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Paying for Apple iTunes with PayPal
MrIcee writes "While cruising eBay today I noted that some clever individual has apparently stepped up to fill the void left by the fact that Apple's iTunes service does not accept PayPal. While insisting that buyers follow Apple's terms of service, is buying and reselling the gift certificate legal or not? If legal, it's an interesting and simple idea that could be applied to many areas." It is pretty neat, even if the $16 markup is a little ludicrous. It's like the old adage: a fool and his PayPal account are soon parted.
"It's like the old adage: a fool and his PayPal account are soon parted." Indeed.
I have one of the debit cards, and I used it like a credit card all the time (it's where my personal allowance money from my bank account goes). It'll also use your checking account to pull funds from if you don't keep a balance in your paypal account.
I give it 48 hours before Apple shoves a C&D right up their ass.
"Just Because"
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
Nifty idea, though the markup is ridiculous. But, it does represent YAWAM (Yet Another Way to Acquire Music) that is a lot easier than dealing with CD stores or even online CD sales.
Sure would be interesting to know how the economics of iTunes music distribution compare with retail CD distribution. More profitable for the label? Less?
Even if it is more, isn't there as risk to the label in that getting on iTunes may not require the backing of a big organization? That is, iTunes represents a much better prospect for the artist? Sure would be interesting to know what Jobs thinks of all this, let alone the accountants in the record industry.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
I don't if your aware of this, but gift-certificates are prepayed. thats the point. you wouldnt have any iTunes bill to pay, cause you get 50$ then your done. I think your missing out on the concept here.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
The iTunes Music Store allows people to buy gift certificates for anyone with an e-mail account. So the idea is that you give the people $66, they take the money and use it to buy a gift certificate and have Apple send it to your e-mail address. I think that using the gift certificate requires you to set up your own account, so you can't just buy as many songs as you want using their credit card.
I believe the point is that the iTunes Music Store requires that any credit card used have an address inside the United States.
Reselling gift certificates would then allow folks outside the U.S. to access the store as if they were in the U.S.
Except I think you have to have valid credit card information whether or not you use a gift certificate. I am not certain, though.
--plambert
it's more like 3 per second
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My next comment will be ready soon, but moderators can beat the rush and mod it up early.
In order to sign up for an iTunes account to REDEEM any such certificate you MUST enter a valid credit card number. I know. I sent my sister a certificate so she could try out iTunes. She didn't want to use a credit card, but ended up being forced to just to redeem the certificate.
There IS a non-credit-card way get an iTunes account, but that's only as the recipient of an "allowance" which is then tied to someone elses credit card, the one giving the monthly allowance ($10 minimum each month).
Good luck redeeming the gift certificate if you buy it and don't have a credit card!
But you can't do that unless you have another card on file with paypal.
I think this is for people that have a bank account only and no credit cards.
Umm... you can't bid. It's set price only. You can click buy now...
So this is one of those ideas with it's own obsolescence!
When will people learn to use "its" and "it's" correctly? You might want to print out a copy of this cartoon for reference.
Go to the 'my account' tab, select withdraw, and click on the 'shop online with a paypal virtual card' link. The number won't be tied to any website in particular, so you should be able to type it in through itunes and have it work.
www.lonseidman.com
Has it occured to you that you could just go look up these questions yourself over at Apple?
- learn to swim.
In the USA it's really easy. There are so many banks and other companies competing to give you a credit card that they're willing to reach far down the credit rating food chain in order to get applicants.
I have worked in the credit card industry in Canada and it's certainly different here. There are only five big banks and much less competition for cardholders. A lot of the people who get all the pre-approved crap in the mail in the USA would never get approved in Canada for a credit card. That's why it's much easier to get a CC in the USA compared to Canada and probably a lot of other countries as well.
or you could spend your $50 worth of cold hard cash on pepsi and get the tunes that way.
You'd have to buy $150 worth of pepsi, since only 1/3 of the caps are winners.
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
My solution is to use the Paypal debit card. It's linked to my Paypal account and acts as a Mastercard. I use it for all of my Apple iTunes store purchases. It works quite well....
Edmund White
http://flickr.com/ewwhite
With Paypal, I do use my credit card, but the merchant never sees it. That's one of the nice features; you only have to worry about paypal's trustworthiness (won't argue that here), not that of every 'net merchant you meet.
If I pay you $50 out of my paypal account, paypal draws it out of my CC and you get it from paypal. You don't need a CC merchant account and you don't ever see my CC information.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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Is it really that hard to sign up for a credit card? I have the credit card companies absolutely throwing themselves at my *feet* trying to get me to sign up for more credit cards. And my credit rating is *bad*.
You're talking about those "You're Preapproved for the Bank Of CowboyNeal's Premium Gold-Pressed Latinum Visa Card!" letters you get all the time? Read the fine print, it'll say "subject to credit approval," blah blah blah. Basically all you're "pre-approved" for is filling out the application and making them check to see if they think you're qualifed for a card or not.Now granted, I've never understood how this is completely legal and not false advertising of a sort (remember that Publishers Clearing House had to change their ways after that huge lawsuit about their "You may already be a Winner" but the fine print says "Not yet, you gotta at least send this back, and while you don't have to buy anything, we want you to do something to the envelope to show if you did or not so we'll know how to..... umm, file it!"? Heck the credit card offers don't even come in saying MAY be approved, so they're worse. But that's starting to stray way off-tppic. :)
This time, it's "read the fucking auction."
Sales are to US customers only and you must comply with Apple's iTMS terms of service.
"A fool and his conspiracy theory are soon made fun of."
-Me
According to a Paypal rep, there have been 35,000,000 individuals who have used Paypal. There are just under 7000 people registered at the paypalsucks message board. That's about 1 in 5,000. To put that into perspective, according to this article , a Princeton survey found the odds of the Earth being hit with a city sized asteroid is also 1 in 5,000. The odds of having a bad Paypal experience are really pretty slim indeed. Don't believe the hype!