Monthly Archives: September 2022

hybrid elephant, rants, zelle

oyoyoyoyoyOYOYOY!!! 😒 (part 2, continued)

so, i emailed woocommerce tech support. they told me that they didn’t see a zelle-compatible gateway installed. i told them that i was using “Direct Bank Transfer (BACS)”, according to THEIR instructions, which were given to me by an employee of THEIR company.

then they informed me that their plugin DOESN’T SUPPORT ZELLE…⁈

so i took them through the process of enabling zelle ON THEIR PLUGIN, and enabling zelle at my bank, and THEN they tell me… oh, if you do it that way, YOUR CUSTOMER has to go through this EXTRA STEP to send you the payment, and until THEY do this extra step, their order will be placed “on hold”.

which is NOT going to work on my web site: incense customers are impatient and flighty. if they have to go through this extra step to make a payment, they’re going to abandon their shopping cart, not make a payment, and not get any incense.

which is “BAD FOR BUSINESS™” 😒

i wish this little piece of information could have been conveyed to me A MONTH AGO, when i had three separate email conversations and a zoom call with a woocommerce representative, named bradley gilkerson, who ASSURED ME that it was fully compatible with zelle (false), and that all my customers would have to do was enter their credit card information (false) and it would instaneously (false) be transferred to my zelle account (false) without extra fees for credit card processing (false). 🤬

220909 how many things can you find wrong with this email?
220909 how many things can you find wrong with this email?

so, basically, i have wasted a month, and $200, getting a plugin that won’t work, installed and set up, only to discover that it won’t work, and now i have to UNINSTALL the plugin that won’t work, and find a new, different plugin that WILL work… and (hopefully) do it all before stripe decides that they’re going to cancel my account… AGAIN!! 🤬

frustration, hybrid elephant, stripe sucks, zelle

oyoyoyoyoyOYOY! 😒

will it ever end?

i got zelle enabled and installed on my web site. i tried to test it, by purchasing incense: entering my information, and checking out. i got a notification from the web site that i had received a new order. i got a notification from the web site that my order had been received, but it had been placed “on hold, while we confirm that payment was received”… and then…

nothing.

i waited 24 hours.

still nothing.

no indication from the bank that either a withddrawal or a deposit had been made, no indication from the bank that either of those things were ABOUT TO happen, and, when i logged in to the web site, there was the order, in “on hold” status.

i contacted woocommerce, maker of the plugin i am using, but it is probably going to take them a while to get back to me, because all of my interactions with them have to go over email.

i actually called the bank, talked to their tech support which is (allegedly) the place to talk about zelle, and went through the entire process of creating a new order, with them watching the back end zelle interface. i got two notifications from the web site, but the bank was unaware that any transaction had taken place at all.

so the bank put in a ticket with zelle, to see if they can figure out what is going on. 🙄

THEN i got email back from woocommerce, which informed me that the woocommerce payments plugin wasn’t completely set up on my site, and that no account had been created. i checked, and the only part of the plugin that “wasn’t installed” was the part where i create an account — WITH STRIPE — so that i can use the plugin to process credit cards… but that’s why i’m using the plugin to begin with: to GET AWAY FROM STRIPE… and besides all that, i am not interested in stripe, i’m interested in zelle, which DOESN’T require that i sign up with stripe… AND i already HAVE a stripe account, and a stripe payment gateway plugin that is completely separate from woocommerce and zelle, and (for the moment, anyway) it appears to be working fine.

i gave them (some of) the information they were asking about, and fudged the rest, but it appears that they lay off work around 4:30 or so, so i anticipate not hearing anything from woocommerce until AT LEAST tomorrow. 🙄

hybrid elephant, incense, mushrooms, stripe sucks

Ƭȟȉȿ Ⱥǹƌ Țħăţ

today i talked, face-to-face, with an actual person at BECU, who told me that “zelle for businesses” is “not a thing”, and that there is ONLY zelle for personal accounts.

however, in order to open a business account at BECU, i had to open a personal account… which has never been used for anything, because i do business through my business account… but there’s no rule that says that personal accounts CAN’T be used for businesses, especially if the only transactions in that personal account are ones that ONLY apply to a business, so i activated my personal account for zelle, and made it so that any money paid to that account automatically gets transferred to my business account, where it belongs.

thus ends the stripe fiasco. all i gotta do now is switch payment gateways on my web site, and i’m quit of stripe.

and good riddance to bad rubbish! 😠

on the other paw, i got two incense orders today, one of which was for 5 boxes of incense, shipped to houston, texas, and one which was for 4 boxes of incense, shipped to ashanti, ghana. the one to houston was addressed to a person named “Nwogbo”, and the one to ashanti went to someone named “Agbogah”… and the one to ashanti was for $5.00 worth of incense! i REALLY DO NOT understand people from remote countries outside of the united states, who order relatively small quantities of incense that i’m POSITIVE are sold locally, and then pay more for shipping than they did for incense. it happens regularly enough that i’ve stopped asking why, and just sending it out, but it’s really mystifying to me.

oh, and on an entirely different subject all together, i have stumbled upon a RELIABLE, LONG-TERM source for mushrooms 🍄 on internet (of all places)… i got the first batch through a twitter acquaintance (which was REALLY weird), and the second batch i got “direct from the manufacturer” — a place called Matrix Genetix — which was an experience so far beyond “really weird” that it defies description… i got an ounce of APEs, which are a strain of cubensis. not my all-time favourite, but, at this point, any port in a storm…

220923 1oz illegal mushrooms
spam, the mallet

YAAAAAA!!!! 😈

i got home from my circus class this afternoon, and discovered approximately 1000 IDENTICAL spam messages in my spam recepticle. over the course of the next half an hour or so, i deleted approximately 500 more IDENTICAL spam messages…

so i decided to do some research. what i came up with is that EVERY ONE of those spam messages had been sent from an IP address in the range of 37.32.0.0/16, in iran.

so i blocked it.

and NO MORE SPAM from that range of IP addresses. not a single one! 👍

THIS is why i do it! 😈

pictures

surreal 2

220918 this is what i wanted
220918 this is what i wanted

this is what i wanted with #3, yesterday, but i didn’t get the offset right, because i wasn’t working with an extended background, once i extended it, i was able to get the offset where i wanted it.

it looks better the bigger it is… it might be cool as a heroic-size portrait… 😉

pictures

surreal

220917 surreal 1
220917 surreal 1
220917 surreal 2
220917 surreal 2
220919 surreal 3
220919 surreal 3

1 and 2 are straight from apple messaging phone. 3 is from the gimp, and is a combination of 2 and the reverse of 2. moe thinks they’re creepy. i disagree.

rants, stripe sucks

i thought it was the end, but i was wrong. 🤬

this morning, i learned that, despite the fact that my bank allows the use of zelle, it only allows personal accounts to use it. “zelle for businesses” is, apparently, a “pay-for” application that isn’t used by the bank, so i can’t switch to using zelle, like i thought i was going to be able to do for the past couple of days.

argh! 😒

while i was freaking out about that, i got an email from stripe (at 6:30 in the morning), which said:

Unfortunately, following an additional review of your account, we’re still unable to support your business as it falls under our restricted businesses. Specifically, we are unable to accept payments for herbal incense , as mentioned on our restricted businesses list (https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses).

HERBAL INCENSE????

first they said it was tobacco products, then they said it was items “which mimic illegal drugs”, THEN they said it was because i “accept payments for aggregation or grouping of funds” (which i STILL don’t know what they’re talking about, and now i don’t think they know, either), and now it’s because i carry “herbal incense”????

W?

T??

F???

need i mention that there is NO restriction on businesses which carry “herbal incense” on their list of restricted businesses… 😠

so i sent them a response, saying that.

45 minutes later, i got this message from stripe:

In order to provide you assistance with this inquiry, my colleagues and I will be reviewing this case, so we can provide you with the proper information about the verification of your company and the reason for the restrictions of this type of business and once we have a response to this concern we will reach out back to you.

which was followed, half an hour later, by this:

I just wanted to let you know that we have successfully completed our review of your account, and your payouts have been re-enabled.We may be asking for more information down the line, but for now you’re all set.

W??

T????

F?????? 😵

so, if i parse this correctly, on 220823, they said they were going to cancel my account. then, on 220829, they said they weren’t going to cancel my account. then, on 220901 they said they were going to cancel my account for a different reason, and on 220908 they said they were going to cancel my account for yet another different reason, which they emphasised on 220909. then, this morning, (220912) they said they were going to cancel my account for another FURTHER different reason, and then they changed their minds, and said they WEREN’T going to cancel my account. 😵🤬

it’s a really good thing i kept detailed records of this fiasco, because i wouldn’t be able to keep it straight, otherwise. 😠

needless to say, as soon as i can locate another payment gateway that ISN’T stripe, i’ll be switching hybrid elephant to that, because, as it is, this is totally ridiculous! 🤬

miscellaneous

miscellaneous

today i learned about the composer carl orff, who lived from 1895 to 1982. i’m somewhat embarrassed to say that i thought he was a 19th century composer, and i was shocked to discover that his lifetime and mine overlapped, despite the fact that i have actually played the piece he’s most famous for, which is the oratorio known as “Carmina Burana”… he was still alive when i played it, too. 😉 but he is also the originator of what has come to be called the Orff Schulwerk method of music education, which is, primarily, intended for children, but can be extrapolated very easily to encompass special needs students, and (significantly for me) older people who have some movement difficulty. there is the Evergreen Chapter of the American Orff Schulwerk Association which i have written to, in order to get more information, because this inspires me in a way that i haven’t been inspired in a long time.

also, i was looking at the wiktionary article for litmus, where i learned that the etymology comes from the protogermanic cognate “blee” which means “colour” or “hue”… at first i thought it might have been a typo for “bleed”, but no, it’s “blee“…

so, this has been a week from hell, but i’m still capable of finding things that aren’t hell, that interest me. 🤔

stripe sucks

stripe — the end 🤬

this morning, i got the following email:

220909 - Stripe - The End
220909 – Stripe – The End

the only mention of “Stripe Connect” (which is an API, and not an actual, finished product) on the “restricted businesses list” is a restriction on “C2C services outside of Stripe Connect” in japan.

as far as i can tell, “C2C” can mean “Customer To Customer”, or “Consumer To Consumer, or “Corporation To Corporation”, or “Cradle To Career”, or Coast To Coast”, or “Coups 2 Cross” (a band), or “Kabushiki-gaisha C2C” (a japanese animation studio), or… there’s no telling which one they mean… and i no longer have the patience to wait for their explanation.

my business is not in japan.

i don’t carry any products that fall into the category of “accepting payments for aggregation or grouping of funds”.

and, on top of all that, stripe monetizes white-supremacist and neo-nazi web sites, which i have known about ever since i switched to them, but was never motivated enough to do anything about it.

they gave me until next tuesday to be off their services.

stripe sucks

stripe, again, still! 🤬

i got a message from stripe, this morning. it said:

Unfortunately, following an additional review of your account for Hybrid Elephant, we’re still unable to support your business as it falls under one of our restricted businesses categories. Specifically, we are unable to accept payments for tobacco products, as mentioned on our restricted businesses list.

however, they can’t won’t tell me which products are causing the issue! 🤬

i have stooped to contacting them on twitter, to see if i can get new eyes on the problem, but, at this point, i’m not going to hold my breath that there will be a change in the outcome.

the only thing i can hope for, at this point, is that i can delay their cancelling my account until i can get a new credit card gateway installed and working… and, at this point, it doesn’t look good. 🤬

ETA:

We’re unable to reveal the exact reasons as to why your account presents a high risk, for security reasons, but we do thorough reviews of every account before coming to this difficult decision.

so they WON’T tell me what products i carry that increase their risk, they’ll just shut me down and tell me to go somewhere else. 🤬

#StripeSucks!!!

stripe sucks

stripe, again… 😒

as expected, stripe didn’t pull their head out of their collective ass today.

I apologize for the delay and inconvenience this may have caused. I’ll have this shared with my team for further review, and should be back in touch with you as soon as we’re done.Feel free to get in touch with us in the meantime if there’s anything else we can help with.

maybe tomorrow… 😒 #StripeSucks

stripe sucks

stripe, still… 🙄

so, friday was the day that stripe said it was going to cancel my account. if the existence of my account is any indication, they have NOT done that… yet…

however, the last thing any stripe employee said to me was “I was able to check that your website products are not related to tobacco products or services. However, I cannot confirm anything for you at this time until a result of this validation is obtained.” so, i’m still not sure they WON’T cancel my account for, alledgedly, selling “tobacco products”. 😒

and, of course, this is a “holiday” (“labour day” was created to distract americans from “may day”, which is actually the holiday for labourers), which means that the earliest i expect to hear about this most recent “validation” is tomorrow… but i’m not going to hold my breath that it’s going to happen at all… in fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if i NEVER hear about it from stripe, especially because, as soon as i can settle on which one it’s going to be, i’m going to change credit card gateways to one that actually does their job, and doesn’t make unsubstantiated judgements about things that do not concern them. 🤬

and, thanks to my recent mushroom experience, i STILL give less of a fuck about these things, than i did prior to taking mushrooms, in spite of the fact that i am still very anxious and depressed. mushrooms are good for you (or, at least, for me)! 😉👍👍

stripe, stripe sucks

🤬🤬🤬STRIPE!!🤬🤬🤬

stripe! 🙄

on 220823, i received a notice from stripe, saying that they were going to cancel my account, because i carried “tobacco products”.

i submitted a request for review on 220823. they said that they would get back to me within 48 hours, to evaluate my request.

on 220826 (72 hours later, 24 hours BEYOND their self-specified limit), i still hadn’t heard anything, so i got in contact with them. they said “the review is taking too long as expected” (🙄) and told me to be patient.

on 220828 (120 hours BEYOND their self-specified limit 😒), i got a notice that said “We have successfully completed our review, and you are welcome to continue processing payments with Stripe.”

on 220829, i got a notice that said “We’re contacting you to let you know that we’ve successfully completed a review of your account based on the information you recently provided to us.” and my account status went from “in review” to “good to go”.

on 220901, i got a notice that said “Unfortunately, following an additional review of your account for Hybrid Elephant, we’re still unable to support your business as it falls under one of our restricted businesses categories. Specifically, we are unable to accept payments for tobacco products…”

i STILL don’t carry ANY “tobacco products”, and since 220826, i have REMOVED AND DELETED any products i carry which MIGHT BE MISTAKEN FOR “tobacco products”. 😒

so, i contacted their helpdesk.

the first person i spoke to said that there was no need to worry, that my account was “good to go”, and not to be concerned. when i asked them if they could explain to me why i received that notice this morning, they shunted me off to a member of their “specialised team”, who wouldn’t answer my question about why i received the notification this morning, but ALSO wouldn’t confirm that my account is “good to go”, either. he said ” I would like to make sure that I’ll provide you with the accurate information so please bear with me while we complete our review to your account.”

so, my stripe account has now gone through THREE (or four) reviews in the past two weeks, and they STILL can’t determine whether or not i carry “restricted products” (even though i clearly DO NOT).

once this whole thing gets settled, permanently, i AM going to switch credit card processors, because STRIPE SUCKS!!! 🤬🤬🤬

and that’s NOT TO MENTION the fact that stripe monetises white-supremacists and nazis, and i have been looking for a reason to dump them anyway. 🤬