Hi

I would be most grateful for any advice people can give me on this one.

I have had a few problems with duplicate transactions going through to PaySystems - it seems to be far too easy to do.

The last one I had was for just under £1600, they were both authorised and captured within minutes - I had logged onto PaySystems immediately I received the notification mails - apparently they were captured so quickly because the fraud screening software handled it and it wasnt done manually.

No problem I though, I'll refund one of them straight away.

BUT ... because it had already been captured I lose the £80 authorisation fees (4.95% plus 60p) on the refunded transaction and according to PaySystems there is nothing I can do about it?

A smaller transaction isn't such a bitter pill to swallow but when we are talking £1000+ erroneous duplicates it's more money than I can afford to lose.

It seems absolutely outrageous that in one transaction (a duplicate so PaySystems have already had one £80 fee) I lose so much money.

Anyway, if that wasn't bad enough ...


A payment from 8th December 2003 was authorised and captured but the payment was not taken from the customers card. The transaction was for £1020 and so cost me around £50 in fees.

I sent two tickets in to ask why the transaction was still showing as pending days and then weeks later and I finally received this reply:

"Order #{edited} was reviewed and captured on December 8th but was not settled because the transaction was stuck in the capture queue. Unfortunately, the authorization code for the order has already expired and can not be processed. Please have the customer resubmit the payment again. In the future, if you see transactions that have been "reviewed, pending capture" sitting in your New Orders section for more than 2 days, please let us know so that we can investigate to see if there is a problem. ...

We sincerely apologize for all the inconvenience."


So I'm now thinking that despite being charged £50 for PaySystems to process the transaction, I still have to chase it up to make sure it goes through OK?

I was then left £1020 plus fees out of pocket and for the last two days have been chasing round to explain to my customer (who is in Germany incidentally!) what had happened and ask that he please put the transaction through again.

If I hadn't managed to persuade him to re-present his payment, who would have paid the £1020 shortfall?

Anyway luckily he did (and I was charged ANOTHER £50 in fees), but guess what ... another 3 duplicates within seconds of each other - I always thought that PaySystems were meant to filter out duplicates.

Luckily this time, they hadn't been captured so I lost only the 60p per transaction.

I was up until 3:30am this morning trying to sort the problems out and getting nowhere.

I'm still waiting for a reply to my last support ticket which I am told has been referred to a supervisor.

I would like to know how I go about obtaining refunds for the authorisation fees.

If it wasn't for my hours of chasing the customer for him to re-do the transaction from 8th Dec, PaySystems would also have owed me the £1020 surely?

I feel like I have been bashing my head against a brick wall although that would probably have been much more enjoyable!

Any suggestions most gratefully received.

Many Thanks

Tom Hill
More For Your Monkey Ltd.

Hi Tom,

May be time for you to look at a "true" merchant account. Your transaction totals seem like they are fairly high and it doesnt seem like a 3rd party processor is cutting it for you anymore.

The time you've spent on this, in addition to the fees youve already paid would've covered off any costs of a merchant account, and then some.

If they won't refund transaction fees for their errors, I would cancel your account immediately and file an action in small claims court.

I guess 2CO is much better than PaySystems. I have heard minor issues (oe DOS attacks sometimes) but nothing this rediculous.

I doubt if it be so easy to get your own merchant account because of the 'high' per transaction values.

May be ask Chris @ CDGCOMMERCE for advice on getting your own merchant account.

Thanks.

Rick Kumar

Thanks guys - I have a merchant account with HSBC now in the UK who charge less than half the fees, settle in 3 days and I'm sure care alot more about their customers.

It's just taking a while to work on the integration with OS Commerce as there is no integration by default a mod needs to be written and configured.

I'm just not sure what best to do about the money I've lost with PaySystems - they don't seem to reply to support tickets and even the Live Chat goes eerily quiet when the subject of refunds is brought up.

Getting nowhere fast with them.

As they are in Canada, I don't think I can file for small claims against them, can I?

Thanks again.

Tom

Originally posted by rickkumar

I doubt if it be so easy to get your own merchant account because of the 'high' per transaction values.



This shouldnt be an issue at. High per transaction value is exactly why I would recommend a merchant account.

The application forms will include these types of questions and the merchant provider will structure the offering around this.

Also, the cost of a merchant account is much easier to justify with high transaction values.

With any big ticket item, I would recommend getting a signature via fax to protect yourself (somewhat) from chargebacks.

Andrew is absolutely correct. A high ticket size definitely won't prevent you from getting a merchant account, you'll just have to pick carefully.

Keep in mind that a larger average ticket size does present more risk to an acquirer (ISO/Bank) as well as to you as a merchant.

That is because getting hit with a $1500 chargeback, for instance, is a lot more prone to resulting in a big loss than if a merchant has an average ticket of say $10.

It is easier for a merchant and/or their ISO & Bank to take an unrecoverable loss on a higher ticket merchant with a lower ticket merchant, statistically speaking.

One thing to ask about are rolling reserves though. There are a few merchant processors out there that require a default 5% reserve (or more) if a merchant has an average ticket over $500, etc.

Other merchant processors do NOT require such reserves so ask about this in advance before signing up with any merchant processor to ask how this is handled.

Also, on the PaySystems note, maybe try speaking with Paul (pablo514) from the WHT forums here. He seems like a standup guy and maybe he can help you out?

I do find it concerning that PS would charge you for a transaction that you voided out mintues after it happened --- simply because there is no discount rate cost incurred on a transaction if it is voided out!

Unless they ran the transaction as a credit return which doesn't make a lot of sense since it will end up costing them more money to do it that way.

Anyways, best of luck in resolving this issue, I hope that they work out something with you on that.

Thanks again guys - just to let you know I still haven't got anywhere so far.

I've had NO reply to my support ticket so I put another one in, no reply to that either.

I went onto Live Chat again at 2:30am this morning and caught the same guy I was on with 24 hours earlier - "Manny B" who couldn't help at all and just said he's passed the issue on to his supervisor.

Re the merchant accounts, my average ticket is about £100 I think atm so they're not all like the ones I've had problems with, it's just sods law that I had BIG problems with the largest transactions I take.

I am still looking to change over to HSBC bank in the UK asap - they have agreed to provide an account which also incorporates a gateway so an "all in one" package at a very good rate.

The only problem is that the code to integrate it with OSC has had to be custom written.

If anyone wants any info on the HSBC package for UK clients, please PM me and I can tell you all I know about it.

I'll let you know if and when I receive a resolution from PaySystems!

Hi mfym,

The HSBC offering is fairly unique - that is a major bank providing a point of sale merchant account, an internet merchant account and a gateway - all in one package.

Do they charge any sort of deposit? (all banks in Canada demand large deposits for any internet merchant account, and they always separate it from the point of sale merchant account). Also, none of the banks here offer any sort of gateway.

Any reserve fees?

I would most def be interested in more information about this offering !

I'll pm you my email address.

Thanks for sharing so openly, I do appreciate it...

Does the HSBC solution offer recurring transaction management and fraud screening? Got a link?

Hi

I just put together a long reply but it disappeared as I'm not allowed to post URLs as I dont have 5 postings on this forum yet!

In a nutshell then, the site is (w etc dot)

ukbusiness.hsbc.com/hsbc/mrp/cards

The system is called Secure ePayments - there is a basic rundown there.

I have some .pdfs re the technical side of things if anyone wants them mailing to them - I don't understand that side of it, I just know what I want for my business and this seems to cover it.

The customer will need some banking history with HSBC, personal or business so if they're thinking of it, it would be wise to open an account now with them - very good business bank, free banking for a year which seems standard practise in the UK.

Anyone needs any info, PM or mail me - I'm out and about now until Sunday or Monday.

Tom
More For Your Monkey Ltd.

Latest from PaySystems:

"Resolution description :
Our system is designed to provide a warning to the cardholder when a double charge will possibly occur. This does cut down tremendously on the number of double charges that do occur. As with any system this is not 100% fullproof and double charges will occur once in a while.

When a double charge occurrs you can void the duplicate order. The fee that will apply in this case is your authorisation fee (60p). This is the gateway access fee for the transaction and cannot be waived.

We apologise for any inconvenience you have experienced on our system and have forwarded your concerns to management."


It's more than "once in a while", I would rephrase it as "quite alot" - anybody else had the same problem with double charging?

Now the fee I'm charged, that is a contradiction since I have been told by paysystems before now that I am charged the full percentage fee plus the 60p auth fee for duplicates even if they are refunded?

Does anybody know which is correct (as PaySystems themselves don't seem to know or just aren't telling!!) ?

They still haven't answered my question regarding the payment that was authorised but not taken by them - if the customer doesn't re-submit the payment - what happens? Are PaySystems going to pay up for their error?

Many Thanks

Tom

Just an update for anyone who's interested.

STILL no reply whatsoever from PaySystems and still £1100 down.

Pablo514 from this forum is having a look at it too for me.

I'm now live with HSBC Secure ePayments and OS Commerce - the mod isnt perfect but it's working :-)


Tom
More For Your Monkey Ltd.

Hi Tom,

Glad to hear its working out with HSBC & osCommerce (sorry about PaySystems - Im sure it will get cleared up eventually, but...still cant be fun in the meantime)

Ive since recommended HSBC's solution to several people in the UK. Looks like we're taking a shot at creating a mod for this. If we get one working smoothly, we'll def pass it on to you for use.

HSBC accept recurring, but we have to input clients' credit card details into ePayments control panel manually first time, some times it throught it is absolutely like "phone order", it is not a real ecommerce like what 2checkout or paypal does.

The first throuble is installation, i spent 2 weeks to know how to install SSL for my domain, put .so into root usr/lib/ , put .e into cgi-bin/ , finall the sample.html is working.

The second throuble is that i suddenly found that the sample.html is not be able to custom design easily. I can not even setup a single payment successfully. Oscommerce is useless because we only sell 2 or 3 products which just require a few purchase buttons.

The third throuble is that there is no way to set up a recurring form on our website to charge hosting.

The stupid HSBC uses a dangerous way to charge clients, the way i need to do is to ask clients credit card details, they can email me, fax me, or phone me for the details, and I will put the data into HSBC ePayments control panel manually. It is so stupid, why doesn't HSBC just make a few predesigned recurring button like Paypal or 2Checkout does?

HSBC does allow you to create an interface so your clients can signup and input their card details, you dont have to do this for your clients.

Hi, Matt,

I have tried both CPI and Virtual Terminal options, non of them has such interface for recurring payments.

Please can you advise me any other options come with recurring signup interface?

Thanks.

As Matt said HSBC is a direct acquire, and they allow you to integrate recurring options, they are not a third party processor such as paysystems, or 2CO. Direct merchant accounts allows you the flexibility & ability to tailor the needs toward your business.