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Premium Member FAQs Wand

Can I pay with a check or money order?

Absolutely! Please make checks or money orders (in US dollars) out to Ryan Carpenter and be sure to include your member # so we know who the premium membership is for!

Log into your account to find your member #—it’s located near the beginning of your profile page. Then send your payment to:

Ryan Carpenter
PO Box 16131
Seattle, WA 98116

I don’t have (or want) a PayPal account—do you take debit or credit cards?
Credit card

The electronic payment option takes you to PayPal’s website, but don’t let that scare you off. They will try to trick you into creating a PayPal account, but you don’t have to!. In recent years, they’ll even make it look like you have to create an account, but you do not!

I have taken some screenshots of the process in April 2025 from a laptop. Depending on your device, browser, location, etc., things might look a little different. And over time, PayPal will update and change their website, so consider this a sample of what you might see and how to pay with a credit card without creating a PayPal account.

PayPal signup page
Step 1:

On the first page, it asks for your login or to create an account. Nothing indicates that you can ’pay as a guest,‘ but don’t let that scare you off.

Do NOT use the “Create an Account”—instead enter your email as if you were logging into an existing account.

PayPal will need your email just to send confirmations of payments and such anyhow, even if you don’t create an account with them.

NOTE: The link at the bottom refers to canceling and returning you to ’Atlas Quest“—I run several websites and originally set up my PayPal account for that. So don’t worry if you see references to Atlas Quest. PayPal only let’s me create one account even though I run several websites, so I use the one account for all my website needs.

PayPal signup page
Step 2:

Most of this page is the typical stuff for filling out credit card transactions. It needs to know your card information, billing address, contact information, etc.

Fill all that out normally, but be careful near the end of the page. There is a checkbox that is automatically checked to create a PayPal account and to create a password. They’re trying to trick you into creating an account again!

Uncheck the checkbox. That area where the red arrow is pointing.

PayPal signup page
Step 3:

If you unselected the ‘create an account’ option, you’ll find that the “Create Account & Pay Now” button turns into a “Pay now as guest” button.

You can tell PayPal isn’t happy that you did this because the button changes from all the words being capitalized to all the words being lowercase. That’s PayPal’s way of frowning at you, but ignore it.

This is as far as I could go without actually giving PayPal a credit card number, but I’m sure there will be a confirmation page with your information and more attempts to trick you into creating an account, but as you can see, it is NOT required.

If, somehow, you accidentally do create an account, you can always have it deleted. It’s more time and effort so best to avoid that in the first place if you really are determined not to have a PayPal account.

I know it’s a hassle to go through PayPal to pay with a credit card, and I’m sorry for that, but I’m a one-man team and honestly, I don’t feel comfortable storing or processing credit card transactions myself directly from Walking 4 Fun. I try to keep this website as secure as possible, but I’m not an expert on such matters and don’t want to be responsible for really sensitive information like credit card numbers in case a hacker ever did get into the website. And frankly, PayPal probably has a lot smarter people than me about how to keep your personal information private!

How do I cancel a premium membership?

If it has been less than 30 days since you subscribed, contact us and Ryan will handle it as quickly as possible. If he is hiking a new route for Walking 4 Fun, it could be a week or two before he gets online to reply—there is often not much Internet access where he is hiking! Please be patient! He’ll still give you the full refund even if it ends up being more than 30 days before he can reply—the 30-day money-back guarantee counts as long as your message is timestamped within 30 days of your initial payment.

Refunds will be provided in the same manner that payment was sent. PayPal payments will be refunded to your PayPal account. Debit and credit card transactions will be refunded to your debit or credit card. Personal checks (and money orders) will be mailed to you as a check. (If this applies to you, do let Ryan know who to make the check out to and where to mail it.)

After 30 days, there are no refunds. We can cancel the premium membership if you wish, but you may as well just let it run out on its own. We never automatically renew a premium membership!

Can I pay in currencies other than US dollars?

The nice thing about sending payments through PayPal—they’ll convert all sorts of currencies into US dollars for you automatically!

So no, I only accept US dollars, but it’s easy to pay with dozens or maybe even hundreds of currencies through PayPal. They will do the conversions automatically.

For checks and money orders, they must be denominated in US dollars. While I do not recommend sending cash through the mail, I won’t refuse it either! Round off the amount to the nearest dollar, though. No coins!

When does my premium membership expire?
If you log into Walking 4 Fun, we can tell you! Right now, we have no idea who you are!