Daz3D sales - watch out for compliance checks on PayPal payments

andrew_0e7e92f999

I often have enjoyed taking advantage of the occasional really good sales offers at Daz3d like yesterdays items for less than $3. To minimise cross currency charges the PayPal option has always worked really well.....until yesterday. After placing the order at Daz3d, I completed payment at PayPal, only to receive an email to say that for regulatory compliance reasons my payment had been marked "Pending" until it could be reviewed. Last night my account at Daz3d showed the order as pending, as did PayPal. Today, Daz3d shows as "Failed" and PayPal as still "Pending". Finding no answer in the PayPal help files, or the message bot, or the phone bot, I eventually tried the trigger word of "complaint", and was transferred to a human, but was then cut off! On the second attempt I actually spoke to a very knowledgeable and helpful guy who explained the process (apparently randomly selected payments!), confirmed that my payment wouldn't be sent through as Daz3d by then had cancelled from their end at 00:00 Daz time, and that when the PayPal review was completed my account would be refunded. The items I was going to buy at yesterday's discount prices can wait until the next time they're on offer. I don't know whether its just a UK random compliance check, but at least I now know just how being randomly selected can waste a lot of time that could be spent browsing Daz3d! Hopefully Daz3d will forgive one "Failed" transaction after hundreds of successful ones ;-)

MelissaGT

Not sure if it's an available option outside the US, but I always use the Amazon Pay option. 

andrew_0e7e92f999

Thanks for the suggestion, but I think I'll instead just pre-buy a big gift card (and the flash sale earlier today fit the bill perfectly), and then just use the store credit up. The second bit of luck today was that all the items I wanted in yesterday's sale were still available as that sale was accessible. It's all worked out okay, and I've now got some more 3D assests to torture my aging PC with!

FirstBastion

Having store credit available by purchasing a gift card is a good way to be prepared for those small quick transactions. Buying a gift card when offered with a discount is even better.

namffuak

I've only used my credit card here in the last 3+ years to buy gift cards and whatever item I need to purchase at the same time to get the maximum discount on the gift card. And I always jump on the 20% discount on gift cards. The net result is that over 95% of my purchases are done with discounted store credit and I have no small repetitive charges showing up on my credit cards.

The down side is that I tend to purchase some items I really don't need just because they look very interesting.

Silas3D

This has been a problem in the past with certain bundles/products, where for some reason certain product names have been flagged.

It happened to me on the Cleopatra Egyptian Bundle and in the end DAZ had to make some adjustments so that PayPal could be used. By that point the sale was over, but they were very good in making the difference up in store credit or a refund (I think it was store credit IIRC).