Focus Mag has found the error... Apology attached

[Richard M. Coda]

I wish to apologize to David Spivak and Focus Mag. He just explained to me that there seems to be a glitch in PayPal, where a name, address and CC number do NOT have to match in order for a transaction to clear. He was very apologetic in his response to me personally. He could not understand how this happened, and neither can I.

The issue has been taken care of. I had to take precautions to protect myself, my family and my business, as I'm sure any of you would have done, especially after receiving a call from the bank late at night telling you that your business account is wiped out.

[BrianShaw]

If I were you I would have left out the second paragaraph. Posting on photo forums is not a reasonable way of "protecting myself, my family, and my business".

[Brandon Draper]

I have always worried about that & PayPal, and never fully trusted them.

[darr]

If my business account went overdrawn I would scramble as well, I just would not do it over the forum. I would definitely wonder how the heck PayPal gets away with charging your credit account with purchases from someone other than yourself or with confusing your info with someone else. :mad: I would definitely be concerned about that unless the retailer gave them your info by mistake. It does not make sense to me. I take credit cards as payment and I would have to be working in my sleep to mix up account information. Definitely not someone I would want to do business with ever again. So are you getting reimbursed for all the bank charges, embarrassment and your time?

[Greg Lockrey]

I have always worried about that & PayPal, and never fully trusted them.

Me neither! I have my own horror story about PayPal.

[John Voss]

It sure would be helpful if this thread had some elucidation. I haven't a clue to the origin of the problem. The OP has also been posted on apug, and is utterly opaque to me there as well, and I try to keep fairly current on apug and this forum's interesting...or even nearly interesting...threads.

Focus Magazine has recently been absent at Barnes and Noble and Borders, and now seems to be a seasonal/quarterly by virtue of an announcement on it's website. I think Mr. Spivac is persona non grata here so he hasn't offered any clarification. I would sooner buy a thousand acre spread on Mars than subscribe to Focus, not because it isn't a good magazine, but because it has become entirely unreliable and unforthcoming about its' evolving status.

[Jim Graves]

Actually, Focus Magazine just posted on this forum a couple of days ago:

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=33763&page=2

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

Actually, Focus Magazine just posted on this forum a couple of days ago:

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=33763&page=2

Any further detailed information beyond what is posted, I'd suggest anyone to sign up for the free newsletter available on our website. Those who have - stay informed. As soon as all relevant financial transactions have been resolved with Robert, I will consider this matter entirely closed and his apology accepted.

As a side note: I have been using PayPal for 4 years, since we started doing business. We've NEVER had this problem. I can lose my credit card today and anyone can buy a huge $10,000 flat screen TV from a website that accepts PayPal and charge it to my account! So paypal's allowance to discard vital information such as the card holder's name and address is somewhat shocking to me and will cause me to re-think our method of credit card solutions in the long term. Any such action would take a bit of time to transition through and several thousands of dollars to have a new way of accepting credit cards online... perhaps some kind of website intergreation. If anyone here has the knowledge of how to program such a thing into your website, I would love to discuss it with you.