CCBill Scrub Lowered
 

Anyone else seeing this? From what I can tell it was on full power 14th-18th November, and now things are back to normal :2 cents:

All hail the Rothschild's for granting this reprieve!

Holy shit!

:1orglaugh

Yes indeed, I was part way through creating my first mainstream site, now I need to get back to my adult updates since the sales switch is on :winkwink:

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

I have been with CCBill for ten plus years and have seen many different patterns. 10 years ago I used to get sales piling in one week then as soon as it hit the start of the next pay week they totally died. Like someone flicking a switch to off as someone said in this thread. I mailed them umpteen times and got the standard reply we all know. " We are not seeing any problems"

This went on for ages then it suddenly changed and things started to even out. There were not the great weeks but there were also not the bad weeks. It all evened out.

Fast forward a number of years and another pattern started where you would get a few weeks where sales were rocking, followed my another few flat ones, yet on the flat weeks you would get other webmasters saying their sales were brilliant so everyone thought it was down to their traffic.

CCBill will always say that there is not a problem and I have built up my own theory how it all works purely based on what I have seen and experienced.

CCBill will have to meet quotas with CC companies in terms of how many charge backs are allowed. If they are nearing their limit then they turn up the scrub level so as they can stay within their quotas. However, if they were to hit all affiliates at the one time with the scrub that would not be good for their company image amongst webmasters, so what I reckon they do is they section off affiliates so some don't get the scrub whilst others get heavily scrubbed.

Its quite a clever idea really as when the subject of poor sales comes up in forums there are always others saying their sales are great.

Fraud will be a major problem and its growing at a furious rate leading to heavier scrubbing.

These are just theories of mine and I would never expect CCBill to ever reveal the truth, and if was in their postion I would do the same.

They are hurting like everyone else in this industry.

Thanks for sharing, and yes I agree, your theory is the same as my own. Like you I hold nothing against CCBill for this and understand that it's what they've got to do :2 cents:

Interesting theory John, that would explain a lot (like the fact that I get many form hits yet sales sucks in the last couple of weeks, declines are normal as well). Got a ccbill rep on the phone yesterday for that exact same reason and his explanation is that the statistical anomaly I see is probably because people are saving for their Xmas presents. Yet compared to the same period last year, there is no doubt that I'm getting scrubbed here (my sales last month were excellent, I've no problem with piracy at this time and affiliates are doing a great job). :error
Cascading with Epoch will probably reveal interesting things... I'll let you know. BTW have you set up a cascade?

Cascading won't show up too much, the only way to really test it is to switch from one primary processor to another ie ccbill first to epoch first, then you need at least 1 month to give any kind of clear indication as to whether there is improvement, realistically closer to 3 months so you can really look at the day to day patterns.

It's interesting you mention this theory, as I have a feeling it is the case also. A couple of years back I would speak to a rep and go through some ideas as to why it was so bad, then overnight things would pick up, time and time again (without implementing said ideas..). Now I reckon i've just been dumped in the shit pile and left to rot haha.

blame others when you do not know what you are doing LOL, I love how people expect numbers when they work with randoms.

It's not blame, I like CCBill a lot and am grateful to them. It always helps to know which direction the wind is currently blowing for us to get to our desired destination.

Let's say I'm testing out a new design at the same time as high-scrub, I might well scrap that design if I don't understand what's actually going on. :2 cents:

Homegrown Video defends CCbill, for once
 

Stop blaming CCbill for "turning on or off the scrub". Those theories are just plain wrong. If you have a high chargeback rate then that is just as much a problem for them. It isn't like they are just going to try to push through fraud for webmasters and punish non fraud sales by "overscrubbing" just so they can maintain averages.

They would have been out of business long ago along with companies like DMR if they did things that way.

So the "high scrub today theory"? THAT IS JUST WRONG.

DO I NEED TO SAY IT AGAIN?

WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG.

If you want to understand why you see those fluctuations then read this wiki describing the "Poisson Distribution"

What you are experiencing are normal fluctuations. CCbill is completely honest about there NOT BEING a problem.

Sorry I got so upset. This sort of stuff just drives me nuts. Besides, if you think that is what is happening then you should be getting your own merch account and start working with a company like Netbilling.

Yup, these kind of threads are ridiculous.

The threadstarter is a total fucking conspiracy idiot anyway.

The scrub is how they protect themselves from going out of business, it's essential with the huge volume of sales they have. If there's been a lot of fraud going through they need to turn it up, they have no choice. :2 cents:

No offense, but I was in this business before CCbill even formed. They have sponsored parties with us, dined with us, and yes, processed for us, and I know just a thing or two about how Third Party Processors work, so thanks for your explanation, but you have zero appreciation for how condescending it comes off, especially in light of how little you appear to be hearing me as I try to help you.

So whatever.

Ok then. I guess you are right. CCbill's magic scrub algorithm has brought you fortune, now pray it doesn't go the other way, because you never know, and you never will know, and that is just the price you have to pay for all that CCbill love you get from the affiliates that refuse to use anything but CCbill.

Hope you don't go out of business along with everyone else that believed in the same fairy tale too. :2 cents:

Scrubs exist Far-L, and 'spreading out the pain' a la the 'rolling blackouts' California experienced a few years back (remember Enron?) is standard practice for a Third Party Processer.

In other words, a processer knows, in general, an account's average volume. Very few 'established' long-term accounts flucuate wildly week-to-week. So calculating how to increase a scrub here, decrease it there, etc etc is all part of the merch account game.

But to blame a processer for this IS wrong, I believe, and that's where I agree with you Far-L. But to just think it's not happening is also wrong. Knowing a processer is scrubbing hard at a particular time helps webmasters to know when to switch between multiple processers, in an attempt to stay one step ahead in this crazy online sales game. (I should add that VOLUME of sales is probably the biggest factor in who does and doesn't feel the scrub the most.)

Of course, there are some days when ALL processers seem to be scrubbing hard, so.....LOL You just gotta stay on top of patterns and, when in doubt, swap 'em out. Having said that, companies like CCBill and Epoch are doing what's in the best interest for them AND you, the webmaster, so "blaming" them is not fair. It's a balancing act.

Cascades and multiple processers exist for a reason. :)

Ok, "scrub" exists but not in the sense of "penalty and reward". Scrub has to do with setting parameter thresholds for risky transactions, which I know you know but just making it clear for everyone. People talk about CCbill like they set a scrub in order to tolerate more bad transactions rather what it really is, a way to increase good transactions.

So, to be more specific, the way it works for processors like CCBill, where that risk is spread across the entire roster of clients, that risk balancing act "scrub" is always going to play in favor of the client, rather than against, because of the volume and average of good transactions which is part of why CCbill can charge the premium that is does.

CCbill is just as averse, if not more so, to chargebacks and other problem billing issues because they have to keep in good stead with MC/visa, so CCbill is not going to allow charges to go through that aren't up to snuff regardless.

So one small site that say does 10 transactions in a day and 3 of those get a CB, and another site that does 1000 transactions in a day only gets 3 chargebacks, the amount of overall CBs between the two is not going to make CCbill lose its status with MC/visa but CCbill is still going to be wondering what is causing the one site to chargeback at such a high rate regardless.

When a company has its own merch account then of course there are more controls over the scrub but more vigilance is required, another reason third party processors charge so much more but then of course everyone also BENEFITS rather than gets penalized by that knowledge and experience adjusting those thresholds to stay in compliance.

Completely agree with MisterPeabody :2 cents:

Also, I know a lot of people get annoyed with CCBill, so I should make clear that I think they're superb, this thread was about discussing the current level of fraud protection, not complaining about anything.

I never said that scrub didn't exist.

Never said that CCbill does not scrub.

So Peabody and you are off track if you frame what I am saying in that context. I am saying that people's understanding of scrub is inherently flawed and prone to the same mysteriousness as the stuff of urban legend, which it is not, nor should it be blamed on poor sales as a factor in CCbills processing because, as I tried to explain, you are going to benefit way more from that situation on average.

The truth is that sales fluctuate for a variety of reasons, from the market, the weather, the time of the batch, everything. There will be days with high traffic, low conversions, days of low traffic and high conversions, and there are even those lovely days where traffic and sales are both outstanding... then there will be days too where sales are crap, traffic crap, etc.

You probably easily see these trends by Day right? Where certain days/times of day sales are stronger based on certain geo factors etc., correct? Well, with that example in mind, what I am saying is that there is a level of predictability and there are factors that must be weighed before you ever assume CCbill is to blame or praise for your conversions;that CCbill is going to provide the best possible "scrub" averaged out over all its clients so no one is "penalized" but so everyone benefits from spreading out the risk over millions of transactions; that you pay a premium for this; and finally, that you cannot blame CCbill for a problem with processing if your sales are indeed going through.

It is to funny how people who get so little joins think a scrub effects them in anyway at all. How can you think someone so small could feel the effects of what you are saying? Not just you but 99% of people. Just like when people say sales are bad this week and they had 8 last week and 4 this week. That is like thinking the change in your pocket effects the national debt if you have a lot of silver coins lol

Just to clarify, are you in at least 10 ccbill sales per day zone? If I would see 10 sales, 10 sales, 0 sales, 0 sales, 0 sales, 10 sales, 10 sales then I would think of shaving, but if you are in 1-2 sales day zone its too low to say anything like that.

Far-L,

If you had 'fraud protection' software on a third party billing system which processes millions of sales per day, would you not want some control over it's sensitivity?

If your 'fraud protection' software is doing it's job well, you can decrease the sensitivity a little, increase overall sales, test if too much fraud is getting through compared to extra allowed sales. One would keep tweaking the sensitivity until it was just right. Then one week tonnes of new fraud shows up, you have to tighten up the sensitivity to prevent it while you perform an investigation, until you feel like you have some way of stopping the new fraud from getting through your system, then you can relax the sensitivity once again.

If someone has at least 8 new sales per day coming through a specific third party billing system, and the 'fraud protection' sensitivity is changed significantly for 4 or 5 days, whilst at the same time there's a dramatic increase of new threads in the forums saying 'New sales in (Specific) third party billing down'. Unless there's something else major going on in the world to effect sales, it's a good enough barometer to suggest that the 'fraud protection' has been tweaked :2 cents:

If it was me alone, through just one site, it wouldn't be statistically significant. I have many sites these days, sales coming from all over the place, but still, that wouldn't be enough on it's own either...but when factored in with the unusually high level of threads popping up saying the same thing, that's enough stats to have value. :2 cents:

(Maths & Statistics was my first degree, so I have a strong understanding of statistical significance)

Anyway, I don't want to keep bumping this, sales are great, I'm heading for a record CCBill month. I'm due to get a record check off them this week. It was not meant to be an anti-CCBill thread, as I'm one of their biggest fans.

VERY well explained Sir! :)

But here's the one factor not yet discussed which is not only of my favorite pet peeves but also the reason I am still concerned about Third Party Processers:

On a day when I'm getting, say, 2 sales with processer #1 then I switch processers and WHAM! 10 sales in a few hours.....then back to processer #1 and sales die, switch again, they return.

Now this doesn't happen all the time but it does occur enough for me to wonder wtf. LOL I know differant processers have differant banks and therefore differant merchant accounts so it would make sense to see patterns like this but then I wonder what if I DIDN'T see this pattern? If I left it on processer #1 all day then I feel I would've missed out on a lot of sales that day....

Anyway, grrr. LOL!

(It is, in the end, the responsibility of the Webmaster to notice these things and to manage his/her own websites and billing and not "blame" processers but instead work with them/around them.)

I would say even 10 is too low to draw conclusions.

Maybe 70,68,74,24,30,68,70

I'm going out on a limb here but I would say for every...

70,68,74 sales per day program there is...

500 0-10 sales per day programs. Just guessing.

By my figures, the 0-10 sales programs have (let's use 1 as the average), are 7 times more statistically important. If 2 is the average... 14 times more important.

Just sayin' ;)

So hypothetically speaking, squeeze 80-95% and leave the larger scale sales be... well I'm sure you can see numbers in volumes by the masses is way more relative then any one single program.

I'm just going to say that the programs pushing those kinds of joins aren't on GFY every other day with a new processor conspiracy because they're not seeing the same significant dips because the dips aren't really that significant after all. :winkwink:

Edit: Or they just use Epoch.

Hypothetically, how do you think the scrubb would appear to the lambda surfer hitting the ccbill join form? I guess he wouldn't get the chance to fill the form and get a decline page or would he?

There is a "law of big numbers" at play when we're talking volume of sales. A 10% drop for a 10 sale a day program is worse than a 10% drop for a 100 sale a day program. Why? because that 100 sale a day program has VOLUME, cash flow, sales flow, steady, consistent join form hits and submissions, etc etc.

The 10 sale a day program will have 'gaps' between sales, sometimes for hours (10 a day = a sale about every two hours) whereas a bigger program pushing more volume will have a sale every few minutes. So the 'gaps' or 'dips' in sales for the smaller program will be more pronounced than someone doing 5+ sales per hour.

The other thing, of course, is traffic. Just because i get 10 sales a day and you get 10 sales a day doesn't mean squat cause chances are our traffic is very differant. :)

Ok, ok, don't worry, CCbill is not going to put you on Santa's scrub harder list. You have nothing to fear except ignorance and the unknown.

CCBill are far too professional for that, at the same time it's not in their best interests to tell us about the exact details of their fraud protection system, otherwise sponsors will learn to switch their billing processor when the fraud protection is on maximum. :2 cents:

Ding ding ding! Winner winner chicken dinner. :)

It's up to US, the program owners and webmasters, to notice these things the best we can and adapt acordingly. Or die. LOL

Dying is extinction. True adaption is evolution.

Evolve then into a higher species... one that has its own merch accounts, a beast that can scrub itself, make more per transaction, pay more per affiliate... :winkwink:

In any event, you both still don't get it. Sponsors that cascade are always going to process wherever they get the most transactions through, the purpose of cascading is to find that point of high tolerance, so CCbill has a competitive interest in putting through as many sales as possible, regardless, so that logic is flawed. Yes, they may want to keep their risk assessment protocols a secret, but more so from fraudsters than legit sponsors. It would be in their interest to let Sponsors know why a sale is scrubbed or not because that would give the sponsor greater comfort in knowing how high their tolerance for risk is in relation to overall sales volume in relation to CBs, and offer a potential competitive edge over processor B that scrubs more or less tolerantly.

Scrubbing is not some dubiously mysterious thing that is controlled by mystical knowledge of powerful algorithms controlled by the Bro-hood. Mismatched info, expired cards, bad addresses, lack of security number, country of origin, etc., all might get scrubbed for solid reasons, and as I said before, CCbill has a vested interest in pushing through as many sales as possible too, nor will they scrub your valid sales EVER, and they want you to stay in the zone for percentage of CBs.

Instead of wondering if CCbill is "overscrubbing" are you looking first at whether or not your traffic suddenly spiked with certain well known high risk traffic sources? Are you looking at the affiliate that sent the traffic? Usually the answers there are pretty obvious and spell out the more accurate issue than getting scrubbed too hard by CCbill.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving gentlemen. I thank you both for a civil discourse on the subject.:thumbsup

yay., i got a sale

Since you're educated like Johnnyclips is, I suggest you learn about confirmation bias.

That is to say there is no connection. Mo' money mo' problems. The programs doing XXX joins a day has X more full-time employees to pay than the program doing X sales.

Many XXX join programs started as a 10 join program and just did things differently rather then blaming the biller every time things didn't go their way.

I never usually comment on these threads but anyone else having a crazy booming day today? Sales are VERY good, never had a day like this besides the first day a site opens. Whatever youre doing CCBill, keep it up!

:2 cents::2 cents::2 cents::1orglaugh

Thanks for the suggestion on working with us Far-L. These threads drive me crazy too and when I sit on panels with CCbill, Epoch, Commercegate, SEGpay and others at trade shows, they explain to customers that there is not a magic knob that they turn to crank up the scrubbing. Many merchants and affiliates just do not understand this.

The successful processors whether 3rd party processors or gateways like NETbilling have sophisticated tools in place that are able to control each merchant's scrubbing independently based on many factors. It would be silly and not profitable to have everyones scrubbing the same.

If you really want to have control over your scrubbing and other aspects of your processing and customer service without having to do it yourself, have a conversation with us about this and how NETbilling can save you money too!

It will be well worth your time, I promise.

Scrubbing is indeed a logical process and quite understandable. But when it comes to CASCADING there we have a major issue....

Here's what I mean: I know that CCBill (and probably other billers, too) do NOT cascade every single time a transaction is denied. If so, I would see numbers "adding up" with both bilers. In other words, 10 form hits, 4 denials when i check the CCBill stats. So shouldn't I then see 4 form hits for the secondary biller? You would think so - but nope. Sometimes, in an example like the above, I might see 1 form hit, or 2, or none at all to the cascaded second biller. Then, when i investigate further, it seems that CCBill declined the transaction, not the bank, and the cascade did not go through.

Now shouldn't another biller get a chance at that transaction? CCBill (or, again, ANY processer) can decline whatever they want but if we have a cascade in place then, well, cascade dammit! LOL

So anomolies and unexplained 'patterns' still exist (to me). But I will reiterate: this doesn't mean you should knee-jerk 'blame the biller'. :)

I'm fairly certain after reading what you wrote you didn't mean "nor will they scrub your valid sales EVER"

That is exactly what happens, valid sales don't go through and we all get our panties in a bunch. Like Peabody said right above this reply, sometimes the customers bank approves the transaction and then a CCBill scrub denies it. I've seen customers money taken out of their bank for 7 days and then returned because of this.

But I don't even care really. The bottom line is getting a merchant account to control your own billing in a more hands on approach is really the only way to break past this barrier. It is just not worth the *wondering* factor if the sale should have gone through or not.

I know the Thanksgiving wish was to the other 2 but I will take it to mean for me to have a good one as well and I hope you too. Shit, everyone have a fantastic Thanksgiving! :thumbsup

If you need any assistance, please let us know!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!!!

:)

I hope yours was great!

Is that a bump? ;)