Ibill Really Fucks Up!!!!!!

[Shap]

Ok, I'm really really pissed.

ALL IBILL CLIENTS NEED TO LOOK OVER YOUR July 14th Charges.

On our account, ibill double and QUADRUPLE charged EVERY ONE OF OUR REBILLS!!!!!! Nice going. Way to bring on the chargebacks and pissed off clients. We've been patient but this is the end IBILL!

Any of you other guys seem the same thing? Quiet, this happen to you?

What a way to start my Saturday. 100s of members to email, cancel, refund both charges, and hope they rejoin. No way I'm going to risk a chargeback for ibills sorry lame excuse of a processing. Hey John Perry and gang at Ibill

[chowda]

... they suck assholes, dirty ones straight from the porcelain

[loverboy]

chargebacks? Ibill is the name

[debbieN]

hey Chowda,

the url to sextracker for one of my sites is http://ranks.sextracker.com/spn.html...SM&pg=0-0.html

bondage4all is one of the tgps I partner with.

hope to see you at Internext.

I use Probilling, Globosale, and Globill. My charge back rate is .05%. I like that.

[katdaddy]

hang i nthere Big Shap

[chowda]

Originally posted by debbieN
hey Chowda,

the url to sextracker for one of my sites is http://ranks.sextracker.com/spn.html...SM&pg=0-0.html

bondage4all is one of the tgps I partner with.

hope to see you at Internext.

I use Probilling, Globosale, and Globill. My charge back rate is .05%. I like that.

i cant make it to the one in florida, i got guest coming over and i gotta show them montreal, are u on msn? im on that too we can discuss there.

[angelsofporn]

is that what that is? ..i'm seeing huge rebills for the past few days..way more than should have been..it's an affiliate account though so i cant see names etc......if this is true that would be horrible.....like i say every once in a while..ibill always has these problems on a weekend...problem always starts on friday and continues through the weekend and no one deals with it until they get thier asses back in the office on monday

[AdultKing]

Why do people use iBill ?

[Tipsy]

If that's happened on a lot of accounts it's just scary. Mind you, even happening on one account is a scary thing.

[Tipsy]

Originally posted by OzMedia
Why do people use iBill ?

Because burying your head in the sand is far too easy for many people.

[MediumPimpin]

I have a huge amount also, looks like they were running behind on the 14th but they are not doubles.

[Shap]

Just talked to Ibill. Apparently it happened company wide.

July 14th double charges to all CC and Check rebills.
July 17th triple charges for all Online Check rebills.

I'm guessing all ibill clients are seeing the same thing. How are you guys dealing with this? I know in the past ibill has made this mistake, however I think then they caught it before it hit their credit card statements. This time it hit their credit card statements so it looks like we double charged them. We all know how long it takes ibill to refund people. Jettis refunds people instantly. Ibill likes to wait 10 to 14 days.

[Fletch XXX]

Way to go iBill. Fucking idiots.

This is gonna hurt for some of you.

Sucks.

[Catalinas]

I got double charged for a membership on the 17th, but then the next day they credited it without me having to call them. That was surprising. Of course, by this time I was already totally irritated and pissed because I was searching for this second membership, thinking I had two different ones. Blah..

[cherrylula]

That level of incompetence is so bad, and to think it will reflect on some really nice sites and their owners in the eyes of surfers is really a shame.

[Peaches]

Originally posted by Tipsy


Because burying your head in the sand is far too easy for many people.

Or this is recurring traffic (see "rebills") and they AREN'T using Ibill for new signups.

[AdultKing]

With all the focus of the credit card companies on chargebacks and rebills, this could not have come at a worse time.

iBill is doing no favours for this industry, whether you use them or not, they're making mistakes which affect consumer confidence.

It is likely that iBills pathetic customer service will turn this bad situiation into something worse.

[Shap]

Cherrylula that is exactly what I told ibill. Here we are running a business in an industry where our clients don't trust us. They've been screwed over by scams and we have to work extra hard to earn their trust. Then out of the blue they get double charged. All that hard work is out the window.


Hey Kev, I looked over our accounts and noticed that not all of our account saw double billing. Luckily for us it was only our biggest sub accounts. Our older account (pre nov 2002) were ok. It looks like they ran the rebills before noon and then double charged everybody in the afternoon.

[Stallion]

I feel sorry for you guys that still use them. I would run quick. That ship has been sunk long ago.

[jimmyf]

Originally posted by Tipsy


Because burying your head in the sand is far too easy for many people.

How come you're right sometimes.

[Shap]

I agree 100% Oz. Today is July 19th. Any guess when the chargebacks for these irrate customers would start pouring in? You guessed it, right around OCTOBER 1st. Perfect timing.

[Juicy D. Links]

I just woke up

[Jimbo]

Originally posted by shap
Cherrylula that is exactly what I told ibill. Here we are running a business in an industry where our clients don't trust us. They've been screwed over by scams and we have to work extra hard to earn their trust. Then out of the blue they get double charged. All that hard work is out the window.


Hey Kev, I looked over our accounts and noticed that not all of our account saw double billing. Luckily for us it was only our biggest sub accounts. Our older account (pre nov 2002) were ok. It looks like they ran the rebills before noon and then double charged everybody in the afternoon.

shap I just e-mailed you please check mail ;)

[Stallion]

Shap,

like you said earlier I would take the proactive approach and contact each customer and refund them the "extra chargers" and explain to them what happened and that should help out some as far as chargebacks.

Don't let them deal with Ibill Support or otherwise you are likely to have them all chargeback.

[Catalinas]

Or they may have already been refunded as I have... maybe Ibill is already taking care of things??? Like I said before, my double charge got refunded without me calling or emailing anyone, it was either Ibill or the site owners. If you use Ibill, you should check your reports to see if refunds are being processed already.

[jimmyf]

Originally posted by Stallion
Shap,

Don't let them deal with Ibill Support or otherwise you are likely to have them all chargeback.

I know this isn't funny 2 you people that use ibill but I have to tell you it's funny as hell to me. Anyone else? What a mess.

[Tipsy]

Originally posted by jimmyf
How come you're right sometimes.

I get lucky sometimes. Post enough random crap and sometimes it'll hit the nail on the head

Peaches - very true for some although for many they are still processing new stuff and keeping that head burried and/or making excuses. The remark was obviously not aimed at the people you mention. The really sad thing is that iBill have the ability to be one of the best. Seems they can never get the management capable of doing it though.

[Asthma]

i think ibills doors are ready to close

[SpeakEasy]

Originally posted by Fletch XXX
Way to go iBill. Fucking idiots.

This is gonna hurt for some of you.

Sucks.

It only can hurt the morons that still use ibill.......most people with a 1/2 a brain jumped ship months ago.

[Drake]

Thank goodness I only ever used them for 1-900 billing.

[tony286]

In cmi when looking up the single day do you see their names multiple times, the reason I am asking is everything looks normal on mine.

[AdultKing]

Originally posted by SpeakEasy


It only can hurt the morons that still use ibill.......most people with a 1/2 a brain jumped ship months ago.

Given that iBill still has a significant client base, such a monumental mistake hurts all of us.

As I said before, in this climate of scrutiny and system tweaking by the card associations, anything which can diminish consumer confidence is bad for all of us.

Companies like iBill do this industry no favours.

[Shap]

KICK ASS! It looks like CMI is on it's way down.


Tony, a percentage of them show up in cmi, however we are seeing alot of people email in that aren't showing up twice in the cmi.

[Ludedude]

Don't worry...the CMI being fuckabazoo doesn't affect anything but reporting. All other systems are normal.

[jcnlv]

These types of problems are not limited to iBill. It happened to us with a different processor.

We had the same thing happen with Epoch in Jan. of 2000.
Dozens of recurring accounts over a 2-3 day period were affected. Some were charged as many as 8 times!

A Y2k glitch we were told. (failure to update software is what we heard from other sources)

I wish I could tell you that everything ultimately worked out OK for us. But it did not.

At first Epoch told us not to worry - they would take care of it. It took several days and then when they finally did do the refunds to all of the overcharged accounts they refunded TWICE the amount they should have - almost $9,000 too much!

We were using them for "transaction processing only" through our own merchant account. So the double refunds all came out of our merchant account! We contacted our merchant bank and explained the situation. They were helpful and told us that it would be in our best interest to handle this all ourselves. We were now faced with trying to recover incorrectly refunded charges, while doing damage control with all affected members and our merchant bank. We emailed, called, wrote letters, referenced and cross referenced bank records and spent many 18 hour days trying to get everything back in order.

The process dragged on for weeks -- many of the over-refunds were uncollectible, as the credit card accounts had been closed (when they suddenly saw 8 deposits of $29.95 to their accounts), or had insufficient balances to cover the charges.... a collection nightmare. We received daily, 3-4 nasty emails and/or phone calls from our members, many complete with threats about FTC complaints and chargebacks - it seemed many felt they were simply being scammed.

We lost around $1,500 in uncollectable charges for the over-refunds. Epoch did send us a check for around $2500 to cover administrative overtime and the uncollectables. A nice gesture but only a fraction of the ultimate losses this fuck-up would cause.

3 months later our chargebacks for the month hit 3.8% and we lost the merchant account. Even back then we usually were never over 1%.

We had already changed over to Netbilling for transaction processing but now needed a new merchant account -- with a cancelled account looming over us. We did manage to get a letter from the bank that canceled us that said we were canceled because they were discontinuing adult accounts, and Mitch put in a good word for us with some banks and we were able to get back up and running again with a new merchant account.

When all the moves and everything were finished and changeovers done, we had lost over 100 members. We offered long term special rates for all those affected and ultimately recovered many, but the damage was still very bad and gave us a black mark on a otherwise exceptional banking record. All in all it sure cost us several tens of thousand in lost revenue alone.

Luckily for you it is iBill's bank account that is affected first here. I would think they would do everything possible to get things back in order quickly and efficiently. How this affects your standing as a IPSP merchant with the card companies should be a concern and I would get letters from everyone you can stating that it was not your fault.

In any case, you do have your work cut out for you -- it is no fun.

The worst thing about this business is how difficult it is to have control over all of its different aspects. No matter how much effort you put into doing things the "right way", a fuckup out of your control, (hosting, processors, etc.) or in areas where you have limited control (fraud, hackers, incompetent employees, patent claims, etc.) can make much of your hard work in vain.

[pimplink]

Is it just a printing error or were they really double/triple charged?

[Shap]

So far it looks like most of them aren't even in the cmi. I'm going to email all the July 14th charges and see how many were double charged.

Pimplink, yep they were actually double charged on the 14th and triple charged on the 17th. They've been refunded but that doesn't remove the double charge from the credit card statement.

[jimmyf]

Originally posted by jcnlv
These types of problems are not limited to iBill. It happened to us with a different processor.

We had the same thing happen with Epoch in Jan. of 2000.
Dozens of recurring accounts over a 2-3 day period were affected. Some were charged as many as 8 times!

A Y2k glitch we were told. (failure to update software is what we heard from other sources)

I wish I could tell you that everything ultimately worked out OK for us. But it did not.

At first Epoch told us not to worry - they would take care of it. It took several days and then when they finally did do the refunds to all of the overcharged accounts they refunded TWICE the amount they should have - almost $9,000 too much!

We were using them for "transaction processing only" through our own merchant account. So the double refunds all came out of our merchant account! We contacted our merchant bank and explained the situation. They were helpful and told us that it would be in our best interest to handle this all ourselves. We were now faced with trying to recover incorrectly refunded charges, while doing damage control with all affected members and our merchant bank. We emailed, called, wrote letters, referenced and cross referenced bank records and spent many 18 hour days trying to get everything back in order.

The process dragged on for weeks -- many of the over-refunds were uncollectible, as the credit card accounts had been closed (when they suddenly saw 8 deposits of $29.95 to their accounts), or had insufficient balances to cover the charges.... a collection nightmare. We received daily, 3-4 nasty emails and/or phone calls from our members, many complete with threats about FTC complaints and chargebacks - it seemed many felt they were simply being scammed.

We lost around $1,500 in uncollectable charges for the over-refunds. Epoch did send us a check for around $2500 to cover administrative overtime and the uncollectables. A nice gesture but only a fraction of the ultimate losses this fuck-up would cause.

3 months later our chargebacks for the month hit 3.8% and we lost the merchant account. Even back then we usually were never over 1%.

We had already changed over to Netbilling for transaction processing but now needed a new merchant account -- with a cancelled account looming over us. We did manage to get a letter from the bank that canceled us that said we were canceled because they were discontinuing adult accounts, and Mitch put in a good word for us with some banks and we were able to get back up and running again with a new merchant account.

When all the moves and everything were finished and changeovers done, we had lost over 100 members. We offered long term special rates for all those affected and ultimately recovered many, but the damage was still very bad and gave us a black mark on a otherwise exceptional banking record. All in all it sure cost us several tens of thousand in lost revenue alone.

Luckily for you it is iBill's bank account that is affected first here. I would think they would do everything possible to get things back in order quickly and efficiently. How this affects your standing as a IPSP merchant with the card companies should be a concern and I would get letters from everyone you can stating that it was not your fault.

In any case, you do have your work cut out for you -- it is no fun.

The worst thing about this business is how difficult it is to have control over all of its different aspects. No matter how much effort you put into doing things the "right way", a fuckup out of your control, (hosting, processors, etc.) or in areas where you have limited control (fraud, hackers, incompetent employees, patent claims, etc.) can make much of your hard work in vain.

What a big fuck up. Wonder how many other people it happened 2. If only you THEN it was most likly not a y2k problem.

[basschick]

while we're all waiting for visa and mastercard to make even MORE rough decisions about the adult industry is not a good time for a large number of customers to be double-billed. nice going, ibill. and probably some people will also charge back. thanks again, ibill.

shap, as far as jettis refunding the same day, we used to have a merchant account, and no matter when you refund on a credit card, it takes anywhere from a few days to two weeks for the refund to hit the customer's bank - a lot of that is on the customer's bank side, not the refunding side.

[Biggy2]

im sitll missing rebills from a few days ago.. is anyone else experiencing this as well?

I dont know what the fuck is going on.

[Giorgio_Xo]

I still haven't had any stats posts posted since 7/16.

I do have an excessive amount of rebills on July 14 but my usual amount of rebills for 7/10-7/13 came up zero!

[Biggy2]

let me rephrase, the problems started happening on the 10th, now...

i still dont see all my stats updated.

I had a couple of days in a row with zero rebills, which is VERY ODD!

are your stats updated, what the fuck is going on, IBILL is really pissing me off.

[sweetcuties]

Originally posted by Mike33
Thank goodness I only ever used them for 1-900 billing.

Same here

[Biggy2]

July 12, 13, and 15 i have zero rebills - VERY ODD.

Now, all the problems started happening on the fucking 10th, usually when their is a problem, it is fixed ina day or so, and everyting gets updated..

I noticed teh CMI started updating, then fucking stopped, are stats completely fucked??

I don't think the CMI ever got fully updated from the problems on the 10th. Then there was another problem - the worst part about it is IBILL takes weekends off, and doesn't tell webmasters jack shit except to "wait for it to update."
THIS IS REALLY FUCKING PISSING ME OFF.

[Giorgio_Xo]

I just got off the phone from a long conversation with iBill. The excessive rebills from July 14th is okay. It actually represents all the rebills of July 11, 12, 13, & 14. This same issue occured July 15 & 16 with a combination of rebills.

The replicator is behind again after that date with no stats.

I wish to God that my RevShare site would move to Epoch or CCBill. I sent the guy an email pleading for a switch.

[01SCdZ06]

I posted this in another Ibill thread that got buried maybe someone here will have an answer.

Do all these Ibill problems related to the CMI affect Affiliates for Big Sponsors like Traffic Cash? My sales with Traffic Cash plunged 80% this week and I wasn't sure if it was heavy scrub or sales not getting reported. Are the two related?

thanks

[Shap]

Hi 01SCdZ06. From what I've heard, everybody using ibill has seen their sales drop in the past 7 to 12 days. Any other big ibill guys seeing this?

[Sausage]

Originally posted by shap
Hi 01SCdZ06. From what I've heard, everybody using ibill has seen their sales drop in the past 7 to 12 days. Any other big ibill guys seeing this?

Yeah I was converting 1:25 or better and now I am converting above 1:100 in the first time ever. Ibill had to be doing something fucking bad.

[Shap]

Btw just did some more digging. Here's what seems to be the case for us.

- Appears all rebills were double billed, these double billings do not show up in ibill. They are not in the cmi. They've been refunded by ibill and if it weren't for customer emails you'd never know you had a problem.

- We have about 10% of rebills that show up as duplicates in the cmi. These are people that were billed 4 TIMES!!! Each transaction in cmi was double charged so anybody in the cmi twice was quadruple charged.

Best bet is for all ibill clients to call their reps or call the ibill support desk and see if you are affected by this problem. My understanding is that we all are.

We should post John Perry's number here and call him ALL day long and ruin his weekend the way his clowns ruined ours.

Ibill

[RoTT]

IBILL
Moves like that can fuck this whole industry up for all of us!

BAD FUCKING TIMING IBILL!