How to Transfer Money!

For the first time since I have been using computers and the internet (since the early eighties, that is), I am at a loss for how to transfer money online.  Oh, sure I know how to use the absolutely perfect system, PayPal, and knew immediately (when I first signed on with PayPal) how, in a heartbeat, to transfer money from my PayPal account to my bank account…but this is an unusual (and maddening) transaction I need to make.  Here’s the story, in case anyone cares.

As a freelance writer who prefers telecommuting (not caring much for people—who let us down left and right, more so in person), I find my gigs, do my research, do the writing, and invoice and get paid for the writing all online.  This should interest you who wish to do the same, if even to help you avoid the nightmare I have just experienced.  Anyway.  I have worked online for a little over two years.  Two months ago I “contracted” with a company to write articles, which, as their website thoroughly defined, would be paid for by them through the writer’s choice of either PayPal, Western Union, or e-gold well it's nice to have a choice!. 

Again, I prefer to transfer money through PayPal, as it is easy—easier than learning to tie shoes is learning how to set up an account, transfer money, get paid, etc..  I checked out e-gold and was not impressed.  Though minimalist in website design, it is also minimalist in information dispensation and in client services.  And Western Union is fine if you are about to be evicted and Mommy sends you a wired amount of dough from her IRA account, but Western U also charges a hefty chunk to do so.  So I took on this project knowing they used the ever dependable, reliable, and long-standing PayPal to transfer money online.

Transfer Money Online

When time to pay me/us came around, they started posting notes on the writer boards, saying they were “having trouble” with their PayPal accounts and would we all please open e-gold accounts if we wanted to be paid on time; otherwise, they said, it would be a week or more through PayPal.  I stuck with accepting the week or more option, as again I had no interested in hunks of metal in place of real US Dollars.  Though, I WAS questioning how such a big company could have “trouble” with PayPal, considering how easy it is to send, receive, and transfer money…UNLESS they were bullshitting about implying trouble and instead were greedily screwing someone somewhere along the way and found that impossible to do with PayPal which is so easy to transfer money online.

After ten days of no pay, I invoiced and waited, invoiced again and waited, emailed and waited, called and waited.  I was ignored, given the de-railing maneuver of “please invoice this XXX account instead of this YYY account, and could not reach anyone by phones—which either just ring and ring or give a voice recording that “no one is available”…CLICK….  I finally, after doing an intensive investigation of these freaks, found out they were not paying other writers either, were buying brand new homes in states 3,000 miles away from where their addresses indicated they were, and were decidedly going to blow me/us off, finally “spammed” their writer boards…as no other address or phone number was real, no way to communicate left me pissed.  All I wanted to do was to transfer some money online!

Well, as soon as I posted on the 20 boards the question of why we were not getting paid or emailed or answered by phone, they emailed me to open an e-gold account.  Arggh.  I figured the only way to get anything from these frauds was to do this.  (I could sue—ugh—if I had to after the e-gold fell through, if it did.) 

Transfering Money Online

So I create yet ANOTHER online username and password—information I have to now remember blahblah complicating my accounting, records, and cluttering an already involved brain.  The company paid fairly immediately then (though only half of what they owed, making up bogus excuses and acting all punitive, and again bulling.  (As an attentive, timely, and effective performer for them, I was certainly not treated as they announced they treated writers.  Be careful when someone doth protest too much, though.  I should have seen the red flags, but, oh, well, that was an inexpensive lesson….)

Okay, so with four credit card bills, an IRS debt I make monthly payments on, a friend to whom I owe rent money, and an unusual need for food, electricity, and an ISP/phone connection, I now had the money I needed to pay up.  Or did I?  I did NOT.  I instead had a hunk of gold or silver or platinum bullion.  No, I had less than one unit of metal, as the dollar amount in my “account” did not reach the equivalent etc. etc.  yak yak.  I could not transfer money from e-gold, as they don’t DO that.  I could not get paid by check or transfer of money, as they don’t DO that, either.

They do, however, REWARD clients for referrals.  So the company with whom I started two months ago, the company who boasted of having 500 happy writers, and the company who was “having trouble with PayPal” was in all actuality amassing chunks of rock that are of some value to someone other than myself.  I aint Candide.  And this aint El Dorado. I don’t want lumps of meaningless crap.  Give me my &^$$#@ money!