This has probably been discussed but are they serious? I have to fill out a form, send in a photo copy of my CCard from both sides then I can buy something from their site? Or I can go through Pay Pal and wait up to 24 hrs? I want to buy over $200 worth of stuff but damn if I'm going to do this. Does anyone know why they do this besides the obvious paranoia reasons? Sorry if this offends anyone but this seems real weird.

It is PayPal that has the CC copy I think .. never had any of that from BBay ...

If you dont want to make a copy of your credit card call their phone number that they provide , thats the fastest way to become verified and it only takes about 3 minutes:-)

heyas; no, ghost, it's bbay. for security, they want photocopies of both sides of your credit card, for you to be 'verified.' for paypal, you have to enter your credit card info so they (paypal) can verify your (billing) address. if you dont, then you are an unverified paypal user, and they recommend people hold your orders for 3 days til payment goes through. some people can refuse to accept payments from unverified paypal users -- bbay also chooses this option, so if you use paypal but dont have a credit card, you can forget that, too. at least they still take money orders, if not personal checks. it DOES seem they try to make it very difficult for anybody to buy anything. their reasoning is that when they started, they suffered from a lot of credit card fraud and chargebacks. why anybody would pick on a tiny company like them with that is beyond me. but there you have it. personally (and not to go off on a personal rant, but...) i think bbay and other download-item vendors ought to go to the credit card companies and say, 'look, stupid; you can't process chargebacks on our stuff, there's no way for people to return our merchandise.' if its any consolation, they processed my money order payment very quickly as soon as it arrived. but since you think 24 hours is a long time to wait for something, i guess that's no consolation. :)

3-D Arena will be using pay pal, but we won't be holding off. After all paypal verifies the account and verifies the order. If I pay via paypal for an auction item, I get credited asap. But then I've used paypal for over a year at SilverMage Concepts (until the recent renovations which aren't finished yet). Right now paypal is the only for us to take cc orders because I'm still looking into merchant accouts... I suppose they could have used Kagi, which downloads asap as well.....

I called Sherry to be verified whe I joined the BBay club a few months ago. It took only a few minutes and she was one of the nicest people I have ever spoken with. Bbay is worth any wait in my opinion.

Well they have some nice stuff but plenty of people do business on the net without this kind of hoop jumping. I wouldn't even mind if they had a no return policy. Besides, how's getting a copy of a ccard going to prevent charge backs or falsly returned items? I just don't understand how that kind of info would help them stop this abuse. If their stuff is getting stolen that badly then maybe they're in the wrong business.

My experience at BBay has been outstanding. Everything worked as I expected. The people there seem to care, so think of them as people, not as a computer, and try to work with them. - JimX

The first time I ordered from BBay I was just as po'd about the whole thing. I called and talked to Sherry and she told me that online venders get charged back immediately if the purchaser contests the charge. They'd sold merchandise to someone using a stolen credit card (a lot of money) and I guess if a vendor has over a certain amount of charge backs within a certain time frame they lose their vendor acccount. Sherry said they almost went under and had the software they're now using written specifically for them.

I guess I'm dense, but if I want to pay with pay pal... why do I have to supply bbay my cc info? I already did that with paypal. I tried to get a membership at bbay last night and I got tossed all over the place, only thing I could see was they wanted a cc. Then I tried to buy something else and came up with the same thing. Idiot proof... gotta make it idiot proof for folks like me. The easier you make it the better sales will be, you will catch the impulse buyer like me.

I don't know what they're doing now. I haven't ordered anything from there since I got SMV and some of Jim Burton's things. Why don't you email them and see if it's not some kind of mistake? No use going round 15 times if you don't have to, but believe me, I can relate s

I can appreciate your frustration, Mason. When I first browsed the BBay site, I saw a lot of things I wanted, but did not want to go through what I regarded as a "hassle." Finally, one day I saw something that I had to get, and decided to bite the bullet and see just how bad it could possibly be. (I opted to go through PayPal at that point.) I have never been more pleasantly surprised in my life. I had my items within one hour -- and that has been the rule ever since. I have never waited longer, and I order things at extremely odd hours (since I am in Europe). I wonder sometimes if Sherry even sleeps. At one point, when my email account inexplicably went down, and Sherry could not reach me, she telephoned my home to see if there was an alternate email address she could use for order fulfillment. And she also turned out to be about the kindest, most considerate person I have ever had the pleasure to do business with. The same goes for Bill Bay. Now I am verified with BBay, and get my orders fulfilled automatically, just like here at Renderosity. The difference is -- BBAY HAS QUALITY CONTROL. I have never ever gotten anything from them that I had the slightest quibble with. They stand behind their products, and in my opionion are the finest vendor any 3D artist could wish for. Give them a try, Mason. I don't think you will regret it. :-) P.S. My real problem is Vista Internet Productions...who offer outstanding models, but refuse to deliver products via any other method than the postal service. Since I am in Europe, and would have to pay large shipping charges PLUS customs charges...I have had to pass up many, many items that I really want to buy!!

I think I should clarify what I mean by "large" shipping charges. Actually, for Europe, they are only about $10. BUT $10 shipping on a $15 model -- I would much rather give the money to the artist. I would gladly pay a higher price for the model, if I could avoid the long wait, and the hassle with customs. (Not to mention the risk of damaged goods -- this has happened to me too.)

I sell at BBay, but like the TV advert goes, I'm a customer too, and I've never had any problems. I think if you go with Paypal they don't need any credit card information at all, at least that was the way it worked when I used it on another vendor. The reason for all this rigormorle is: bottom line, credit card companies don't like working with any vendor that sells a product that can't be returned. Downloaded items are a whole new area, remember, something that didn't exist a couple of years ago. BBay has had problems, DAZ has had them as well, and recently changed the artist's cut to help cover losses.

Jim you need to have your CC verified with Pay Pal if you live in countries other than Canada or the US.. This is one reason I have never purchased any of your stuff. I have no CC so Render is the only place I can make purchases.

Mason, just give Sherry a phone call and your credit card is verified within three minutes. She's really friendly and helpful and I've only gotten top quality items from BBay so far... it's definitely worth the "hassle".

I tried to buy from them too - It's hard to believe that any vendor would make it difficult for you to spend your money. It turned me off so much, I won't buy from them. Why is it so easy to purchase here at the store and so difficult to do at BBay? I imagine they've lost lots of potential customers. I will say this for Renderosity - i've NEVER had any problems with a purchase (i mean the mechanics of it), never had any weird stuff on my credit card, and they've never dumped me in the middle of a download. I've had the best shopping experiences right here.

Bbay used to have some kind of arrangement where they more-or-less set up a credit line for customers, you would start small but after you paid for the items your credit limit would go up. I don't know if they will still do that but it might be worth a call to Sherry. I've bought stuff from DAZ, BBay and the store here, and all seemed to work fine.

I called Sherry and gave her my credit card info, not problem at all - it only took a few minutes. I did not have to send any photocopy either - don't know what that's all about. The only "problem" with BBay is that their server is a little bit on the slower side, but the stuff is outstanding - at least the stuff I have bought. AND the BBay club is the best deal on the market! //Mike

Attached Link: http://www.x.com

Use the Paypal option with BBbay! i set up my PayPal account originally to buy from *Ebay,* but it's turned out to be very useful most everywhere. i take PayPal on my web site, too, for things i sell. If you are wondering how they make their money, this is how: they take a couple days getting your money from your PayPal account into your bank account. They probably make those huge overnight loans that banks do. Wacky concept, but it works. PayPal has turned out to be VERY safe for consumers. If you don't have a credit card, but do have a US bank account, you can set it up with that. Or, if you *do* have a credit card, you can use that to set up your PayPal account and begin using it immediately. i have always used my PayPal for the BBay folks (no WAY am i going to fax a copy of my credit card ANYWHERE!) and Sherry has alway responded in about 2 to 4 hours. Not instant, but darned fast. Quite acceptable for me. Or, if that isn't fast enough, as they have been saying in this thread, call them. Finding a combo store/merchant account that doesn't cost the earth and will deal with soft merchandise is tough. Kagi is one, Digital River is another--but it costs. Merchants do what they can. True, the BBay verification statement is rather off-putting, but i bet they could spin it so that it sounded less negative. (It's not, really.)

heyas; to clarify paypal and credit cards: when you sign up for paypal without a credit card, they 'verify' your account by posting two teeny deposits to your account (like 2 cents). you respond back with the amounts, and they know that's your account, cuz you got the info of what got put in it. now, that is DIFFERENT from having a verified ADDRESS. i dunno, but they can't ask my bank what my address is. the only way paypal can verify an address is for you to give them a credit card number, and then the billing address for that card is your verified mailing address. now the two or three weeks ago when i joined the bbay club, their policy was they do NOT accept paypal payments for paypal accounts that do not have verified addresses. at all. doesnt matter if you are u.s., canada, or otherwise. other online merchants don't go through all that 'rigamarole,' but bbay has found it necessary, to try to prevent credit card fraud and being ripped off, etc. i'm sure they do what is best for their business. they may lose customers on the one hand, but maybe they make up for it by not having so much loss to fraud.

Golly, I just called Sherry at BBay because I couldn't print the form from the only computer which could download and display it. She was really friendly despite being the end of a long day for her and I think the models I bought were in my mailbox an hour or so later. I signed up for the Club, too...last November?... and it is one of the best bargains around. With the phone calls you get to discover people as people, not just customers and vendors, and they are nice people. Carolly

Mason, Just give Sherry a call and she'll set you up ASAP. The most hassle-free way of getting set up. Like you I was originally annoyed at their order process, but once you've made the first purchase you are verified and buying from them is just as easy as anyone else. Just like in the 'real' world some merchants have their quirks on how they handle things. For instance, at the game store I shopped at, if you had a credit card declined, you could then only pay for that purchase with cash. No whipping out another credit card, no checks. Cash only. I never figured that out, other than the fact that it is anti-fraud. On the other hand, as a former retail clerk, I'd remind everyone that when they insist you pull out your ID for a check or credit card, it's not only for their protection, it's for YOURS. I'm very uneasy now about all the stores that once you are in their 'system' you don't have to present ID on checks. Ya gotta know that the thieves know all the stores that have lax security. On the other hand, I want to tell you all a GOOD story about the basic honesty of folks. I work for a botanic garden, and we have several big plant sales every year. We probably take in over 500 checks each year, and I've worked there for 10 years. We do NOT take ID because I have volunteers running our cash registers, rather than regular sales clerks, and it's hard enough to train them as it is. Guess how many checks I've had bounce in that time? Out of over 5000 checks? Eight. And three of them were situations where a checkbook had been stolen and the account closed, and two of the people called me before I even knew the checks had bounced and made good on them AND added the bounced-check fee our bank charged to boot.