Skrill?

[OldProf]

I'm currently in Italy again and being victimized by yet another lesson about when "international commerce" ceases to be international.

For years, I've used PayPal to purchase many things, including DLC packages, based on my (concealed) American credit card. Although PayPal pretends to be international, I cannot open either its U.S. or Italy site with Firefox or Internet Explorer using my Italian computer. The real disaster here is that a number of sites, including E-Bay, now run all credit card payments through PayPal, thus blocking all my attempts to buy from them.

A couple of days ago, I tried to purchase one of the Budd RDC packs from Trains and Drivers, which sells from Germany. All went well until payment time. T&D uses a supposedly international money mediator called Skrill, which was absolutely unable to deal with my American credit card. International my foot!!!!! I've looked at some of Skrill's help pages and it seems that I would have to open an account with them, which would automatically draw money from my credit card that I could then use to make international payments. Compared to PayPal, that's one extra layer of complication.

I've been corresponding with Andreas, who suggests that I pay him directly using Skrill, but I do not have an account with them and do not know how trustworthy they are. So, I'd like to hear from other forum members who use this service.