IPS Fax Number

[Cycadcenter]

I have been trying to renew my membership for a few weeks now and have just discovered the following:

On the IPS website the Fax Number is listed as follows:

By Fax. Fax your credit card (VISA or MASTERCARD) with the expiration date to: US 513.607.6468. Please write your credit card number clearly and please include either the membership number or the full name and address of the person who is renewing. You may also download and fax or mail the renewal form. Click here for the form.

But on the form it is listed as:

The International Palm Society

9300 Sandstone Street

Austin, TX 78737

USA

Fax: 512.607.6468

Which is correct as I don't like faxing my credit card # to incorrect fax numbers.

Also there should be a provision on the website to renew membership after it has expired and not send by snailmail or fax.

Almost every society I belong to accepts PayPal as a form of payment now.

Thanks

Bruce Ironmonger

[bgl]

Bruce,

I am alerting Liz to your post and I am sure she will respond as soon as it's convenient. Not sure how often she checks her emails over the weekend, but she is usually very prompt.

Bo-Göran

[Cycadcenter]

Bruce,

I am alerting Liz to your post and I am sure she will respond as soon as it's convenient. Not sure how often she checks her emails over the weekend, but she is usually very prompt.

Bo-Göran

It's been a month and haven't heard anything, maybe I missed something.

Bruce

[mike in kurtistown]

Bruce,

You can renew online, giving your credit card details, of course. You need your membership ID number. If you can't find it, the system lets you enter your email address, and you will receive an email with your ID number.

I keep running into this attitude about paypal -- if you aren't using it, you are hopelessly out of sync with the modern world, like still typing letters on a Smith-Corona. Or using a telephone land line instead of paging messages to Facebook from an Ipod. I like to evaluate systems to see what they actually offer instead of plunging blindly into things because they are trendy. At present, my take on paypal is that it is roundabout way of using one's credit card, but paying an extra middleman.

That said, IPS does have a paypal account. I have to download a record of the balance every quarter for our accountant. It is reserved, however, for biennial registration payments, and it is only a month or two before that will start. We wanted another online gateway like the one used for membership payments, but the gateway company wouldn't let us have a second one, even for a separate bank account. Now, it appears that paypal will not let us have a second account, either.

[Cycadcenter]

Thanks Mike,

The problem is now my membership has expired and you CANNOT renew online, you must print out the form and send it by snail mail or fax it in. Surely there must be a way to renew expired membership on line as you can join the IPS online no problems. At least the Fax number has been corrected now, wonder how may members you lost with that error.

Thanks

Bruce

[Lizs]

The fax number of IPS renewals is 512 607 6468. There was an error on the website that has been corrected. I also want to urge anyone who is having problems or issues paying their renewal fees to please call me at 512 301 2744 or 512 466 3210. I generally can be reached at one or both these numbers just about any time of the day

Liz Stansfeld

Webmaster and membership renewal

[Dypsisdean]

I keep running into this attitude about paypal -- if you aren't using it, you are hopelessly out of sync with the modern world, like still typing letters on a Smith-Corona. Or using a telephone land line instead of paging messages to Facebook from an Ipod. I like to evaluate systems to see what they actually offer instead of plunging blindly into things because they are trendy. At present, my take on paypal is that it is roundabout way of using one's credit card, but paying an extra middleman.

Mike,

I have been using PayPal for over 10 years. It has been in existence for 13. It is now handling close to 15% of all e-commerce in the U.S and growing. It is also especially convenient for international payments. It is far from new or trendy.

It has little to do with a credit card. People/Companies pay via funds from their PayPal/bank account. And they receive payments into their PayPal/bank account. Money is easily transferred between a PayPal account and your bank account. As an additional convenient service, it will enable incoming credit card payments for those who do not wish to set up accounts with the major Credit Card Companies.

Making a payment to someone setup with a PayPal account takes as little as 15 seconds, and can easily be done from your phone. It sure beats feeding in credit card info each time you wish to make an online payment, and something the IPS should be using to pay bills as well as receive payments online - it would also facilitate making easy donations to the IPS through PalmTalk with one of their "Donation Buttons."

[Cycadcenter]

I keep running into this attitude about paypal -- if you aren't using it, you are hopelessly out of sync with the modern world, like still typing letters on a Smith-Corona. Or using a telephone land line instead of paging messages to Facebook from an Ipod. I like to evaluate systems to see what they actually offer instead of plunging blindly into things because they are trendy. At present, my take on paypal is that it is roundabout way of using one's credit card, but paying an extra middleman.

Mike,

I have been using PayPal for over 10 years. It has been in existence for 13. It is now handling close to 15% of all e-commerce in the U.S and growing. It is also especially convenient for international payments. It is far from new or trendy.

It has little to do with a credit card. People/Companies pay via funds from their PayPal/bank account. And they receive payments into their PayPal/bank account. Money is easily transferred between a PayPal account and your bank account. As an additional convenient service, it will enable incoming credit card payments for those who do not wish to set up accounts with the major Credit Card Companies.

Making a payment to someone setup with a PayPal account takes as little as 15 seconds, and can easily be done from your phone. It sure beats feeding in credit card info each time you wish to make an online payment, and something the IPS should be using to pay bills as well as receive payments online - it would also facilitate making easy donations to the IPS through PalmTalk with one of their "Donation Buttons."

Have to agree with you 110% Dean, PayPay is so simple and safe. Well over half of my transactions are now completed through PayPal, infact on mail orders I insist that they are completed this way due to the ease of printing shipping labels and tracking.

Regarding the IPS website and payment option, personally I find it very poor to have to FAX my credit card information..........especially when the Fax number was incorrect. Also if you join via the website it appears that there is ZERO ZIP NADA security on credit card transactions as there are no listing as an e-commerce secure website.

Please IPS treat this seriously as I for one WILL NOT expose my credit card on a non secure webite.

Thanks

Bruce

[mike in kurtistown]

Liz will have to answer questions about the security of the IPS website. That's out of my area of expertise.

I have been trying to make some points about paypal, and the only response is "it's so easy". So it may be, and I haven't used it personally to make or receive payments. But let me make some of the points again.

First, every funds transfer is from some kind of account (bank account, paypal account, or credit card account) to another account, even if it's in the form of a debit (credit card account). The IPS does have a paypal account for the biennial registration. The biennial registration chairman in 2010 made regular transfers to the IPS biennial bank account at BofA, and I regularly obtain statement printouts from paypal. IPS also has an online gateway for membership and book payments that operates in a similar way and can take payments from peoples' credit cards. The monies are routed directly to our general bank account, and the process only takes seconds.

Overseas members in 2010 insisted on making their biennial payments through the gateway rather than paypal, because it is very difficult, for reasons that I do not understand, to make paypal payments from outside of USA borders. I have been hearing this for years.

There's a lot I don't know about how paypal operates, and information seems to be hard to come by. I visited their website several years ago, and all it had was a signup sheet. If anyone can provide a summary of the mechanics of what can be done and how to do it, I would be grateful for it. I especially would like to know what kind of information one needs to make payments to a vendor, say Allen Press. Their bank account number?? Their paypal ID of some kind??

And don't worry about donations. The board agreed to accept paypal donations from the website as suggested by Toby, It just need to be engineered by Liz.

[Cycadcenter]

Mike,

The dark ages have ended, time to refresh the IPS mode of doing business.

Can't for the life of me see why the IPS can't have a secure ecommerce site like everyone else.

The IPS is put to shame by the Palm Society of Southern California

http://www.palmssc.org/membership/membership.htm

Bruce

[mike in kurtistown]

According to Liz, the IPS site is fully secure with encryption, which is required by our gateway and shopping cart vendors.

[Dypsisdean]

According to Liz, the IPS site is fully secure with encryption, which is required by our gateway and shopping cart vendors.

Mike,

- A secure connecton should be seen by the URL displaying a https:// instead of the standard http://

- Everything you would ever care to know about PayPal can be found on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal

[Lizs]

I want to put the record straight on the issues regarding security on the International Palm Society website. All financial pages on the site are protected with an SSL certificate and are encryted and secure. This is not only normal policy when accepting credit cards online but is also a requirement of the credit card processing company. We could not accept credit card numbers online WITHOUT this encryption in place.

The IPS also processes credit card transactions for members who fax, telephone or otherwise provide us with their credit card information. These transactions are processed through a secure portal and records of these credit card numbers are then destroyed. We do not keep a record or database of memberss' credit card numbers.

FYI - the URL of pages that are secure start with https//... rather than http//...This is an easy way of determining whether a page is secure or not.

I see there is also discussion on PayPal versus other payment options. PayPal is an easy-to-use system, but has limitations, particularly for International transactions.In addition, PayPal is not able to provide the "back end" support required by the IPS and does not accurately record transactions back to the database (an ongoing issue that PayPal has failed to fully address). This latter drawback means that PayPal transactions must be manually added to the membership database. This results in delays and is of course subject to human error.

Liz Stansfeld

Webmaster