account and could accept then transfer to your crowdfund? Since they are taking a percentage perhaps they can figure this out?

 

I've just had a look about online, Sainsburys don't seem to do them, preferring people to buy a sainsburys gift card. At least I cab find no mention of them doing them anywhere.

Asda and Tescos seem to, or at least a couple of years ago. Martins (newsagents), WHSmiths also do them, or did a couple of years ago (2016). The post office still does some form of 'voucher' which can be used online, anywhere apparently, in place of a credit card but I am uncertain of this as it appears to be a one hit thing from what I've read (i.e. if you had a £100 code and use it the whole £100 gets transfered - damned odd way of doing things so I 'hope' my understanding is flawed)

The system is much more like I remember it than how I've seen it described recently.

Paysafe vouchers is a term that keeps coming up.

https://www.paysafecard.com/en-gb/

(I have not used these, and am not recommending them, it's just what people seem to be using, mostly)

ETA - It appears that paysafe is the company that asda and whsmiths are using for these cards.

https://www.paysafecard.com/en-gb/buy/retailers/

It appears much simpler than other companies, walk up, give them money (multiples of £25 from the looks of it), they give you a card to a preset value. The only downsides seems to be that if you still have credit on the card after 13 months they start charging you £3 a month (so don't lol), a single transaction limit of £750, and they won't let you credit more than £40,000 a year lol. I am currently unsure about transaction fees - it may be £2 a transaction, it may be nothing, it depends on how they view a donation from the Uk to the US.

 

I buy frequently on Amazon and that's a different scenario - you don't give your card details out online every time you make a purchase, you give them once when you create your account with them and they store it for future transactions. The only exception is when your card expires and then you have to give them your new number. Same deal with eBay/PayPal, which I also use frequently. I've never been defrauded via either of those sites, the frauds I experienced were when I made one-off purchases using my card on other sites. I've never lost my card, and always used cash to pay for shopping; the problems I had were definitely due to online transactions. Hence three times bitten, a zillion times shy!

ETA:

Oh nooo, was going to go to Sainsburys and ask about it. We have an Asda nearby too, maybe we'll ask there. Thanks very much for the extra info!

ETA2:

Thanks! That was actually the main search result I looked at earlier that made it seem complicated and expensive, but maybe worth another read.

 

Hopefully useful link for those in the UK looking for pre-paid cards - https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/prepaid-cards/

 

It should be the same for Berkeley, most websites don't receive or store your card details, when you pay the information goes to your credit card company who pays Berkeley's account. Perhaps @dave30th can look into this?

 

My card is a debit card, I don't use a credit card. Might vary with what country you're in or what bank you're with, but my bank account got overdrawn by over a hundred pounds when my debit card got defrauded, not just what was in the account. And I got charged for going overdrawn, although thankfully the bank waived that when they understood that I'd been defrauded!

ETA:

Ah, thanks, sounds worth looking into!

 

What I can't see is how they are making money from it.

Plastic cards, paying retailers a fee, etc. all cost money. It's difficult to believe they are doing it just for the interest on funds on cards and the odd few quid that gets unused and forgotten about when cards expire.

So....I just looked up reviews, customer reviews, not the 'customer' ones on sites recommending them. Fairly small numbers but it seems when things go wrong they go wrong, badly, money's gone, or at least accessible for ever. But then I also have several tens of other reviews saying they are fine.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pay...me..69i57j0.4792j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Given the relatively small number of negative reviews, and that people without a problem don't tend to leave reviews for things like this they are probably okay, but it seems they do completely muck things up occasionally, and have effectively no customer service to resolve things.

Do some googling and I'd suggest that if you go with them then don't get a high value card, just in case.

 

OMG, that first Google result, Trustpilot: 8% 'Excellent', 88% 'Bad', aaiiieeee. I'm too poor to get a high value card, so no worries there - all I wanted was a card with a few bucks just for the donation to Berkeley. OK am giving up on this for now, my brain hurts, LOL.

 

You could try and get a paypal access card if you have a paypal account. Not a credit card, it takes funds from your paypal balance, and now appears to be able to pull directly from your primary paypal funding source if the paypal balance is insufficient or zero.

Works just like any access credit card on the internet.

https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/accesscard

 

I seem to remember that it's normally much quicker to the first 50% than it is getting to 100%.

Hoping it all goes well!

 

It has already slowed down! yes, it will go through ups and downs and at some points stall. Then something will trigger something and it will pick up. I will not likely have another 24 hours like the first.

 

I dunno bout that, last time you got a 10K boost near the end

 

Hey thanks, will look into that!

 

I use Firefox, and if I click 'International' I get the world map, where I can find numbers of donors per country.

Pleased to see that there are 70 from the UK! (and only 21 from the USA!)

 

But Antarctica is not even available, penguins with gold doubloons can't donate at all