Quote:
Originally posted by nevermind
That's great Chris ... but you're also assuming that that Epoch and the industry as a whole is squeaky clean here? And that Epoch will be viewed as such?
What other industry systemically tries to force a rebill down the consumer's throat before they even see the product? What other industry systemically makes it a hassle for the consumer to cancel?
For better or for worse, Epoch has been a part of that. With what is, for all practical purposes, a forced rebill system --- can Mastercard be totally blamed for insisting that "refunds" be counted as chargebacks?
I sincerely doubt this would be happening if the industry standard was the more consumer friendly non-recurring billing option --- which very few sites use.
Joining a porn site is supposed to be fun. Having to worry about cancelling before you even know if the site is any good takes all the fun out of it.
Let's be honest. Rebills are designed to take advantage of the customers' forgetting to cancel and squeeze every possible dollar out of them --- whether they like the product or not. And now Mastercard is saying no more to the "refunds" that are supposed to cover your ass with these questionable billing tactics.
To paint the adult industry as the "victim" in this scenario is laughable.
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Sorry...
EPOCH is squeaky clean, as are most IPSP?s. What do you think MC will say? ?They are billing for porn so we have the right to screw them.?
As for rebills, no one forces anyone to do anything. We take tens of thousands of calls a week and more emails from cardholders canceling. Consumers know. This is not a new concept. It is a hell of a lot cleaner and better than subscription news delivery services, like the LA Times for example. I have cancelled my subscription about 10 times over the last year. They keep delivering the paper and sending bills. They call me at 11 PM asking if I want to subscribe. They can?t cancel, stop telemarketing or rebilling ? so I?m screwed. And guess what? If I don?t pay that bill every month, they turn me over to a credit agency and my credit is ruined. Our industry is a 1000-times better than any magazine, newspaper or other ?deliverable? merchant of that ilk.
Granted, there are bad guys in this business, as there are in all businesses. There are those that screw the consumer morning, noon and night. We don?t process for those people.
As for the cross sell talk, this is old news, but one more time: We have been doing this for well over a year. Our chargebacks have decreased (not because of increased volume either). So that is a lame argument. The facts support my position. The reason is because of disclosure. We email everyone upon joining. Consumers know where to go to cancel trials, recurring, to get help if their password does not work, etc?
Paycom / EPOCH and other IPSP?s spend millions every year on providing cardholders with state-of-the-art Call Centers. Ours is open 24x7x365 with toll free numbers to call from around the world answered by professional Customer Service Representatives speaking a total of 21 languages. We do this for the card associations (MC / Visa) rules and to protect their brands and our / your ability to continue accepting the brand. If we were scamming, we would not have a call center, save that money and roll along. We don?t.
I can?t speak for CCBill, but I bet Ron would agree with me that the disclosure is better now, Customer Service is better now, chargebacks are lower now and fraud is lower, except for the stolen databases than at any time in this industry?s history.
As to why MC won?t whack the known stolen card numbers, well the deal there is simple: Money. It is estimated by our professional consultants (with a combined 100 years working for and with the card associations) that the cost to MC alone is well over $1 Billion to reissue the stolen database cards from the DPI hack alone. The Issuing Banks have the lists, they just refuse to list the cards and MC won?t even ask. MC is owned by those same banks, so MC?s owners would probably opt in to of any re-issue program. Why is that? Don?t the care about the cardholders? Sure they do. But the reason again: Money. The money comes from the merchants. We pay the costs of the chargebacks and the good news for MC and their banks is that they KEEP the Interchange and fine us in the process. So there is no financial incentive or penalty for these banks and MC just letting the cards be used. This is the issue that should really tweak webmasters. This means that resellers can get the databases and run the cards on your programs, earn $35 a sign up and off they go, forever. And we keep giving valid auth?s as the card number and the CVC2 are correct and we get full AVS ? no reason to decline or scrub out. Webmasters are screwed, we are screwed, and cardholders are screwed, but not MC. That is where deceptive trade practices come in.
Sorry for the length of this post, but these issues are so complex, serious and maddening that it is hard to be brief.