Well, since my e-mail from CCBILL yesterday, and after 2 days of reading this entire thread, I can see that we all have to do some hard thinking on what the best course of action is. I've been doing this adult website stuff since 1996, and have had my own ups and downs, including $8,000/mo profit my first couple of years, down to almost nothing now.
My first 3rd party processor, WWIA in Crestview, FL, due to an unscrupulous (sp?) sys admin, had his merchant account frozen in Dec, 1999, my $3,000 check bounced, he ended up over $100,000 in debt to Visa/MC, and owed me over $7,000. Because I had the lowest charge-back ratio, he kept me on with his new merchant account until he decided this shit wasn't worth it anymore, and 1 year later he paid me my arrears (money I thought was lost forever). I checked in on getting my own merchant account but decided "pledging my house and ALL my assets" wasn't worth it. Too many surfers abusing the system and charging back for legitimate signups (covered many times in this thread).
When I was shopping for a new 3rd party processor at Internext (then IA2000), CCBILL (Ron & Craig) woowed me by telling me they use multiple servers and multiple locations, to move bad accounts from one to the other to "mathematically" keep the ratios down. Don't know for sure if it's true or not, but it sounded good.
Like everyone else, I have to make the same decisions, and as crappy as the net has gotten for signups and retentions, I can't let $750.00 keep me from receiving the $1,500/month I'm struggling to maintain. However, I did e-mail CCBILL this morning and ask if I can charge a higher rate for the VISA charges than I do for the others, as VISA cards all start with the number "4", so it should be an easy programming change, but CCBILL replied back they "couldn't" do it. I prefer to believe they don't want to do it.
Finally, this morning, I raised the prices on my pay sites 50%. Guess the only way to beat this is pass it on to the consumer, and maybe their power of a large number of complaints to VISA will get the assholes to re-consider what they are doing.
Regards, and thanks for taking the time to read such a long reply.
vik