But Speaking of Payza ...

Apropos of this morning's post on the US regime's attempt to take the online payment service down:

I do not like the service, and do not recommend it.

Payza has been around for several years, and functions as an alternative to PayPal for many "Internet Marketing" sites, especially since PayPal pulled a weird crackdown on such sites that pay affiliate commissions (yes, I am still involved in Internet Marketing -- fortunately my latest project involves no movement of money between myself and customers).

Payza always looked cheesy to me, and I never used it until recently.

I wanted to buy something from a site, and saw that the site accepted Bitcoin. When I pressed the "buy" button, it turned out that the Bitcoin payment would be routed through Payza. No problem.

OK, well, problem.

Once I sent the Bitcoin to the specified address, I got an error message referring to network congestion and directing me to send in a help ticket, which would first require me to create a Payza account of my own. So I did.

After I created the account and sent in the help ticket, I got an email informing me that the Bitcoin transaction had gone through. Not to the merchant I was sending it to, but to my new Payza account.

I conferred with the merchant, who confirmed that he hadn't received the Bitcoin or even seen a note on the transaction. Then I went back and forth with Payza, whose rep:

1) Denied that the problem was what Payza had said it was (network congestion);

2) Suggested that the problem was with the merchant; and then

3) Switched to insisting that the problem was with me, because I had multiple Payza accounts -- the one I had just set up, and one I've never heard of, associated with an email address I've never seen before.

I finally stopped talking to them, and shortly thereafter saw something else, somewhere else, for just under the amount in my Payza account, and bought it. So I think I have 75 cents or so in Payza, and have no ambition to have any more, or to conduct any further transactions through them.

Which doesn't mean I approve of the US government abducting one of the company's principals, charging a company in Canada with violating a local District of Columbia money transfer licensing scheme, etc. All it means is that I don't like the company much.