Hi Everybody,
:mad: we have all read this forum and had our own nightmares with instabill. They robbed me too of $<edit> and now I finally have something to prove how big a fruad they are. They handle thousands of dollars of transactions daily and don't even have a VALID SSL CERTIFICATE
. I don't have to say any more go check it out for your self https://secure.instabill.com

I don't have any hope of getting my money back from them but I would love to see Instabill closed :) but this thread is'nt about just me. I'm sure fellow instabill users will agree and I am happy to say that I now have my own merchant account thanks to sfcommerce.com

<<MOD NOTE: Merged duplicate, cross-posted threads>>

I am instabill customer before i switch over to revecom.

I had seldom read up on about creditcard issue. But just realise that instabill isn't that honest as i thought? Well, their cheque is pretty professional organise with your transaction details attach which is much better than revecom( only 1 cheque).

Btw, what is the advantage of getting a merchant account? do i have a merchant account now (with revecom)?

how do you know the instabill SSL is expired?

I use Netscape 6 which gives an alert whenever something is wrong with the ssl of a site. But you can check yourself by clicking on the Small Lock in the bottom bar of the browser ( IE left and Netscape Right)

With your own merchant account you will only have to pay 2.75% commision and no reserve fund. Also it has realtime processing and verification ( instabill now takes 48 hours) and also you can charge manually ( Go to the control panel and charge a cc) also your name and not zStarNetworks appears on the CC statement,

Revecom and Instabill are somehow connected. I'm not sure how but I read somewhere on this forum that their whois information matched and they were owned by the same person. Also check zStarNetwork.com and PaySystems.com as you can all see both websites are very identical. PaySystems is the parent company of Revecom and zStarNetworks is the parent company of Instabill.

yeah the date of ssl certificate is expired. but i think you should notify web master.

but from this it is clear that company is very unprofessional and not worth to do business at least payment collection.

:mad:

why should i tell them
they have;nt helped me with any of my problems and they have taken away my money becuase of their mistake

Cool for having my own merchant account. So, will i need to keep my client billing data or sfcommerce.com have one to help us keep the database?
2.75% commission on sales? Does that apply to future recurring billing?

well it doesn't 'prove' they are commiting fraud by having a SSL cert expire, but I will agree it does seem a little unprofessional of them. Seems they're having a spot of bother lately...

Greg Moore

Their cert expired today. Although that is entirely unprofessional, I think they deserve a break, an oversight by whoever's responsible. They do maintain Revecom.com too if I'm not wrong and that company has received lots of praises from users on this board.

Originally posted by arrty
...They handle thousands of dollars of transactions daily and don't even have a VALID SSL CERTIFICATE.

Arrty, while I like them less than I used to, they still fill a need for low cost payment processing. To be fair, the cert expired *yesterday*, so when you say, "they don't even have a valid SSL cert.", this is true, but not exactly fair.

Secure orders are indeed down (at least a payment link I have set up doesn't seem to work for me).

Note: I commented on this before I merged the threads. Some of the thread might seem out of order due to the merging.

chicken,
i apologize for my behaviour and you are right some of my comments do not seem to be very appropriate. But this does not change the way I feel about instabill and i'm sure others will agrree with me about my comments about them.

I have been with instabill for over an year and at first they were my angels as they offered cc acceptance when no one did. But as soon as my cash accumulated with them and (i assume) their members increased they became what they are now.

At least everyone I have talked to has had similar experiences with them. They took away $<edit>+ from me because of their mistake and then won't answer my mails. I am frustrated but have come to accept it and move on. They left me hanging on a cliff and for two week I could'nt accept any new orders becuase of them. Luckily sfcommerce helped me and I'm back on my feet.

I'd also like to rephrase my orginal comment.
Although their certificate expired only a day ago this adds hard fact to the list of complaints that people have against them. Take my own example, above i wirte how I got robbed by them but its up to you to believe me or not. But by the expired certificate shows to the non-members and those who have'nt (yet) had bad experience with them that they are unprofessional. And being unprofessional they could possibly cost you your business.

Note to Mods: Please delete any part of this that you think is against the guidlines.

Thanks

No, I partly agree with you. I've had cases where customers have tried to enter an order 4 times (really unbelievable that they'd stick with it that long) and I had to head off the final denial with an email to support asking them to call the client. Also slow approvals, etc.

It isn't a merchant account, and you don't have full control and that can be fustrating. But for nothing a month, it isn't bad to start out (or something similar).

The SSL cert. is poor planning to say the least. If I had orders today, they wouldn't process and that does say something about reliability (or lack thereof).

If they owe you money however, you should follow up on that with a letter from a lawyer (sometimes that is enough), or small claims (a pain I'll admit).

right now i can not access https://secure.instabill.com/ from india.
i get server not found error. this is been more then 5 minutes. is that mean payment gatway is down ? best of luck for your business using this company ? :D

C:\WINDOWS>tracert secure.instabill.com

Tracing route to secure.instabill.com [207.21.209.153]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 154 ms 117 ms 116 ms 203.124.230.75
2 125 ms 116 ms 114 ms 203.124.230.66
3 397 ms 320 ms 317 ms har1-serial5-0-0-1-0.London.cw.net [166.63.164.1
85]
4 324 ms 323 ms 323 ms bcr2.London.cw.net [166.63.162.62]
5 360 ms 315 ms 316 ms bcr2-so-0-3-0.Thamesside.cw.net [166.63.209.149]

6 330 ms 329 ms 325 ms bcr2-so-1-2-0.Amsterdam.cw.net [208.173.209.173]

7 384 ms 351 ms 348 ms acr1-loopback.Miami.cw.net [208.172.98.61]
8 366 ms 360 ms 352 ms aar1-loopback.Miami.cw.net [208.172.98.2]
9 348 ms 359 ms 362 ms aar1-loopback.Miami.cw.net [208.172.98.2]
10 387 ms 348 ms * ge1-2.CORE4.MIA1.INNERHOST.NET [216.87.0.6]
11 400 ms * * ge1-2.CORE4.MIA1.INNERHOST.NET [216.87.0.6]
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.

I am not based in the US and the country that i'm in has no concept of legal action :)

Also I have some information that I will disclose when I get my remaining balance that is left in my account right now.

Also let me remind you that the problems you are describing are just a delay in service or product errors. My case is completely different and its safe to say that i've been robbed.

Does anyone know how secure Instabill's system is?
Their hardware/software and storage facility?
Their office is it in a secure location?

Trust me its worth for all you guys who are using instabill to check it out thoroughly, and you'll be surprised at what you discover.

Yes its down for me too. Funny that the server went down just now :)

I've been trying to access instabill for hours but it is still down.

Fortunately, I've also signed up with worldpay, and so my clients have an alternative means to pay. (Well, actually worldpay is my main processor now, instabill is the alternative.)


arrty, instabill took my money away because of their own negligence! My customers complained to them about fraudulent charges to their card, and instabill refunded them their payment to me! Why should I bear the loss? How can I fraudulently use my customers credit cards when I don't even have access to them? Instabill does not protect credit card info properly, and that is reason enough to avoid and leave them.
Read http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15101

Also, remember the lame server status page inside instabill? Doesn't it always show that their web server, secure server, transaction server etc.etc. are all "OK"? Well of course, since all those servers are hosted on the same machine.

Furthermore, I see no references of instabill from their parent company zstarnetwork. Very suspicious indeed.

Eric

Instabill's order page always sys they will call the client to verfiy $100+ orders. This is great i think. No chargebacks possible this way.

But I charge $150, $225 and even $400+ and they don't call the client.

Now I am happy and satisfied that they have verified and I am not in any danger.

A month later, Out of the Blue -> BOOM!

They throw a nuke at you saying that they have refunded becuase of chargebacks. I e-mail them asking if they called the client or not and no reply from them.

Now you guys judge!

Is it really my fault other than the fact that I had a dream? I thought by taking larger clients I could expand, but in reality I came to the brink of extinction bu trusting instabill.

loggind off.... arrty

Well first, you shouldn't be running anything higher than $18 charges through them. There are cheaper solutions, even if Revecom doesn't accept you. You can't use them for $400 charges ($80 taken out, 1/2 returned I know... but still... and it sounds like none of it was returned to you anyhow, errrrrr).

Anywhooo, I was thinking of switching to revecom but was afraid of basically the same, though people have said the water is fresher o'er thar. We'll see :)

Originally posted by arrty
Yes its down for me too. Funny that the server went down just now :)

Guest what, I wrote instabill.com and zstarnetwork.com's provider, here is what I got.

-----Original Message-----
From: support@innerhost.com [mailto:support@innerhost.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 4:11 PM
Subject: Site down [Incident:rightnow 010812-000038]


Recently you requested personal assistance from our technical support center. Below is a summary of your request and our response.

Our mission is to provide you with superior customer service. If we do not hear from you within 48 hours we will assume your issue has been satisfactorily resolved.


Subject
---------------------------------------------------------------
Site down

Suggested Answer
---------------------------------------------------------------
At 08/12/2001 04:10 PM we wrote -

Greetings,

We were inform to take those servers offline..

Question
---------------------------------------------------------------
I just wanted to inform you that instabill.com and Zstarnetwork.com sites are both down.

I am a client of theirs and need to reach their sites
I did a whois and seen they are with you.



Question Reference #010812-000038
---------------------------------------------------------------
Product: Shared Services
Category: Other
Date Created: 08/12/2001 04:01 PM
Last Updated: 08/12/2001 04:10 PM
Elapsed Time: 0 Minutes
Status: Solved
Server Number:

Domain Name/ IP addr
---------------------------------------------------------------
dsp-202, custp-321


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Greetins, we were informed to take those servers offline? Who told them to take the servers offline, of course they could not answer that so I didn't even ask.

Why didn't instabill notify its customers?

This is getting very scary. They didn't renew their SSL cert and now their site is down.

This burns me to no end. :angry:

I have their address and I am only 4 hours away from them, if the address is correct, I may be taking a small drive.

I am glad my merchant account went live Friday. I am in the
posistion to move my customers over, but now I can't get in to cancel their rebills or see when they are due next.

This is exactly why I got my own merchant account. So I and only I have complete control.

I have had three customers tell me so far that their cards were changed due to fraud, since coming onboard with me. I think I am starting to put pieces together here.

It just makes my business look bad in the long run.

I hope they come back up by morning.

ljprevo,
Its good that you got your own metchant account and my suggestion to everybody is to at least be prepared and have a backup provider and of all your customer's information. I did not trust instabill from the start.
Also please do check their office. As far as I know their headoffice is in a foriegn country.

Well I guess all is fine for now, their site is back up and I am able to access my customer's info. I am half temped to cancel them all, but I don't have all my customer's info yet, i.e. credit card info.
I am getting all the info while I can. I know I can't get the credit card info from them but I will at least know when their account is due next.

Hey Guys,

I received the following reply from Instabill after I wrote them asking a few questions:

--------------

Hello Ryan,

Thanks for your message.

First of all, a for your question; NO , definitely it will not effect recurring charges less then three months or as you said your are of one month.

Secondly, NO we are not going out of business NOR we are closing down. Its just that due to some problems and our on going up-gradation process we have changed the policies for time being.

Hope this answer your queries.

Feel free to contact us in case you have any further query.

Regards,

Lisa Woods,
Support Team Member,
Support Team,
Instabill.com
www.instabill.com
support@instabill.com

--------------

See, all you gotta do is ask! :)

Thanks,
Ryan

Originally posted by extsupport

See, all you gotta do is ask! :)

Thanks,
Ryan

Yeah, but all they gotta do is lie. No say they are, but they could be.

It's official, instabill.com will cease it's services from 20th August.
Apparently their support didn't get the wind of it :-)

Take a look:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=18122

Dear Merchants,

Due to unavoidable circumstances Instabill.com/zStar Network Inc. will no
longer be able to provide its billing services.

Please make alternative credit card processing arrangements as
Instabill.com/zStar Network Inc. will cease its services from August 20, 2001.

We regret the inconvenience caused but ensure that all dues will be paid
according to the payment and hold back schedules.

Our support service will be available to make sure that all your questions are
answered as soon as possible.

Please note again that your payments will be made on time as per previous
schedule.

We wish you all good luck with your businesses.

Regards
Instabill.com/zStar Network Inc.

Chicken,
Please close this thread. Instabill has closed down and I think that this thread is no longer appropriate.

I think that now we are all concerned about our remaining balances with instabill. I hope they keep their word and give us our payments.

Yes, I suppose discussing an expired secure cert. is somewhat a moot point, heh...