Bitcoin Forum

Today just reminded me why we should avoid all these centralized services like the plague.  >:(

One online retailer <I will not mention names> started their Black Friday earlier this year and it is a absolute mess. They do not process transactions directly, but opted to use a payment processor. Let's call this payment processor, PayX for this example.

Ok, the retailer started very early to beat it's competition, so naturally it's online website was hammered with visitors and it was very slow.

I placed my order for some goods and I was redirected to PayX to do the payment, but PayX cannot handle all the traffic, so they cannot process the payment. The payment processor also redirect you to your Bank to verify the transaction, but the re-direction does not work. <overloaded with requests>

The problem is as follows :

1. Goods on special have limited quantities.
2. If your payment is not processed within a specific time, then your claim on that product is nullified and you lose the deal.

So, due to payment problems, my deals did not go through and I lost almost $1000 in saving from the goods that were on special. !!!!

If they used Bitcoin as a direct payment option, then we would not have had these problems. I made several Bitcoin transactions over the last couple of months and most was confirmed within the first 10 minutes. <SegWit>

Let's avoid payment processors and third party payment methods at all cost and just pay directly from one Bitcoin address to the next on the Blockchain or better yet, via the Lightning Network if you need more speed.  ;)

Yes avoid them but wait a second because our off-block lightning network is a system of centralized banking nodes if you care to look.

Nope I think we need to embrace centralized servers, best thing since sliced bread they are not that anyone is making much bred around here
as the price of BTC has not stopped going down since "Virtually free fees" hit $55 per transaction ten months ago.

Software developers like myself who understand these things did try to warn you all but the gambling addicts thought they knew better !

I should have made this thread "self-moderated" to get rid of this rubbish, because the trolls/shills are back in full force again. We not talking about centralized servers, but rather centralized services.  ::)

I am not even going to waste my breath on attempting to counter your LN statement, because I am not in the mood to feed the trolls. Go boast about your bogus predictions in someone else's thread, this thread is for genuine discussion on the disadvantages of using 3rd party services.  >:(

I've been there. My experience with payment processors is rather bad. I used to use a shopping site, one of the big ones. After the purchase they redirect you to a payment processor that then takes you to your bank login site where you enter an sms code and are done with. The problem is that the shopping site awaits confirmation from the processor and basically gets stuck if it doesn't come. 90% of times it goes through, but sometimes it doesn't. Possible problems? It lags so much that it doesn't redirect you to your bank. It redirects you to your bank but you don't get sms code for some reason. If you were logged into your bank dashboard you could resend it, but the payment processor doesn't give you full bank account access, only a small window with transaction details, so if you don't get the code on your first try you're fucked and have to wait until the shopping site finally gets it that the confirmation is not coming and allows you to restart the process. I also got redirected to a scam processors a fes times, you have to watch out for that.

This will always be a problem on centralized services on holidays, especially if they have something on special and everyone is eager to get the best deals available. This has happened to me once on a cheap game key store (I guess you know what that is) and as I was about to hit "process request" on the website, it crashed, and the 90% off promo for the game I was to buy suddenly went back to its original price and I was charged the whole amount. It also happened to me on a black friday sale last year, and I remember it was a SSD off a tech-website. I waited at least 15 minutes to get to their checkout screen and pay, but the redirection, too, didn't work and the last thing I know is that the item is no longer available due to depleted stocks, mostly due to the payment processor's fault since they can't handle too many requests.