Site SNAFU

A number of people have contacted me to report that when they've tried to do various things here, like click on the Comments section or just come to the site in the first place, have been redirected to a donation page.

I can't reproduce this glitch from here. If it has happened to you, it's not something I've done or am doing on purpose—it's an unknown bug of some sort within the site software. (It's also a particular glitch I've never seen before, and I thought I'd seen 'em all.)

I've opened a "Help Ticket" with TypePad and we'll try to chase the problem down. In the meantime, sorry for any inconvenience.

'Subscribe' cancellations
This might be a good time to mention that if you've ever signed up to make a small recurring donation—in the "Subscribe" panel in the right-hand sidebar—and then later had your subscription cancelled, that's not me. I would have no reason to cut off anyone who is contributing to the site! It's something PayPal does on its own, spontaneously and apparently randomly, for no reason that anyone can perceive. I've tried several times to chase the problem down with PayPal, and have never gotten anywhere. They're doing it but they can't explain why. There doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it, except maybe try to find an alternate method for accepting donations.

So if that ever happened to you and you're mystified about it, well, me too. Thanks for trying anyway!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Comments

[Eoin Lawless]

FYI I've had my subscription cancelled once when the credit card I used with PayPal expired. But it only happened once and I've changed numbers several times.

[John Krumm]

Funny, I just noticed that my normal Paypal subscription went through twice this month. The universe in chaotic balance...

[John]

Perhaps someone has hacked into Paypal and is diverting the contributions? Just a thought.

[Michael]

So sorry to hear about the SNAFU, Mike, but so cheered to see the acronym. Speaks to me of my admiration for my parents' generation, who lived through WWII, which also gave us Catch 22. Rich and useful ideas, always relevant. But perhaps especially following the British referendum outcome. I can't bring myself to use the common term to designate that, but it was certainly a world class SNAFU, gifted to us by certain politicians who were just following their natural bent. Hope the US avoids same.

[Richard]

From my own experience, if you have subscribed somewhere using Paypal, and your card expires, and the payment is declined, then you have to re-subscribe

[Matt]

I know a ton of people using Patreon for subscription based art/writing. Worth checking out.

[Dave Van de Mark]

Have you checked on the Russians? Their oil sales are down :-)

[Sal Santamaura]

As a retired electrical engineer, I frequently hang my head in shame. This is just another example of people serving technology. It should be the other way around.

[Andrew]

I would definitely "+1" the comment regarding Patreon as an alternative to Paypal donations - seeing it used more and more.

[David Kieltyka]

The provider of a Visa credit card I once used took exception to me maintaining a negative balance on the card—that is, at the end of each billing period they "owed" me money—for a number of consecutive months and began declining all recurring charges. I hadn't intended this…it just worked out that way. When I called them to find out what was going on they were completely forthright about what they'd done and why. I in turn was forthright in cutting their card in half. ;)

[mike plews]

FYI When I click on the "any love for the D500" thread I get sent to a donation site.

[Eric Erickson]

Mike, I just checked my pay pal account and it appears that you took some money out in both May and June, but not July. I assume you take the $6 out on a monthly basis. I keep a few dollars in the account just to pay you,and maybe some small things at B and H. Just wanted to give you a heads up. If you would rather charge by the year, I would be fine with that just let myself or us as a group know. All the best.

[Ed G.]

Like mike plews, clicking on the D500 post or the "comments" link under it gets me a page that has only a "Donate" button and "blog powered by Typepad". URL is http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2016/07/no-love-for-the-d500.html It doesn't happen for any of the other posts I've tried.

Like Matt, I think you should look at Patreon. Patreon really seems to work for a lot of creators.

[Thomas Paul McCann]

Good luck with Paypal and its sibling eBay, Both fully trained in the Ryanair school of customer relations

[Richard Parkin]

Several different problems with your PayPal subscriptions have been raised by you and in the comments but I'd like to raise another one. Although we can see when the money is deducted by PayPal there is no evidence that it reaches you as would usually happen with payments. I have to just trust PayPal to be doing it right and I don't trust them generally and you and the comments have shown they are at least inefficient. I realise it would not be practical to communicate about the payment but perhaps a sign-in system would suffice. Maybe Patreon would solve the problem - it seems they aggregate small payments so that the PayPal fees are paid on the aggregated amount. Patreon would also result in some promotion of your site.

[Richard Parkin]

Oh, and I also think you should put your "subscribe" and "donate" buttons centred beneath each post so that they are more obvious and possibly appear in RSS feeds and so on.

[Richard Parkin]

I've just had the site snafu from this page - clicking on the D500 post gives me a donate button on a blank page. Earlier to day it gave me the D500 post but as html (I think) on a white ground. Other links seem OK.

[Len Salem]

Has anyone tried the Canon 24mm T&S lens on a micro 4/3 body via an adaptor? And if you did, then how did that go? Did it even fit and leave room to work the knobs?
The 24mm T&S Mk1 version is now available secondhand at a relatively reasonable price, since the release of the Mk11 version. The 17mm Canon T&S is still very expensive for my budget.