I thought I'd update GOG on a few concerns so far with Paysafecard. So far, I've checked two places that are supposed to carry either the card or the tickets that can be generated by a service for Paysafecard (namely Food Lion aka Bloom for the first option and a smaller grocery store with ePay service which is supposed to generate such tickets upon request at your own denomination of choice), and both have ended up dead-ends.
In the first case, I checked one of the Food Lions nearby on two separate occasions, finally talking to the manager on the second attempt. As expected, the Paysafecards are, if available, to be placed in vendor kiosks where most other giftcards or prepaid cards are located. An independent vendor purchases these kiosks and places them in the Food Lion store for a fee paid to Food Lion. The vendor then chooses and stocks these kiosks with whatever he wants or sells well or is requested by the Food Lion manager, etc.
So what's the problem? Well, American retail management is pretty pitiful compared to what it was when I was a kid and my father worked at the huge Macy's in New York City. It's all numbers and avoid the customers these days, seriously. The peons interact, the rest is all inventory reports, supply logistics, and hating your job, that's what we call management these days. Most managers, probably in the whole western world, but certainly in America, do not actually know their store's inventory, nor the current demand changes via requests by customers etc.
So at any rate, it turns out the vendor has probably never supplied any Paysafecards ever to them. Neither the manager nor the much more efficient and hands-on assistant manager even knew who or what the card is (something my dad could never be ignorant of, if the store carried it, he knew). Worse, as a punch line, only the nosy assistant manager actually mentioned and knew of the inventory request form in every box of resupply that the vendor owning and stocking the kiosk SENDS VIA MAIL has within it. I got him to write down a need for Paysafecards to send back to the vendor, much thanks for that, but you could see he mostly did it just to get me out of his hair and because the much more efficient female assistant manager had pushed it because it seemed a way to achieve a happy customer. (Of course for that she'll have to work every holiday, never get a raise, and soon be off to manage her own Business providing a better product called RealCard ... but that's another story).
Sorry, excuse the sarcasm, I live in the USA, I've seen its decline, and well .. I expect the end of time is soon, personally I hope its very very soon.
Ok, the other minor grocery store is run by three immigrants, who always look at any person who does not look for the INS over their shoulder every ten seconds and then bury their eyes into their navel, as ... well ... not to be trusted. They definitively stated that they did not carry such a card, never heard of the ePAY service I said carried it as an option, and this even from the matriarch, who can haggle with you so well, you'd have to pay her 100 dollars just to call her incompetent at the end of the conversation.
Now, I am going to check the other Food Lions over the holidays, and the various check-cashing places which usually are much better at knowing about services like ePAY because their clients come there to ... well ... bypass the normal market for anything quick, hard to track, and cash-oriented ... lets be kind and call it a grey market .... but in the interim my concerns over access remain.
Here is the biggest issue. One reason I had recommended Rixty in comparison a while back to Gog, was that Rixty is an option on the Coinstar system of machines. Coinstar is in every Walmart, which is in every town basically in the USA. Coinstar machines count coins or inserted cash and then you can get various giftcards or cash back for the amount you put in minus a fee , in the case of cash, or sometimes little or no fee for the gift cards and prepaid cards. Coinstars accessibility and the preponderance of cash and coins makes its availability almost everywhere. Now, Coinstar machines plan to rollout some sort of Paypal prepaid card soon, but overall it isn't yet available anywhere and may not be. It does offer Rixty though, which is used at Gamersgate.
Here's another key thing. You can purchase ONLINE Rixty prepaid cards from companies that do except American debit cards because they are also based in USA. But you can't do that with Paysafecard because none of the online purchase options are based in USA. There goes one clear avenue for USA debit cards.
What looks good on paper may not pan out so, this is the problem with not checking with your customers fully the real world access to a method of payment. Just because a company like Paysafecard , says it is purchaseable in many grocery stores, pharmacies , and online doesn't actually mean it is so. It simply means that an independent contractor who is the vendor of a kiosk has claimed to be contracted to place their cards in its kiosks in the stores in which the managers do not know the card, do not see the vendor (it's via mail 95 percent of the time), and your card is competing with all the other cards in the vendors inventory for space with that vendor in his kiosk in that grocery store .... do you follow how convoluted this is. It's the new now staid old way of doing marketing in the western world, and it will eventually lead to our doom.
Ok, so now I've let off some steam. You could have hired me to supply all of my unnamed state in the USA, and I would have guaranteed you that I would have made at least 2 personal visits each month to every location I had a kiosk just to take a look at the selection myself, the placement myself, the kiosk's condition myself, chat with the manager myself, and toot Gog and Paysafecard myself. But instead some other bunch of clowns are doing this by lounge chair and other people's laziness, and you wonder why nothing ever works out.
Summary :
1) No USA online purchase option via USA debit card means fewer impulse buys and lower convenience to getting that debit card to buy a Paysafecard and a Gog purchase.
2) There is seemingly a lack of physical cards at high transit locations such as grocery stores because Paysafecard has very little east coast and mid-atlantic presence in the USA. After all, I look for Rixty cards and prepaid phone cards all the time, I have never ever seen a Paysafecard at the local 7-11s, at any grocery store chain, at any Walmart, at any convenience store. The last hope is a check cashing place or gas stations.
I have logged the issues via the automatic system with Paysafecard and will do so every couple of weeks, I will be visiting the other 5 or so locations shortly and update you with any progress. But, I have the feeling based on experience that it will take a lot of personal effort to find any Paysafecard within 10 miles of my location within the next month or so, and I'd guess it's below a 20 percent chance even with that.
Best wishes, have a great holiday season.
(Oh, and not to overrate Rixty, I've also never ever seen a Rixty prepaid card in a kiosk either. But they are an option at every Coinstar, so far, and they are purchaseable online via USA debit cards from an online USA retailer --- that's the point and also another reason for my somewhat cynical view. Beware, always beware, the independent contractor who never sees any of your employees more than once a year and is yet responsible for all your placement, all your supply, all you look, all your everything ... without any meaningful supervision. This used to be called the easy man's get rich quick scheme ... but legal ... be the independent contracting middle man, because you are just purchasing the caravan, you never guaranteed his camels were burdened with your product or where they were heading, or how much perfume to place on the product to remove the camel scent. Sigh, nevermind, it's just another bit of old but forgotten Americana. And they thought Dale Carnegie once was a hack, now he looks like John the Baptist given how honest he was in comparison.)
Post edited December 20, 2013 by DedNLeft
