Tried to donate but merchant's paypal is down?

I tried to donate but it lead to a page stating

"This recipient is currently unable to receive money.

Your purchase couldn't be completed
There's a problem with the merchant's PayPal account. Please try again later."

Never had a problem in the past, any info on what's going on?

Hi Kushbud,
Yesterday Paypal informed us that after over 13 years of an amazingly congenial business relationship, they have permanently "limited" our account. We have tried numerous times to find out what their reasons are, but their excuse is that we are a "file sharing network".
They have told us that we need to be "pre-approved" in order to receive donations, but when we ask what that procedure is, they tell us; "we are not currently offering preapproval.".
As you can imagine, this is a very shocking turn of events for us.
We are currently researching alternatives to Paypal, and are close to making a public announcement. We apologize for any difficulties that this may be causing our users, but ask for patience and understanding during this difficult time. Thank you for attempting to support us, it is greatly appreciated.

I also have tried to donate several times over the past couple weeks with no success... Please send out a message through the client when you have settled on an alternative to paypal. I will sign up and donate immediately.
Thanks for a great piece of software that I've used for years... don't know what I'd do without it!

Well that sucks.. You done well using them for 13 years without problem.

I just hope the Paypal alternative doesn't cause any problems. Please do not use flattr... They are hard work for your users, takes ages for the money to get to you as it sends funds monthly & users can not withdraw money they have put in... it claims you can on the website but i had to go though paypal to claim my money back.. I would suggest bitcoins but that is a bit too high value for donations tbh.

Yes, you are correct, it is very not fair! We have already started to set up alternatives:
right now you can use Stripe.com by clicking on the "support soulseek" button in your client. Thank you for your emotional support, it means a lot to us :)

Hi,
I just tried to donate through Stripe and once I entered my CC info and selected the Donate button, the Soulseek page that appears after you donate did not load. So I am not sure if my donation went through or not. Any way to verify it went through? Thanks!

Hi Squid,

Looks like no payment went through under the e-mail you've registered to the forum with (merc...) If that's not the right e-mail, let me know in private and I'll check again. I wonder if it has something to do with the SSL problems we were having in the last couple of days. Those should be fixed now if that's the case.

Thanks! Nir

I tried to fill up the donation form with my CC informations but when I do confirm it goes back to the main page "Please enter a dollar amount that you would like to donate:" and I don't know if I have complete the payment. Apparently it didn't do anything. Can you please verify this issue ? Thanks.

I was able to make the payment using Firefox. Thanks !!

Thanks Layla! What browser were you having the problem with initially?

Still having issues with trying to donate. I filled out the CC form with Stripe and it gave the green checkmark that it took my info (I assume). Then it went to a page that said "Unable to Connect" - "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at ipn.slsknet.org:81."

If it couldn't connect to ipn.slsknet.org then you weren't charged. The green checkmark shows when your credit card is verified, but the charge actually happens on ipn.slsknet.org. Does it say anything about why it can't connect? What happens when you browse http://ipn.slsknet.org:81/ manually?

When I try to connect to http://ipn.slsknet.org:81/ it just says "Connecting to" but does not load the page. Can't recall if the page says anything about why it cannot connect.

Decided to try again to donate but this time when I click the "Donate" button, it will not load the Stripe donation box so am unable to see what the error is when the http://ipn.slsknet.org:81/ page comes up.

Hi Squid,
Which browser are you using?

Firefox.

I tried it with FIrefox, and indeed I got a warning after I filled in the credit card details because our other domain (ipn.slsknet.org) wasn't using HTTPS. I set up another certificate for ipn.slsknet.org and my donation is going through properly. But I don't know why the Stripe popup isn't showing for you in the first place, definitely worrisome. I'll try it again on a Windows/Firefox box.

I finally was able to donate this evening. Everything works fine for me in Firefox now. Hope it does the same for everyone else too.

Very happy to hear! Thank you for the feedback and your support.

roomx's picture

Firefox with Stripe dontation seems to work here, also..

Excellent news! Thank you for the feedback and the support, it means a lot to us :)