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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.
At least until someone figures out how to sell it for $15 markup.
Then $14.
Then $13.
Then $12.
etc...
Until Apple decides to implement their own version...
So this is one of those ideas with it's own obsolescence!
GPL Deconstructed
Reload the link to eBay and look at the counter near the bottom of the auction listing. See the Slashdot effect in real time. Impressive.
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Section 11.a:
Payment for Products. You agree to pay for all Products you purchase through the Service, and that Apple may charge your credit card for any Products purchased, and for any additional amounts (including any taxes and late fees, as applicable) as may be accrued by or in connection with your Account. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TIMELY PAYMENT OF ALL FEES AND FOR PROVIDING APPLE WITH A VALID CREDIT CARD FOR PAYMENT OF ALL FEES. All fees will be billed to the credit card you designate during the registration process. If you want to designate a different credit card or if there is a change in your credit card status, you must change your credit card information online at the Account Info section of the Service. (There may be a temporary disruption of your access to the Service until Apple can verify the validity of the new credit card information.)
So how would this work when buying initially through a gift certificate bought through a middleman? Would I, as the buyer, pay the middleman to pay my iTunes bill for me?
What else can I say ? If the option is available and if someone is willing to pay the exorbitant price markup, why not squeeze few pennies out of it ? Unless apple implements this payment method, the markup will be driven down but will exist in one form or another despite how small it ends up to be. Also for the initial paypal bashing post owner : not everyone's paypal experience is as bad as what you had to hate them that much. If you know what you are getting into and not trying to defraud the system, why worry ?
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
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.
Great, another middleman between musicians and fans. Are we moving backwards through the internet??
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.
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You don't need a credit card to sign up for paypal, that's the point.
Duh.
But you need a checking account and what checking account nowadays does not offer a free VISA debt card?
Does it make any sense that this person lets you use a credit card on Ebay to pay for $50 gift certificate when the purpose of his $16 markup is to allow someone to pay when they don't have a credit card? I guess you'd have to be pretty stupid to fall for this one....
Ah-ha.
That answers my other question. I suppose this means that I shouldn't be buying that gift certificate if I don't already have an iTunes account?
I have to believe that anyone who's willing to pay for downloadable music are the type of people who have a credit card. Those without credit cards, students mainly, are still getting their music from Kazaa and the ilk.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
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
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!
Markup: $16 on $50 certificate
Hmm, I wonder if this is an intelligent decision.
Sounds like the ?? right before Profit! to me.
(In reality, they only accept PayPal, but they have icons for all the above. Misleading design.)
There's only 5 digits on that counter. I wonder how many times that thing has rolled over since this story's posting :)
~~Dan
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
It seems to me like apple would make a killing if they sold the certificates in their stores (at face value, of course!). It would make a great gift-item, and would be an impulse-buy for many (read: this is the kind of thing that mall-shoppers would buy)
Or would that violate the agreement between Apple (Computer) and Apple (Records)?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Hey! I know this particular auction is only open to people in the US but how long will it take before someone starts selling gift certificates to non US residents?
The gift certificate section on the iTMS doesn't say that non US residents can't receive them.
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.
Why go to all the hassle and bad publicity of a C&D when, with a little extra effort, they could just quietly refuse to sell gift certificates to anyone who orders more than a couple at a time, or just pull the gift certificate product altogether for a month or so. Anyone want to take bets on it happening that way?
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
here is my listing
When punk rock is outlawed, only outlaws will have punk rock.
Umm... you can't bid. It's set price only. You can click buy now...
Geez, you guys know that anytime an auction gets in the news, Mr. Kevin Pursglove (whatever his name) issues a cute little statement along the lines of "we are investigating the auction".
Then the next day, the auction is pulled for some obscure reason: "the seller created and posted the auction between 10pm and 11pm from a state that outlaws ferret hunting during summer months. Persuant to section 573, paragraph 43 of the eBay user agreement, which we just updated last night just for this guy, where it says we can pull an auction for any goddamn reason, we went ahead and pulled the auction, even though 60,000 others just like it are still up and running."
In other words, eBay pulls it at the drop of a hat.
I bet PayPal (owned by eBay) has some stuff buried in their terms that they can use also.
So Apple should not sell music from the big 5 because they want to support indie music and strike down the RIAA. They don't care about name recognition, money, or selling iPods. This is all about you and your hatred for the RIAA. Seriously, they let indie music labels use iTMS. I think you are asking a bit much.
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.
YAWAM???
Be honest, that word is just YAAPOOYA
(Yet Another Acronym Pulled Out Of Your Ass)
~Z
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
"Open the IPOD bay doors Steve"..... "I am sorry, I cannot do that Bill"
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
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
By the way, how do you mod posts anyways?
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My experience is that
- Peter
INsigNIFICANT
I can just see the eBay web architect in his design when choosing to have a counter on each listing saying:
"5 digits on the counter should be enough for any listing"
bwahahahaha
One of the largest obsticles to buying music online is using a credit card. There are still many who don't trust it. Granted, this isn't the crowd that itunes apeals to most (older folks who don't trust technology).
Still, I bet that there are MILLIONS of teens out there, all downloading online music - mostly hit singles, WITHOUT acess to a credit card. What apple needs to start doing is selling music cards, with set amounts of dollars on each (ala pay-as-you-go cell phones).
This would allow teens to buy music cards anywhere : I'm sure 7-11 would be up for carrying them simply because of the increased foot traffic in their stores. Also, Apple could even make "collectable" graphics on each (perhaps artists on iTunes). At least its something tangable...the kid with the most iTunes cards is the coolest in the class.
I'm guessing that i'll get a lot of responces saying "that's what the allowences are for". give me a break, I know that my parents wouldn't have given me a music allowence. There needs to be a better solution.
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
That's kinda cute... so the middle man gets your quarter, *and* a copy of your song. Does their DRM counter that that all?
I write code.
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)
Seeing as the product is only available on Windows and MacOS, isn't this something of a strange attitude to have?
-
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!