English Chess Forum

Is anyone else having trouble with PaySubsOnline?

When I login to renew my membership the menu bar contains only two items: Member Details and Payment. There is no option to renew or change membership category and the payment page refuses to take any payment (presumably because the 2016-7 membership is paid and it hasn't let me renew for 2017-8).

I have tried two different browsers with and without adblocker. I did notice in both browsers that when I click Member Details a more complete menu bar (containing an item called something like Subscriptions) flashes up for about a milli-second before reverting to the two item version.

I can't even get that far. The program steadfastly refuses to recognise my password, even saying when I try to reset it that the two identical phrases do not match.
The office was unable to renew my membership when I gave in and tried phoning.

I experienced similar difficulties (first it wouldn't log me in, then claimed my passwords didn't agree when I tried to change it). Then I tried the older version of my email address (googlemail instead of gmail) and I was able to login and renew. It looks like a case of poor error checking/ messages, it certainly doesn't diagnose an incorrect email address correctly!

Since Andrew sent out the renewal email midweek, the office has received many phone calls from members wishing to renew their membership. Some have told us they have tried and failed to renew on-line (I would say around 20 from a total of 80 or so calls we received since Wednesday afternoon). Compare this to the many hundreds of Paypal payments that were made on Wednesday night successfully.

It is true that PaySubsOnline is not the smoothest membership system, and it does have a few known glitches that can catch out the unwary and cause frustration. The most common problems are as follows:

- "Unable to get a payment to go through using Paypal": this is possibly the most common error. There is no known fault with PSO specifically, and as far as we can tell, payments do not go through because of user error (such as inputting an incorrect card number), a break in the internet connection, or a bank genuinely refusing to make a payment. Inability to make the payment is not normally the fault of PSO. On a very few occasions (a handful in the past year), a payment is made but membership is not automatically updated. These can be resolved once we are made aware.
- "I can't log-in" (because I am using a different email address than that recorded on PSO). PSO is not so intuitive (thankfully) to judge that an email address is "close enough", and thus potentially let any old hacker in. You must use the exact email address that is on your membership record. If you can't change it yourself, contact us and we can do it.
- "I can't log-in" (because I have forgotten my password). We are unable to reset passwords in the office. When using the forgotten password facility, you should not use the auto-fill facility in your browser because it might remember your old (forgotten) password. After resetting your password, when you then log in, I would advise you to type in your entire email address and password again.

Aside from juniors with a free membership, and juniors who are 18 on 31st August who therefore become an adult for membership purposes, all accounts should have been given the same level of membership that you finished up with on 30th June 2017. Should anyone wish to renew at a different level, after logging in, choose "payment", and use the drop down menu. If a member did not renew their membership by 30th June 2017, then no payment will have been set up and you will need to contact us at the office.

Aside from the above, we can only give general advice, because everyone's system is different: make sure your browser is up to date; try using another browser if you have problems; unless you are very experienced, avoid using a smart phone...

Finally, we will try to help as much as we can at the office, so if you remain unable to renew your membership on-line please do contact us. At the very least we can take a payment over the phone and update your membership manually. Please note that whilst emails will still be monitored, due to essential engineering works in the vacinity of the Battle Office (see the main website), our phone lines will only be open for one hour from 9.30 and 15.30 each day in the coming week.

Gary Willson

It's behaving differently for me with different browsers.

If I use Firefox it asks me for a Username and Password and then tells me "Invalid username and password. Please retry" when I try to log in.

If I use Internet Explorer it asks me for a Username, First name and Password and logs me in successfully when I provide them.

As the fields displayed on the screen vary between the browsers that must be a problem that's down to PaySubOnline. Curiously, they say that Internet Explorer is not one of their supported browsers and people should use either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

I have just successfully logged on using the FireFox browser to the site: https://paysubsonline.com/club_software ... gn_in.aspx

It requests:
(i) Email address and
(ii) password (for PaySubsOnline account)

It functions correctly.

Michael Flatt wrote:I have just successfully logged on using the FireFox browser to the site: https://paysubsonline.com/club_software ... gn_in.aspx

That link works for me as well. But if you use the link on the ECF website you're taken to https://paysubsonline.com/Login/9967EB1 ... C08722.htm, which gives the error I mentioned above when using Firefox.

Well spotted, Ian.
The obvious solution is for the ECF to update the link on its own website.
Problem solved!

This doesn't solve the problem for me. I can login but there is no menu option to renew my subscription. Behaviour is the same on Firefox, Chrome and Edge.

I get the identical problem on PC and smartphone, so it is nothing to do with (e.g.) ad blockers or anti-virus software. The problem is very definitely with paysubsonline.

Thanks to Gary Willson, who took the trouble to phone me, the problem is now sorted. Although PaySubsOnline allowed me to login there was confusion in the system between old and new email addresses. However, I have now been able to renew. Thanks Gary.

Reading this I'm thanking my lucky stars I had the good sense to fork out for a 3 year subscription last year. I'm hoping they have a much smoother system in place in 2 years time when my renewal is due. Even better would be to reinstate the option to pay for 3 years and save players and the office the pain of struggling with annual renewals.

Brian Towers wrote:Reading this I'm thanking my lucky stars I had the good sense to fork out for a 3 year subscription last year. I'm hoping they have a much smoother system in place in 2 years time when my renewal is due. Even better would be to reinstate the option to pay for 3 years and save players and the office the pain of struggling with annual renewals.

The link on the ECF goes to an old login page which seems to offer limited options.

If you use the latest PaySubOnline login page it does all you ask: https://paysubsonline.com/club_software ... gn_in.aspx

I successfully upgraded my 3-year Bronze to 3-year Gold.

After reading all the responses, I tried to renew using the link from the Federation membership page, and it failed, again.
I then tried using the link suggested by Michael Flatt, and succeeded in renewing my membership at the first attempt. Thank you Michael.