No, THIS is a motherfucking BUMP motherfucker. :D

FIDDY more sales flowing in.


:thumbsup:thumbsup

NAH - just late

If you, Peabody, Wehateporn, and everyone else in this thread that believe the "sales switch is on/off" are not going to listen to Mitch from Netbilling explain it in plain English too, then I don't really know what to say.

I guess make sure to leave a cookie and glass of milk out for Santa and his corporate sponsor, CCbill, otherwise you may all experience a precipitous drop in sales for absolutely no explainable reason... :winkwink:

And no, I meant what I said. Mitch can perhaps clarify as well - Valid sales are not being scrubbed. Questionable RED FLAG raising sales get scrubbed and for good reason based on statistical probability of being a problem transaction. Sales don't "magically disappear" from pending approvals.

Again, CCbill would not be in biz if they turned away the valid sales and they do everything possible to put sales through regardless of whether you believe me or not.

Not understanding that is the heart of the problem that I am trying to get you all to realize. I guess the real issue is not having the facts makes people fill in the blanks of their own holes in their understanding with "logical" explanations.

The abject apologies to make sure to avoid angering, the mysterious control of life and death over sales, the prayers, usually unanswered, for the scrub being turned off... CCbill is like the G_D you all pray to, hate to love, love to hate. :2 cents:

Valid sales *Are* being flagged.

My mainstream site.... I had 2 attempts last month from Mastercard numbers that were being flagged by Mod-10 check. Legit member, legit card, both were previous members, and the only reason I found out was because they updated their card on file to renew subscription and could not even enter the card number because the worldwide credit card number check scrubbed them out.

Legit sale, scrubbed out due to scrub error.

CCBill... they flag legit sales all the time. I'm not saying it is PaulK with his hand on the switch... I'm saying it is their internal checks which are many times not letting legit sales go through.

Please read this statement I made last post and think about it for a few seconds...

"I've seen customers money taken out of their bank for 7 days and then returned because of this."

Do you think I'm lying about that? That is the scrub factor denying a legit sale, but the system got all fucked up and kept the potential members money for 7 days until finally returned. I should also add that we never received a denial email until after we received an email from the customer who was complaining that he couldn't join the site. Then we contacted CCBill, then we got the denial email.

I would say that is a scrubX2 with a side of WTF.

I don't think you are lying so please don't get defensive.

However, sorry, in this case you make as an example, to me you are just making my point; although, Mitch would be able to explain it more authoritatively. Your customer was being protected by that scrub just as much as you were. It wasn't a "mistake"; it was the system working the way it should. The customer updated his info. You got the sale in the end. That is what is supposed to happen.

So yeah, it is scrubX2, but the "WTF" in this case stands for "With The Funds" and the X2 is you, the vendor, (X) the Customer = a side of sales with the funds, both protected by scrubbing.

We did not get the sale. We had email communication for a week until he finally was refunded the money. He never got what he wanted, we never got the sale, his money was in cyberspace for 7 days. I can't remember the reason for this particular incident given to us by ccbill but I will recap what I have been told either this time or others:

IP associated with another email
Multiple IP's associated with same email
Tried too many times recently
Already have a membership (that one is really painful to see when you sell cam/phone time *yes, we have the multiple transactions enabled*)
Blocked Country
IP not from origin of credit card
etc. etc.

Ask yourself something... do you know that 95% of surfers have a **DYNAMIC** IP address? That means... there IP will change. Well, that is a CCBill scrub setting to deny multiple IP's associated with 1 email.

I did this experiment 6 months ago - a 1 month experiment, which i feel is long enough. One person went to Epoch, next person to CCBILL, next to Epoch, next to CCBILL etc

and the results were a statistical dead heat.

They are not scrubbing out sales based on a single factor. Moreover, the scrub protects you way more than it hurts you and if the opposite is true then you need to get better quality traffic. Finally, if this has been a long, ongoing concern then why haven't you moved over to your own merch account to get more control of your scrub through a gateway?

And again, CCbill, as Mitch confirmed, treats each account uniquely, so they are trying to give every account the best possible scrub to maintain the account in good standing. It is not like another client's wave of fraud is going to set off your site's scrub stabilization protocol so you lose sales while the other site gets fraudulent transactions through.

That is the part I really don't understand. It simply defies logic. You all act like CCbill is trying to "cover up" the fraud transactions that would put the chargeback rates too high day to day, week to week, month by month, year to year, by denying good sales through "scrubbing" legit sales in other accounts. That is not how it works. It isn't. That would be a bassackwards way to run a company.

I swear on the CCbill Terms and Conditions.:winkwink:

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

While I do wish they would improve some things, I'm going to give CCbill some love and show an affiliate's stats who is beta testing a new site for us.

http://i.imgur.com/kCPNd.jpg

Nice!

You must've sacrificed a tranny virgin to the CCbill G_ds for stats like that! :thumbsup:winkwink:

Hi,

I cannot speculate how CCbill handles their scrubbing specifically, I can only assume based on how we handle ours at NETbilling. Of course fraud scrubbing will always flag some good transactions as fraud but it is the overall portfolio that is important. Without good fraud scrubbing, CCbill, NETbilling, Epoch or any of the others could not stay in business long as there is tremendous amount of fraud on the internet and in retail. Far-L is very knowledgable because he has control over how things are handled in our system. The more control one has, the more informed one is.

If you are going to use a third party processor, you have to trust that they handle things properly (I know CCbill runs a tight ship) as that is what you are paying all of the extra fees for. If not, then take control yourself.

Mitch

Far-L makes great points (as usual) but none of his answers satisfy my MAIN concern, the bugaboo which keeps me from siding with Far-L completely on this issue:

So why is it when I switch processers on a 'bad' day do sales come through with the new processer? Switch it BACK and sales stop dead. (The reason I am not specifically pointing out CCBill is because this phenomenon happens with all billers I've tried thus far.)

As Mutt said, if you leave things be for a month they may indeed be a 'statistical dead heat' BUT - and this is a big butt, heh - some of us split with content partners (along with affiliates). So my timeframe is WEEKLY, not monthly. In other words, a bad week is a motherfucking bad week, even if the overall MONTH is okay. In other other words, a good week next week does not (should not?) wipe out the fact that THIS week sucks ass. As an example.

If I kept all revenue from my company I would probably be retired by now. LOL And I know, even with what I wrote, statistically, things can balance out. But the feeling is that of a rollercoaster, and sometimes it's difficult to say to oneself "be patient, three weeks from now sales will rock and my month will be okay..."

Sales can be effected by a number of things beyond the processor such as the transaction network, the bank that hold the merchant account and underlying factors there such as scrubbing on the acquirers end etc.. If you have cascading in place to another processor or another mid at another bank for example, you can internally cascade it without the customer even knowing.

It sounds like a "forest for the trees" scenario. If you try to focus too closely, daily/weekly as you say, then you might be missing the big picture and be prone to reactionary behavior that actually hurts more than it helps - kind of like people that constantly switch lanes on the freeway, hitting their gas then hitting the brakes, and causing a chain reaction that ultimately creates a traffic jam. Also, you do need to look at the bigger, broader trends - that good week next week does not "wipe out" the bad week but it does give a better indication of a trending average, aka "the big picture".

Mutt presents a good fact based, split tested assessment of this in his example.

I do agree it's best to look at trends and the bigger picture but it can be difficult when you are juggling third party processers. Merchant accounts bring their own issues for a small company like mine....which is why, in the end, I've decided to stick with third party processers and try to understand, the best I can, how they do business and how I can help them help me, so to speak. It's also vital to know the differances between a CCBill and a NETBilling for example, as differant processers have differant relationships with differant banks, etc.

I also think 'good' transactions getted blocked/denied sometimes because of an account's overall 'average' activity. Suppose you do 10 sales daily then one Wednesday WHAM you do 70 sales because you just found a new traffic source, or are testing one, etc. I'm assuming, under a scenario like that, some good transaction may be flagged as fraud just based on sheer sudden volume to an account that ordinarily doesn't see those kinds of numbers.

Anyway, again, blaming CCBill or any other third party processer for these things is pointless. Better to educate ourselves and try to work WITH the company rather than against it. The lessons I've learned. LOL

Two of them. :pimp

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I can't say if any processor would flag sales based on a sudden unexplained increase, but it would certainly make sense to do so. Once again, that is probably not the only thing that is going to cause a scrub of the sale.

The thing is, and I think you are in complete agreement, a third party processor has an expertise of experience, a vested interest, and a competitive instinct to try and get as many sales through as possible. I apologize because it is just my personal pet peeve that people always question their processors, the most important relationship they have in business, and don't either do something about changing the situation or at least understanding the conditionals better to feel more secure about the process.

I

So all this discussion basically proves there is still no foolproof credit card checking mechanism in place and industry is still crutching on other factors such as statistical probablity, temperature of cpu at particular moment blah blah
:1orglaugh

I understand pet peeves, believe me - like why do parents ASK their four year old what they want at Starbucks thus making me wait and wait for a child's indecision?

But I digress. :)

I've learned the hard way how processers work and how relationships are the most important thing in any Industry. Working WITH your 3rd party processer will always get you further than thinking they are "up to something".

Having said that do I believe differant levels of accounts exist in a processer's eye? of course - the million dollar account is more important than the hundred dollar account in ANY business. LOL So yes, I do believe smaller, more "isolated" (in terms of location, connection, etc) webmasters (like myself) can sometimes think they are being overlooked or swept along with the dross instead of getting preferential treatment. But it is OUR job, the Webmaster, to keep that relationship strong and to work hard to get and keep a processer's attention.

Blah, blah, time for an end-of-work drink. Cheers!

Looks a lot like review traffic, am I right? Wish all traffic was like this :winkwink:

http://i.imgur.com/uZ9B3.jpg

CCbill refund policy
 

Had the sad surprise today to see that a CCbill support supervisor refunded a customer that had bought a $135 membership for 6 month. The customer called to request the refund based on the fact that he mistakenly bought a 6 month membership instead of a 30 days membership, which is of course bullshit. They openly admit that it was to prevent a chargeback, but I feel I've been fooled because they are trying to reduce their merchant account chargeback ratio with MY money. Did this happen to anyone?

I see that there is a problem too but not for this period.

ditto :thumbsup

I saw recently that they added this link (question on a charge):

http://www.myimg.us/images/12.12.13/39378.jpg

that returns to:

http://www.myimg.us/images/12.12.13/39379.jpg

That must be their problem and same problem as in 2010

Sales are good for you right now?

Not really. Mostly rebills.

Last month was great, this month I have rebills like you, not sure if scrub is high or if I've lost traffic :2 cents:

I lost some traffic since i submit less then before, but there is a problem since let's say, april/may for me. November sucked ass and it will be worse this month.

Thanks for the plug Far-l. It was great seeing you at the AVN party last week btw.
Don't get all worked up over these misconceptions about scrubbing..... It won't change.

Mitch