6 ms·

Always bugged me when I tried to use a Privacy card on Digital Ocean

by m0ngr31 5y ago

donmcronald 5y ago
I thought DO had an option to prepay via Paypal.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  They do
- singlow 5y ago
  Yes which means you prefund your expenses. If you provide a prepaid card as a funding source it is likely to not have funds when they attempt to debit you for services already rendered. I'm sure they'd be fine with you prepaying on a prepaid card.
- dylan604 5y ago
  If you're trying to use something like Privacy.com, it's probably because you don't want to have your details shared with others. Using PayPal is not going to to that.
julianlam 5y ago
I don't blame them, though. DO is a "bill-after" company, so if you racked up server time, they're out that money if you attached a pre-paid card with $0 on it. We use DO as our provider, and we offer trials in our product offering, so if they attach a prepaid card to _our_ service (which people do, all the time), we're out that money, but it's $5 for us, so we eat it.
- netr0ute 5y ago
  > DO is a "bill-after" company, so if you racked up server time, they're out that money if you attached a pre-paid card with $0 on it. Then if they don't want that, don't be bill-after or companies like Privacy will just engineer around that prepaid card limitation.
  - jrockway 5y ago
    Everyone is a bill-after company, though. If it was pre-pay, you'd buy $200 of computing time, convert that into 8 cents of today's hot shitcoin, and then initiate a chargeback to get your $200 back. They could make you wait 60 days or whatever, but that's an unpleasant customer experience, so they don't. With physical goods, there is always the possibility that the merchant could compel you to return the physical good, but with cloud computing, that's nearly impossible.
- morpheuskafka 5y ago
  The thing is that every card has a limit, both regular debit and credit. You can easily have a bank account with no more than a couple dollars in it and DO would accept that just fine. If you haven't preauthorized, you aren't guaranteed payment. That's why these services also have usage limits, of course--AWS doesn't want me to rack up a million dollar bill without seeing a past payment history that would indicate I can actually afford that.
awslattery 5y ago
Weird, I must have added my Privacy card to DO before they made a backend payment processing change. Been using it since July 2016, with a new card in August 2020.

Always bugged me when I tried to use a Privacy card on Digital Ocean

donmcronald 5y ago

I thought DO had an option to prepay via Paypal.

ipaddr 5y ago
They do
singlow 5y ago
Yes which means you prefund your expenses. If you provide a prepaid card as a funding source it is likely to not have funds when they attempt to debit you for services already rendered. I'm sure they'd be fine with you prepaying on a prepaid card.
dylan604 5y ago
If you're trying to use something like Privacy.com, it's probably because you don't want to have your details shared with others. Using PayPal is not going to to that.

julianlam 5y ago

I don't blame them, though. DO is a "bill-after" company, so if you racked up server time, they're out that money if you attached a pre-paid card with $0 on it. We use DO as our provider, and we offer trials in our product offering, so if they attach a prepaid card to _our_ service (which people do, all the time), we're out that money, but it's $5 for us, so we eat it.

netr0ute 5y ago
> DO is a "bill-after" company, so if you racked up server time, they're out that money if you attached a pre-paid card with $0 on it. Then if they don't want that, don't be bill-after or companies like Privacy will just engineer around that prepaid card limitation.
- jrockway 5y ago
  Everyone is a bill-after company, though. If it was pre-pay, you'd buy $200 of computing time, convert that into 8 cents of today's hot shitcoin, and then initiate a chargeback to get your $200 back. They could make you wait 60 days or whatever, but that's an unpleasant customer experience, so they don't. With physical goods, there is always the possibility that the merchant could compel you to return the physical good, but with cloud computing, that's nearly impossible.
morpheuskafka 5y ago
The thing is that every card has a limit, both regular debit and credit. You can easily have a bank account with no more than a couple dollars in it and DO would accept that just fine. If you haven't preauthorized, you aren't guaranteed payment. That's why these services also have usage limits, of course--AWS doesn't want me to rack up a million dollar bill without seeing a past payment history that would indicate I can actually afford that.

awslattery 5y ago

Weird, I must have added my Privacy card to DO before they made a backend payment processing change. Been using it since July 2016, with a new card in August 2020.