Hobby Search - CC & PayPal payment issues 2022

[Jimbo]

Hobby Search       what a joke right now tried to place an order, nothing?? tried PayPal big mistake on my part!!  PayPal  sees hobby search as a threat an wouldnt do the payment!!  ive tried to contact hobby search but no response, i finally got feed up an contacted them again an told them to cancel my order, we'll  see how this goes??   Sorry for the venting but i dont deal with stupid bs well<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< lol

[shiniji]

But that sounds very strange, I've been shopping at Hobbysearch for many years (for several 1000€ a year) and so far I've never had a problem, whether it's paying via Paypal, shipping or the registration/ordering process. 🤔

[cteno4]

jimbo,

 

you might check paypal. ive use paypal and credit cards sucessfully for like 20 years with hs and never an issue. just a couple of times the cc checked with me as it was overseas and they sometimes flag those depending on the action on your card at the time, but once i oked it everything went thru fine.

 

issues with payments like this, especially overseas, do take a little patience to work out kinks when they have happened but ive done thousands of transactions to japan and all have gone thru and just a handful needed any poking to go thru.

 

jeff

[Cat]

My last recent order went through fine on PayPal, which I had to use after it turned out that their new verification system doesn't play well with my major credit card.
 
In good and unexpected news from them, they actually agreed to my request for a special order recombination that is not part of their regular menu!  I have an order pending awaiting the arrival of one back-ordered item, and they agreed that I could combine it with an item that is due for release in Early April (as long as the new item arrives by the 20th, they just don't have storage space to keep holding things indefinitely).

[JR 500系]

I've also tried to use paypal on HS, do be sure to check if you had selected paypal MANUAL payment or paypal AUTO payment. In manual, a manual checkout is required on your end before payment, more control overall and you still got the option to add in items (if HS allows). If you selected AUTO, it automatically gets processed, along with the shipping fee and there is nothing you can do more except to wait to get charged and the invoice will be sent to you. 

 

I've gotten my own pit falls on paypal AUTO, not exactly the best IMHO, but good if you dont like the hassle of combining the orders yourself. 

[Jimbo]

it was PayPal that got me, their security got me would allow my transaction.  i used the same card with plaza japan an had no issue's with the card,, so hobby search switched things around, an the transaction went through with no problems  oh well  

[cteno4]

Once and a while international transactions will get flagged by the merchant bank (the company the seller is using for the credit card transaction), your credit card company, or PayPal or other intermediary. They all seem to have ever evolving fraud systems and I’ve never been able to determine specific things that set them off. Is just a hassle now and then. Mostly it’s just my credit card company that will squeak, but it’s usually just a verify this as good before we let it thru. Actually seems to be happening very little for me in the last couple of years. they probably have a good AI pattern on me now! Some systems in some combinations just don’t play well with each other or take time to settle in. I switched to PayPal with hs a while back when their merchant bank was having some issues with overseas credit cards for a little while and it’s just worked so I just kept using PayPal. I do pay for it in yen and use a credit card on PayPal that has good exchange rates and no foreign exchange fees.
 

glad you got your order in.
 

jeff

[gavino200]

This is the choice I've used for every HobbySearch purchase I've ever made. (Which at this stage is more than I want to consider).

 

[katoftw]

I like manual also so I can change shipping options if need be.

[cteno4]

I think their auto PayPal is like what hlj has, basically the auto you just pre approve hlj for PayPal transactions and then it’s like storing your cc number with a vendor, you just hit pay and don’t have to log into PayPal and pay the invoice, it just happens automatically. Basically the same just don’t have to log into PayPal. But on reserved items of course as Kato notes it won’t give you the change to change shipping or recombine orders as it will ge reprocessed and paid as soon as it comes in w.o your needing to do anything (or aware it’s happening until done).

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[katoftw]

No thats not how their auto payment works.  You accepted the terms for pre authorization of payment.  So they just charge you and send you a receipt.  You don't click into anything.

[nbobkk]

On 4/12/2022 at 1:04 AM, Jimbo said:

Hobby Search       what a joke right now tried to place an order, nothing?? tried PayPal big mistake on my part!!  PayPal  sees hobby search as a threat an wouldnt do the payment!!  ive tried to contact hobby search but no response, i finally got feed up an contacted them again an told them to cancel my order, we'll  see how this goes??   Sorry for the venting but i dont deal with stupid bs well<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< lol

I just had the same exact experience last week.  Thought it was because my address situation is a bit weird, but maybe not.  I contacted them and they responded but after the first couple of exchanges, they weren't really reading them closely and weren't assisting.  Both paypal and credit card didn't work.  So I made my order from Plaza Japan instead.  It's disappointing because I am planning a new layout and have lots of stuff on my wish list on their site.

[disturbman]

I still don't understand how PayPal could be an issue. When you say PayPal didn't work, what do you mean? HS didn't send you an email payment request? The PayPal page didn't load or something? I never had an issue using PayPal on HS, not that I use it often these days, but I used to. Could be worth contacting PayPal about it.

Also wonder if those issues could be linked to cookie blocking on HS, that often blocks proper functioning of website. I had to allow them on TaoBao and eBay, both were bugging otherwise. In chrome, the blocking is shown as a cross out eye on the left corner of the address bar.

Edited April 20, 2022 by disturbman

[nbobkk]

I don't know how paypal is an issue either.  I use it the same exact way with other merchants.  The message comes "this card cannot be used".  No other info.   I don't know what is going on, it must be a paypal thing because this morning it happened with another site.  I think it might have to do with sites that don't allow having a shipping address and different billing address.  Because when you get to the paypal page and you change the address or name to match the card details and press submit, I get that message.  It is something I can't help and works normally, but not in this instance.  I live abroad for work and travel often, so  I can't avoid this, my accounts are back home.  It's not usually a problem though, my credit card is used to it.  For instance , I am in Kenya now and am using the card daily for all my purchases, even tiny ones.  I've ordered online from shops in the UK, US, and Japan (plaza Japan) all this week.  So I really don't know what the problem is.

[katoftw]

You need to contact you bank. You just highlighted many issues banks have. The is so many layers of security. Billing address etc is just one of those layers.

[nbobkk]

No, its not the credit card company.  The request didn't even make it to them.  They didn't reject it, they never received it.  The payment was stopped at paypal.  If the bank had rejected it, they would have sent me a fraud alert, which I didn't get.  If the order form doesn't allow for two addresses, that could be it if paypal is checking the name and address with the vendor order. 

Edited April 21, 2022 by nbobkk

[cteno4]

PayPal gets weird at times. So is the cc you are using saved in PayPal (attached to your PayPal account)? Also are you paying thru the PayPal and filling in cc data as just a regular merchant checkout or thru PayPal login (ie log into PayPal and choose attached cc or PayPal funds or bank transfer)?

 

paypal had an odd issue a few years ago that flummoxed one client’s users. If you had a credit card attached to your PayPal account but you tired to use that card as a straight credit card merchant checkout it would deny the card with similar cryptic language and nothing even looped through the bank. PayPal just did not want to have you use that card as a straight cc checkout, they wanted you to log into your PayPal account and use it by selecting that payment information, but they did not tell you this, nor when I talked with PayPal did they say that was forbidden, but the system forbid it! When researching all this I found a host of other odd PayPal permutations that would cause PayPal to just block some cc payments at PayPal, but PayPal always say nothing wrong here and ignore it. I think PayPal was trying to drive everyone to do everything inside the PayPalverse. After about a year the issue of using an attached cc went away, but I’ve not been doing the merchant backend stuff for a couple of years now so don’t follow it anymore.

 

one donor was fuming over this and said he didn’t even have a PayPal account so this was not it. A day later he came back sheepishly saying turns out his wife had a paypal account and had attached their cc to it!

 

jeff

[nbobkk]

No, I don't have a paypal account (and won't).  Usually paying by card through paypal works. 

 

I wrote to my bank just to confirm and they said there is no block and no charges were declined:

[disturbman]

I split off the conversation about payment CC/PayPal payment issues.

I really don't know what could be the issue, but maybe a solution would be for those affected to create a PayPal account if they want to continue ordering at HS. Otherwise, they are plenty of other vendors.

[cteno4]

Last time I had to deal with my clients’ PayPal merchant check out just dropping some charges it seemed like there were a number of oddities that may be causing these as I ran across a lot of site developers with headaches like this at times. PayPal tends to be very opaque about it all and was no help figuring out the issue I had outlined above and in fact just would deny it was not so when I could replicate it very easily.

 

Have you tried just using their straight credit card check out using hobby search’s merchant account at the bottom instead of PayPal? That has always worked for me except for a couple of times my bank just questioned me did I make this charge as I had a few foreign charges in a row. I just got lazy with the PayPal checkout using the cc attached to my PayPal account and using up random money that ends up in PayPal.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[nbobkk]

Yes, I had tried to do straight credit card check out with HS, but had the same problem as mentioned somewhere else in this thread.  I remember also HS said that for using that method, the billing and shipping address needed to be the same, so I knew it wouldn't work.  I am in Kenya now but shipped some things to my new landlady in Thailand. 

 

For paypal, they must have the credit card number saved and won't accept it.  I used this CC with paypal many times, but sometimes there is a hiccup and maybe the card eventually got blacklisted for some reason. 

 

Yesterday, I tried to buy a gps unit for my camera from a webshop in the UK.  Had the same exact experience with paypal.  Going thru paypal is the only option with them, so unfortunately I won't buy it now. 

[Jimbo]

lol that was me,, i contacted hs about it I tried something with the same card an it worked fine, so it was a glitch with pay pal,   hs switched things around an finally just charged my card an it worked fine,,,  On a lighter note iv found some things [not through hs or plaza japan] an the shipping is 112 us dollars!!!  guess they never heard of DHL,,??   i cant win,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[HannaYisa]

Hey there! I totally feel your frustration with Hobby Search and its payment issues. It can be really annoying when you're trying to make a purchase, and the payment method just won't work.