Need to tell you guys who donate by phone to stop even trying until Inso can get a new provider sorted out. Kambi's welched on its promise of keeping its service going until a particular date and people are no longer able to use it, they're trying, but nothing's happening.
Inso
is looking into a replacement, in the meantime I encourage those of you who can to use Paypal instead, as it is the most cost effective method. Meaning that more of your donation actually comes to us, instead of lining the carrier's pockets.
Paypal works in a similar way; with the more you give in one go, the smaller their fees, so we get more of the donation.
If I can break it down quickly, these are Paypal's transaction fees for donations:
..................................................Amount you donate ..... Paypal fee .....Percentage......Amount we get
.................................................. ...........$2.50
.................... 39c
-............. 15.6%
-..............$2.11
.................................................. .............$5
.....................- 47c
-............. 9.4%
-...............$4.53
.................................................. ............$10
....................- 64c
............... 6.4%
-...............$9.36
.................................................. ............$25
-................... $1.15
............. 4.6%
-..............$23.85
.................................................. ............$50
-................... $2
-................ 4%
-..................$48
To explain those:
If you made 4 seperate donations of $2.50 (which some people do) then Paypal will take 39c for each donation, so what Mene actually gets from that $10 total is $8.44.
Where as if you donated $10 in one got, we'd get $9.36, nearly a whole dollar more in our pockets instead of Paypal's!
But even Paypal's highest fleecing is still only
half that of the
cheapest carrier fees for SMS donations. They take 30% of a transaction at the
very least, and they take that much no matter how much you donate. These fees vary per country, up through the rediculous to the unbelievable. If you live in Argentina the fee from the company Inso is considering switching to is a staggering 89% (so if you donated $10, and all we'd get would be $1.10!!)
Bearing in mind that it's the mobile phone companies levying these charges, not the SMS donation provider. It's people like T-Mobile etc. that are charging these exorbitant rates just to pass a message and some funds along.
Yes, well
As I'm sure you've picked up on, the SMS donation racket get me a bit ticked off! Really gets me mad how these companies are taking so much money from our pockets for doing basically nothing >_>
So yes! TL;DR version...
Kambi dead, use Paypal if you possibly can, and we'll hopefully have a new service soon! And if it's at all possible for you to switch to using Paypal permanently, you'll be benefitting us as we'll get more of your much appreciated donation
Just to add...because I'm not done being mad about SMS fees yet today!
As well as the carrier's fees, the SMS provider has a fee too. OneBip's is 10%. If your sales volume for one particular country is above a certain amount for one month then OneBip's fee just for that country goes down to 6% for just the next month, or 3% if you have truly massive sales ( for the UK the 6% target is £2,000. 3% is £40,000...so we would never get a cheaper rate)
So if someone donated $10 who's country's carrier fee was 40%, we'd only get HALF of that $10 because of the combined carrier and provider fees. :(
