It’s easy, says the website
It’s spring, and I’m overcome by a spring feeling: I want to afford a premium membership for a well-known site with “not safe for work” content, it’s supposed to cost around 60 euros. However, there is a catch: the company behind the website is based in the USA; most payment providers there have fallen victim to the guillotine blade of public opinion in recent years and no longer offer payment options to such sites – including PayPal, which I would have used otherwise. The only reasonably sensible options in Germany are credit cards, crypto currencies and paysafecard. I don’t own the first two, so it should be paysafecard.
paysafecard’s website promises it’s easy: find a point of sale, pay, get a code, redeem, done. My heart trembles with joy when it sees that there is even a search for outlets where you can purchase the desired code. The code seems to be mainly at home in kiosks, electronics stores, telephone shops and gas stations. My quest is made more difficult by the fact that it is Sunday – many places do not want to open their gates to me.
A precise analysis of the proportion of kiosks that are listed on the website but simply no longer exist is not the subject of this transcript – such a list would plunge both me and the readers into deepest despair. I just want to report how I get credit in two different places.
Petrol station: “I can only print 25 Euro codes, and only one at a time.” “… What do you mean all of a sudden?” “I think every 15 minutes?” My counterpart also seems to have lost his mind in the Minoan labyrinth of this payment digitization, or at least his self-confidence. “But we can also try it with 50 euros. Shall we?” yeah
The brave vicarious agent of my wish pulls out a page full of barcodes and scans one that says “50 euros” (there are also some for 100 euros). I pay with a debit card.
The money is debited, but the code is not printed. The gas station man gives me my money back in cash. One checkout further, he then prints a code for me for 25 euros – this time successfully.
I’ll never know why the site has barcodes for items that can’t be sold.
Since I don’t feel like coming back twice, fifteen minutes apart, I’m thinking of alternatives. A brainstorm!
There is a well-known chain gas station at the other end of town, for which I happen to have a prepaid card, with which one can probably at items (not just fuel, which is the gas station’s real raison d’être). And indeed, it is listed in the magical branch finder on the paysafecard website. I’ll drive there quickly and present my request again.
For me, the person behind the counter works on a touchscreen device (it is unclear whether this is a special device or the normal checkout terminal). Here you can actually select 50 euros.
I swipe the magnetic tape of my credit card on the debit card reader, which also functions as a credit card reader, with which, as we remember, you can pay for everything.
“Items not allowed,” says the debit and credit card reader.
The person behind the counter says he has never experienced anything like this before. So I pay with an ec card after all and go home.
What did I want the code for again?
(sympathischeufos)