CCbill Voids...you might want to start verifying each one
 

Greetings friends just a heads up, if you happen to log into your admin and see a voided transaction, I would encourage you to investigate it as thoroughly as you can...

Yesterday we had a customer sign up, then login members area at least 6 times over a 3 hour span.. This gentlemen watched videos, read stories, viewed photos, and then decided to call ccbill on the phone and demand a refund because he claims he never got any access....

Pure utter horseshit... We tracked all of his movements on the site and he appears to have enjoyed himself for over 3 hours...

We present this info to ccbill and demand and explanation and they say it was someones judgement call to void his transaction...they would not give us a name of the individual so we could talk to them about it...just too bad shut up and take your void

The ccbill rep said what was weird about this particular void is that most voids take 48 hours because ccbill investigates the customers gripes first, and in this instance nobody invesitgated or contacted us...they just issued a login and pass for free content and thats that...

how hard would it have been to open a fucking browser and attempt to login and see if this guy was lying???? Hello How fucking hard would that have been??

Me and my company are supposed to pay for this guy enjoying himself on our website! I mean freeloaders everywhere else why not let the paying customers freeload also

CCBILL could have credited us the $17.95 as a courtesy in exercising bad judgement but felt like it was prudent to just issue the lying customer a refund and tell the precious salary paying client (us merchants) that it is nothing they can do....nice!!!

Verify your refunds and I hope this doesn't happen to anyone else

It's $17.95

It's not worth the time and energy, let it go :2 cents:

Its not just CCbill who does that.

Sorry to hear that, least now I know I can get a days access to your site for free though :winkwink:

LOL.....as infuriating as it is...you got to laugh I know its "just" 17.95 but tell that to the cheap ass customer

I have had that happen to me in the past as well.

Now if someone contacts them for a refund I have CCBill tell them to contact me and I will take care of it.

That way I can investigate it.

Had one the other day where the guy mailed us asking for a refund and happened to mention that he is a Member of the IBBB Thats Internet Better Business Bureau.

He had logged in about 3 times in 2 days and I told him no refund no void. And that if he decided to go to his IBBB to make sure that they knew it was a Shemale site that he had purchased the membership for, and logged in multiple times etc..

He may CB he may not.

I wish CCBill would let us fight the CB's and " Friendly Fraud " as coined by visa when the card holder does this.

Get your own merchant account. problem solved.

another CCbill success story

CCBill will do this every time a customer threatens a chargeback. But then they'll blacklist the user, based on email and CC number, so the customer will only be able to do it once (until they get a new CC). The Webmaster of the next site they try to join gets a Pre-Auth decline, then bitches about it because they think they're losing customers. Hep me.

CCBill is more likely to reverse when it's a void as the charge hasn't been batched yet. They (and you) want to avoid excessive refunds. Cheaper than chargebacks, but they also don't look good if you have too many of them.

Yeah, there are crooks out there, but the customer probably would have charged back if not refunded, so you would still be in the same position.

Right and I don't mean to say to let every refund/chargeback/void go but you can block his IP from your site and be fairly confident it wont happen again with him.

Think about it. For that one $17.95 void the time you spent with CCBill, the time you spent to make this thread, the time we've spent responding, and you responding back. Not worth the energy and more then $17.95 in time spent :winkwink:

Any good tips with whom?

With your volumes you won't get it, clown shoes.
Otherwise netbilling.com

I appreciate all the responses many thanks....my only issue and main point was it would only take ccbill 20 seconds at the most to verify if he was lying...

open a broswer, pull up website,login with pass, inform customer he is full of shit...we retain our $17.95 credit

I wish it was just only "17.95" but when we see many of you guys reporting 0/25,000 uniques,

1/40,000 you know it demonstrates how hard it is now to make a sale, and to have a ccbill rep void the sale without taking 20 seconds to verify is ridiculous :2 cents:

The ccbill rep even stated that its weird to void transaction without investigation....so thats not me talking thats their own rep agreeing with me 100%

So, what exactly do you plan to do?

Reverse the Void, and take the chargeback? CCBILL won't let that happen, nor should they.

A certain percentage of your processing volume is always going to be surfers who know how to play the game and get refunds.

Even if he was lying, who cares. His bank isn't going to care, or stop him from charging back.


Just move on.

Sometimes low levels reps for companies will just say things to upset customers to sort of empathize with them in order to get them less upset. You have to be careful with that one. Then again given what I will say below it might not even be worth it for them to investigate too much over that money given the potential other costs involved in fighting over it.

I don't have a problem with them doing a void as long as the transaction has really been voided and they place the customer's card on a blacklist after at least a few of these.

Sure that customer is basically stealing from you and that sucks but we all know how easy it is to chargeback with most banks and if CCBill fights too hard it just means even more reports to the BBB (I hate to admit it as much as I like them but CCBill had an 'F' rating the last I checked) and sites like ripoffreport.com which will hurt business too. Personally I don't give out my CC online until I check a site in ripoffreport and if it is a large purchase I try to check the BBB too. The less bad reports there the better.

I am pretty sure that authorizing employees to use member login info on client sites for whatever reason is its own can of worms and I can certainly understand why CCBill would not authorize its employees to use member login data.

You can't take BBB ratings seriously when they grant non existent businesses, that paid for BBB accreditation & membership, an A rating. SOURCE

Better Business Bureau: The Best Ratings Money Can Buy - ABC News Reports

'Pay For Play' Scandal Engulfs Better Business Bureau



:winkwink:

Best advice in the thread :2 cents::thumbsup

they are not the only processor who does this FYI. you really have no choice but to take the hit shoot more content and make more sales

SwirlsGirl:

If CCBill had refused to refund the money, Mastercard or Visa would have granted it anyway. The cardholder agreement GUARANTEES a refund / chargeback to the card holder. Intangible services such as site memberships are considered "High risk" because proof of delivery cannot be provided (IP addresses, access logs whatever are not legal proof).

The ONLY think you can do about this is encourage your customers to call you if there is any problem instead of calling CCBill (but you are not allowed to stop them from calling CCBill and you must have their phone number on your site). Having your customers call you gives you the chance to satisfy your customer, or to REFUND or VOID the purchase instead of forcing him to complain and charge back.

This doesn't solve the problem. Not only can the customer still charge back, but you as a merchant put your own credit rating at risk whereas currently this risk is taken by CCBill. There can also be fines to pay which currently I don't think CCBill charges.

She doesn't want someone else to refund without investigating first. with your own merchant account, you will be the one doing the refunding. That was my point.

It's not up to CCBill to verify this, and even if they could it doesn't matter. It is in CCBill's best interest to grant the refund. As a merchant, they (and you) HAVE to do it if the customer asks to keep chargebacks under control. In fact if they refunded or voided the transaction, they actually did you a favour.

You really need to contact your rep at CCBill and ask them these questions instead of turning everything you don't like into drama.

Ok, but what if the customer calls the tel# on the back of his credit card, tells Mastercard they weren't happy with your service and charges it back? The job of any rep is to satisfy the client, so they will tell the client what to do to complete the chargeback. They will not attempt to verify the customer's complaint or even call you as the merchant.

It should be a policy to refund customers that cancel in 24 hours anyhow.

If she had her own merchant account she's be liable for the $35+ chargeback fee, in addition to the funds reversal. CCBill does not ordinarily pass on the chargeback fee to its clients. That allows them sole discretion whether to unilaterally issue a credit.

It's not a "surprise," nor is it unusual, for CCBill customer support to refund a customer without contacting the webmaster, if the customer has threatened a chargeback. Odds are they'll chargeback faster than the webmaster will reply to the inquiry. My experience is they just do it, and then forever blackball that customer.

it was 1 of her 3 sales this week, dont bother trying to reason with her, ccbill is evil and always in the wrong

Its a good point.

For one reason you may have a bug in your site and members may have problems accessing the site, so if ccbill log in they can contact you to fix it, so you do not loose more members.

In this case clearly not a bug.

Zombaio and others do this all the time, without contacting the paysite first. Those who claim that it's only $19 and that it's done in your own interest don't have a clue... it's a matter of principals. Don't make things too easy for these freeloaders, if your server stats proof that the member accessed your site and downloaded your videos then the card holder should be confronted with that.

For some of our sites we do have our own merchant account and there you have the same problem; people demand a chargeback through their banks after they accessed our sites. We always contact these card holders and tell them we will send a list of all their video downloads to their bank and sometimes that's enough for them to withdraw their dispute. If they don't, we really do send the list of downloads to the bank and this list will end up at the card holders banking branch. Then at least they know their well respected customer is a porn addict.

What I hate most about the Zombaio thing is that they NEVER close an account when doing a refund, you have to remove the password from the htpasswd list yourself.

Just as a side note, Segpay has always contacted us any time they have had a question or problem with a customer who could not access the service they paid for. This gave us the chance to fix the problem, credit the customer if necessary (& send an apology note thanking him for his patience and business), and most important of all, KEEP the customer.

We do have our own merchant account and when dealing with a bank directly there is no chargeback fee. The chargeback fees CCBill and Zombaio etc come with is invented by themselves and just another way to feed their greed a bit more.

Here's another thing:

You process in US dollars and someone in Europe joins your site. Subscription costs $25 per month and you would think the new member is charged in Euro's at the current conversion rate.

Well he's not.

The payment processors use their own conversion rates which provides them with another 25% extra profit. The guy in Europe ends up paying $31 but you'll get $25 of that, minus the processing fee.

So anyone standing up against these greedy stealing practices, even the smallest guys with maybe 3 sales per week, really deserve some respect.

Thanks for bringing this up Swirls.

My lifetime overall ratio with CCBill, good sponsors and bad, is 1:1,118 so the people saying they're getting 0:25,000 or worse ... that is a problem with the site CCBill is billing for, or the person's traffic, not the biller itself.

That's great. We never worked with Segpay before, I think they are a bit expensive? Also what happens if the customer can access your service but is not happy about the content?

We're setting up with netbilling now, anyone knows how they deal with card holders claiming they couldn't get access to purchased services?

If a customer cannot access a site, ccbill send an email saying

"A customer has complained of not being able to load the program.

The customer's subscription id is #[insert number here]. Please contact us at your earliest convenience so we may quickly resolve this issue."

They would not just automatically void a sale as with a void, they *should* also lose their commission on that sale (unlike a refund or chargeback).

The only time I have seen a void without communication is when they decide (after the purchase is approved... sometimes as late as 8 to 12 hours) that maybe they shouldn't have approved it for some reason or other.

As others have said, it is not nice when this happens to you, but it is better than a chargeback which too many of can restrict your ability to open new processor accounts.

Sounds like you were unlucky here Swirls. I hope the very least ccbill do is blacklist the customer.

thankyou everyone for your input, like EukerVoorn said its principal... THE CCBILL REP SAID HIMSELF that its unusual to void without investigation first...

We all know $17.95 isn't going to bankrupt me, ccbill, or the customer with that being said its a matter of principal I am at a loss of goods and services me the merchant...as all of you are merchants

I am sitting here with 3 hours plus of documentation of this surfers downloads... if there can be billing fraud, there can be chargeback fraud....this is a case of refund fraud coupled with the fact that ccblll could have opened a browser and entered login and pass

I know many of you disagree with me on certain issues but I still appreciate your input and value all of your points....many thanks

God! How many stupid threads will you start bashing CCBill?? Why don't you go elsewhere if you really think they are that bad?

I've been with ccbill as a affiliate for over 10 years and a ccbill program owner for 7 and I LOVE working with CCBill!

Really let the one void sale go! Like others said if they hadn't refunded him he would prolly charge back and CBs go against you if you have too many :2 cents:

Blah blah blah.

Welcome to the Internet!

Ok, what proof do you have it was him? Was it an affiliate ref sale? Maybe he is telling the truth? Maybe he is trying to fuck you out of 20$.

Yes! The way to repair this industry is to start 'blackmailing' the customers! :upsidedow

I'm going to say this straight up.

CCBill is a starter program for people who have a site or 2 and don't have resources to bill themselves. Some affiliates like CCBill because they feel like they won't get screwed.

Now CCBill is like 1 account. Are you with me? They are the master merchant account and let all you peons have sub-accounts. So you, bringing in 55K per year is like a .001 percent of the "master".

Do you see where I am going with this? You are a nobody in a program making loads of cash off of newbs.

You will NEVER get the answers to your questions. They, CCBill, will scrub any way they see fit to make sure that their chargebacks remain tolerable to visa and mastercard.

The only thing that will happen is CCBill will simply close your sub "peon" account and you will lose all your rebills. You are not the merchant, you are simply a working ant under the queen.

Get your own merchant account (merchant account meaning find a bank and a gateway processor) and be *actually* your own merchant. You are currently not a merchant nor have any right what so ever to decide who gets a refund and who doesn't!

Understand?

i dropped on-line checks because a lot were joining for 7-10 days and then easily getting their money back. with on-line checks, ccbill isn't able to blacklist them so they can repeat this as many times as they want.

I think I had a 50 percent refund ratio when I used CCBill with checks. It is one of the worst possible options available and take away from CC sales that would have processed and likely rebilled.

i agree and it was the same thing every time, 7-10 days after joining they charged back. my guess is they were guys that did this on a regular basis with many sites.

No matter what, the customer can always chargeback his purchase, right? At this point you have 2 choices: #1. Let him chargeback, or #2 refund the transaction. (Or #3, if it is within 24 hours, you can VOID the transaction).

#3 is best because voiding a transaction means the order is cancelled before it gets to Mastercard Visa. #2 is good too. Both are the best for you because you prevent a chargeback. Mastercard, Visa, CCBill, Segpay, Zombaio etc all hate chargebacks. If you read the fine print, each of them have the right to stop processing for you if your chargeback rate exceeds 1% of your total transactions (some are flexible on this).

Can you contact me? I have a question. icq 322403761 or Skype "markfrom2much".

I'm sure you have all of that, but here's the kicker. Believe it or not, all of that documentation is not "proof" that your customer received the content he paid for according to Mastercard and Visa.

The only "proof" that a customer has received a purchase, is a signature on a UPS delivery form for a tangible product. If you sell sex toys or any other tangible good, your proof of delivery is the UPS, Fedex or other shipping receipt. This is the only proof of delivery that Mastercard/Visa will pay attention to.

When you sell subscriptions to a website, regardless of all of the IP addresses and server logs to can gather, it's still not legal proof that he, the card holder, paid for and received the goods. This is why CCBill, Zombaio etc call this "High Risk Processing".

Same here. NEVER add online checking to your website.

Ron has a super nice private jet. Small program owners don't. Ron wins by default.

You can always switch to ibill or glo-bill.... I heard they are not refunding people if they can avoid it

Bottom line is it's ccbill's merchant account. Do they care about your 5-10 sales a day? No. Not at all. They have been doing this crap for years. On the other hand, it's always eaiser to refund the jerkoff & that's a fact. It's the most cost effective way if you are doing anything remotely close to volume.
ds

You missed something in this thread. It's the card holder blackmailing the paysite: "I want a refund otherwise I will contact my bank"!