Message from the Guide to Chodosh regarding advice on taking credit card payments

[Yoseph Herman]

A few weeks ago I sent out a request for technical help to allow the  Guide
to Chodosh to accept subscriptions by credit card. The response was HUGE. I
really want to thank all those kind people who took the time out to forward
to me their suggestions. I regret that due to the number of such emails, I
cannot respond to each as I should. Rather let me list here the suggestions
that I think I will try to follow. Then I will list the other ideas and my
comments on them. I will also state a few words about why and in what form
I will not use the Internet.

Special thanks to the number of people who have offered to volunteer the
use of their free time to help us. I have kept your names on file in case
this would be needed.

I believe that one of the following choices will be given to those who want
to subscribe with their credit cards.

·         Have people call a phone number. An automatic system will ask a
series of questions (name, phone number, address, credit card number, etc).
This information will be forwarded to us by secure, encrypted fashion. We
will enter the data into a credit card payment system which has already
been established.

·         We will mail out a renewal/order form with the next Chodosh
Bulletin being sent by US mail to the subscribers. This would include the
credit card option which could be faxed to us.

·         People could request this same order form by email. They could
either print it out and fax it to us, or they could email it back. However
we will provide a secure means of sending your credit card information,
since ordinary email is not secure.

Regarding other suggestions. Here are my comments:

·         The most frequent suggestion was to use PayPal. However, PayPal
only takes orders on line. That is, if you are on the internet then you
could access PayPal to place your orders. Since I am trying to avoid the
use the internet, PayPal is not applicable. They also do not take orders by
phone calls.

·         Have people call a phone number, such as a voice mail box on the
Hot Line, or Google Voice and record all necessary information. The problem
is that many items of information are required and some may be left out or
not be clearly pronounced in such recordings.

·         Have people mail in credit card orders by US mail. This is
certainly possible. However, I am trying to avoid the use of US mail for a
variety of technical reasons (such as time delays, lost mail, and others).
 Instead we would allow faxes.

·         Pay a yeshiva or similar organization to have their secretarial
staff take our phone orders. It is doubtful that any such organization
would be able to commit their staff to do this with any priority, even if
we make a moderate contribution to them.

·         Leave a message on the Hot Line when people could be called back
to take their orders. My experience has been that calling people back is an
exercise in frustration and time wasting. Lines are busy, a child answers,
momy is not home, etc.

·         Use email to access some third-party web site indirectly. I am
trying to avoid the use of the internet, and ordinary email is not secure.

My apologies to Xchange Telecom, the company that provides the Chodosh Hot
Line service. I stated in my previous message that they were not responsive
to my requests for help. This is not true. In fact they made repeated
attempts to answer me by email. For some reason I still do not understand,
all those emails were rejected by my server. (I did check my spam filters.
These messages were not stopped there.)

Finally, a few more words about the use of the internet. I received a psak
many years ago not to do anything to encourage the use of the internet and
web sites. At that time The decision was made to allow the use of email but
not web sites. There is no question that the use of a web site would make
the operation of the Chodosh project more efficient and easier to access.
However the Chodosh Project is here to serve H-ashem and violating piskei
halacha is not consistent with that goal. The recent Kinus at Citi Field in
New York very forcefully underlined the validity of this policy.

Yoseph Herman
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