Erik is right. The immediate answer for this person is that cash is required in these situations. I'll write and let him. Some general points related to the long term issue. Trivia first: Technically, a bank draft is a check written by one bank against its deposits in another bank. What he probably meant was a Counter Check, which is a nonpersonalized check form of check you can get at the bank counter. Or he could have meant a personal check -- or a Cashier's Check or Certified Check, which is a check drawn against funds the Bank certifies to the payee to be available to cover the amount of the check. In any event, if they cannot use Paypal and are not from the USA, processing any of the above types of checks will cost us $17 each. For those folks we can either accept a check for a gain of $3 each or require that they send cash in USA currency for gain of $33 each. Note that converting currency is going to cost them extra. I suspect there are less than 20 such folks per year but let's assume 20. If we receive checks from these folks, that's about $60 revenue against and estimate cost of roughly $400 per year. If we receive cash from each of these persons instead, that would be a gain of about $660 or the equivalent of about 2 TAG ads. Maybe Phil can get someone to sponsor these foreign memberships by buying an ad once a year. After February, especially if we are not involved in working on a 2005 convention, I can look around again for reasonable arrangement for us to accept cred cards directly, which will probably mean dropping paypal so that we can maintain enough volume to make the cred card arrangement affordable. I have not investigated whether accepting cred cards directly will end up with similar limitations on transactions from some foreign countries. If so, that would just mean that AGA would be responsible for covering any cred card purchase that AGA accepted but could not be processed. sh --- Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com> wrote: > Bank Draft means essentially they write a check that > costs us more money > to cash than the membership itself. PayPal doesn't take > payments from > Malta. :( > > - Erik > > > > On Mon, 13 Dec 2004, Cheryl Rogers wrote: > > > Erik, forwarding to you because he says nice things > about the web site. :-) > > > > Scott, pretend I'm stupid and explain to me in simple > words what he means by > > "bank draft." > > > > Cheryl > > > > PS Stephan told me a couple of his Maltese friends were > interested. > > > > -------- Original Message -------- > > Subject: FW: Becoming a member with aga > > Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 18:21:38 +0100 > > From: Ramon Vella <rams@onvol.net> > > To: <cheryl@wilstream.com> > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > > > > > > Hello there. I find your website extremely informative > and > > professionally organized. When trying to fill > registration there was no > > option for my country. (Malta) > > > > How can I subscribe? Possibly by sending a bank draft > in US dollars and > > filling in the traditional membership form?. > > > > I m really looking forward to share and display my > aquascapes with other > > aga fellows, possibly entering in the yearly aga > competitions . > > > > Best regards , looking faithfully for an answer, > > > > > > > > Ramon Vella > > > > > > > > > > -- > Erik Olson > erik at thekrib dot com > _______________________________________________ AGA-sc mailing list AGA-sc@thekrib.com http://lists.thekrib.com/mailman/listinfo/aga-sc