Hi there,
One thing I am still a bit confused about: How do you resellers out there activate accounts instantly for your customers.... For example, a customer fills out and submits payment on your site, then how would you activate that account. I would not have a problem doing this if I had my own server, however being a reseller I am not quite sure how it would be done......

Or, do you just activate their account manually????????

thanks again everyone......

In most cases reseller's won't set up accounts instantly, whether they can or not. On the upside a lot of hosts that run servers are of two minds about this as well.

But, as a reseller you make a choice when you get notified of an account request wether to set up right away, or wait for the credit check. Depending on your billing provider you should be notified pretty quickly after submission. You'd just need to set up the account from that and send out the info. A turn around of 1/2 an hour or so tops is pretty much 'instant'

If you're looking at having account setup without your intervention at all, then most reseller accounts won't do that. The idea of reselling is you provide the billing to your customers, and administer the accounts yourself. As you don't run the server, there's no direct connection between you billing and the system itself. In fact many server setups don't directly connect billing with account setup, so it's up to you to find a solution.

Most people understand it takes time to confirm their credit information and are happy with 24 hours or so. In many cases they're happy that a host will be willing to spend time checking them out as it's something they do to everyone, reducing the chance that the host will end up on the scrap heap for letting too many fraudters through the door.

Greg Moore

If you use WHM then they are working on something to make account activation instant.

Before that comes out, for reseller I am not sure if a tool like that exists.

Hello
My advice is don't do it.
You should vet every customer order by hand or you will be overrun with spammers using stolen credit cards.

Gordon

Originally posted by GordonH
You should vet every customer order by hand or you will be overrun with spammers using stolen credit cards.

Well I can't say anything about the stolen credit cards, but it isn't all that hard to stop people spamming from your server... just put a limit on the number of emails they can send before you have a chance to notice the new account.

Good advice Gordon :D
I totally agree....while some hosts offer instant activation, I cant help but wonder the consequences of doing it that way.
The Ala systems offer that, and we are also on the Ala system and DONT use the "instant setup"
and DONT want to, LOL.
Ive found people sure dont have a problem with waiting just abit.
We offer 24hr response (and this is just to protect us)
Usually accts. are setup within an hour, BUT they are approved FIRST!

In this case if you want something done, do it your self.

There are lots of examples of accounts I have picked up as potential spammers using stolen cards that even our credit card authorisation system has not picked up.

You get a feel for it and can spot them, but if you used auto sign up they would go straight through.

Classic things:

US credit card, US address, but customer puts country down as "America" (don't laugh, I have seen it twice recently).

US address but zip code obviously made up/does not follow US post code formats.

IP address of order not in same continent, let alone country as card issue country.
That gets through AVS but not past me :)

Obvious "problem" domain names like warez****.com or getrichquick.com or the classic "penisenlargement.co.uk".


People really don't mind waiting.
As soon as they ordr they get an auto response explaining that we use real people to set up new accounts. We quote 6 hours to set up an account, but most are done within an hour.

If there was an auto sign up script that could closely scrutinise people then I would be all for it, but so far I have not seen one.

Gordon

Originally posted by GordonH
If there was an auto sign up script that could closely scrutinise people then I would be all for it, but so far I have not seen one.

Well, that's one advantage of Paypal ;)

Originally posted by GordonH
There are lots of examples of accounts I have picked up as potential spammers using stolen cards that even our credit card authorisation system has not picked up.

You get a feel for it and can spot them, but if you used auto sign up they would go straight through.

Classic things:

US credit card, US address, but customer puts country down as "America" (don't laugh, I have seen it twice recently).

US address but zip code obviously made up/does not follow US post code formats.

IP address of order not in same continent, let alone country as card issue country.
That gets through AVS but not past me :)

Obvious "problem" domain names like warez****.com or getrichquick.com or the classic "penisenlargement.co.uk".


People really don't mind waiting.
As soon as they ordr they get an auto response explaining that we use real people to set up new accounts. We quote 6 hours to set up an account, but most are done within an hour.

If there was an auto sign up script that could closely scrutinise people then I would be all for it, but so far I have not seen one.

Gordon

Hi Gordon,

Is there any site that I can find relevant information about all the countries (or in the U.S. at least) with their postal code, state, province, city etc. type of information listing?

Thanks :)

Regards,
Choon

Hello
Not that I am aware of.

http://www.zipfind.net will let you cjeck zip codes to see if they match the postal town.
I have seen enough US addresses to know what state a zip is in just by looking at it so I can spot obviously bogus ones.

Gordon

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for the link. :D

Regards,
Choon
P.S. Mod - sorry for this off-topic question & reply from me.

Alabanza servers will set up a reseller's added account immediately. But when it comes to new accounts, we don't set em up until we look at the order and screen it for fraud. Spammers and Fraudulent credit cards are now becoming a bigger problem every day :-(

Regards
AH

Originally posted by choon

Is there any site that I can find relevant information about all the countries (or in the U.S. at least) with their postal code, state, province, city etc. type of information listing?

http://www.anywho.com is another one you might want to look at. I don't think it's a totally complete listing, but it does come in handy at times.

Greg Moore