I have been a reseller for Godaddy (Wildwest domains) for a number of years now and am looking for alternatives.

The main reason I am considering this is because of the problems their chargeback policy places on my business. As it stands now I have had two months where I am left with a negative balance, which just no longer makes any business since.

I would rather not increase my prices, but look for another low cost reselling company.

Wildwest's Onerous Chargeback Policy
-------
Charge Backs - In the event of a credit card charge back, Wild West will deduct the amount of the credit card charge from Reseller's commission. In the event that chargeback experience is high, as determined by Wild West, Wild West reserves the right to hold back 20% of monthly commissions for 90 days from the date the commission was to be paid.
-------
Translation= If an order is charged back, the reseller is responsible for 100% of the charge.

Can any of you currently reselling, post your wholesale rate, chargeback policy, setup/startup fees, and company reselling for? It would be most appreciated.

Go with eNom or DirectI.

In most cases the seller is liable for chargebacks. It's only fair IMHO.

I could understand a percentage, but never 100% liable.

If a customer makes a $150 purchase I get around $20 as commission.
If a customer makes a $150 purchase that is charged back I am billed $150.

Please help me to understand how this is fair?

As a reseller I go through the expense and cost of making money for the company, chargebacks are a risk of the main company but never for a reseller.

Let's say I hire Joe Salesman to sell cars for me. He sells Steve Poor Guy a $50,000 Porche and Joe makes a cool 10% or 5,000 for his well earned commision. Two weeks passes and the bank calls to say the Steve Poor Guy's check bounced we then find out that Steve drove the Porche to Mexico. So I go to Joe Salesman and tell him to give me $50,000 since I am never responsible for these types of issues.
Maybe in bizzaro world, but the standard way sales comissions are done is that the salesman would only be responsible for the commission he made if a deal fell through. Never 100% responsible.

whats nice of enom is they take the commision and deduct the domain cost from your balance and give you the domain without any chargeback fees :)

So do you want the registrar to cover the losses of your customers?

Sounds like you are living in a dream world.

I expect the business I resell for to cover any losses from a sale of THEIR customers.

I am only a middleman, who expects to be paid commission when a transaction is completed 100%. If a transaction fails then I will loose that commission.

"Dream World???", will you please explain how the reseller being liable for 100% of a charge back even remotley fair?

Your customers are your responsibility.

Exactly my point, I am a reseller. They are customers of WWD/Godaddy

the registrar doesn't take the loss they just refund the suspected/fraudlent transactions and they dont fall into chargeback fees.

You are responsible for chargebacks because you refered the customer to them and buying domains are not reversible.

Please explain how that qualifies as "fair" without using circular logic or stating the obvious.

Jim, it's your responsibilty as they are customers your referring. As a reseller you need to be responsible for the types of clients you are bringing to the site. Imagine if you advertised or promoted on an illegal warez or carder site. Sure you'd make ALOT of sales but 90% of the purchases would be made with stolen credit cards. Now, I'm not saying you would do this but it is possible someone would if they were not responsible for the chargebacks. It only makes sense. You need to monitor your clients and what they are purchasing,where they are logging in from etc. etc. It's a difficult job but it comes with the territory. If you are going to sell domains with a relatively low margin, you better be prepared or you will take a big hit.

We spend alot of our time developing fraud prevention measures, analyzing hundreds of daily purchases, calling people and confirming sales etc. etc. etc.... Sadly, it's just a reality of doing business on the internet.

No

Perhaps you are not familiar with what is involved with reselling through wildwestdomains/godaddy. I am only a middleman, totally removed from all purchasing and delivering the product.

Maybe your given example of me referring customers who purchased warez fradulently would make some sense if I were the one processing the visitors credit cards.

I have no control at all on who buys from the site, nor if I suspected a fradulent purchase was made would it make any difference. I own a domain name that forwards to a premade website 100% controlled by WWD, I only set prices and recieve comissions.

Even if Godaddy is processing the cards, they are still losing money on YOUR customers that YOU referred. Responsibilty lies with you to manage your clients i.e where you are sending them from. I doubt very much that the Godaddy/WWD reseller program would be very profitable if they took responsibilty of all chargeback fees from their resellers, ESPECIALLY with the margins they are working with. Without the consequences of a chargeback fee being levied on their resellers, their chargebacks would be 10 times worse as I can guarantee their resellers would send ANY type of traffic imaginable to them. Good or bad. Just would not be worth it. JMHO

No

These are not my customers, I am removed from all purchasing and delivering of the product. This is not a debateable point, these people purchasing are simply not my customers, they belong to WWD/Godaddy, period. Within the terms of service when signing up to resell this point is very obvious, end of discussion.

Please read my previous posts in this thread, this is not a simple chargeback fee. I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR 100%, READ THAT ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF THE CHARGE OF THE TRANSACTION. So that means, if the customer orders (from WWD) $100 worth of stuff I am not just denied my commission and levied a chargeback "fee", I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WHOLE $100. Actually, to use the term "fee" is incorrect, in effect, the reseller is forced to purchase all defaulted products without receiving anything in return.

What is the difference between a seller or reseller besides the extra business a reseller can capture? Is a resellers role to hedge all losses, to gain more market share, or both?

You can go with Enom. But i think the problem will remain the same.

Abhishek

I partially agree with jimtomas. If the reseller would be able to analyze credit card details of the buyers the situation would be different. Sure it is a red flag that somebody from X country paid with a card from Y country. But, we, the resellers never know these kind of details to prevent fraud. At least, this is my case with enom, but I assume it is similar with WWD.

WOW, so THAT is how they keep prices low? They cheat affiliates? If the low price isn't profitable, they should charge a HIGHER price! That is the **************FIRST************** rule of marketing! It is SO obvious that nobody should have to say it. Remember that "I love lucy" show with aunt marthas salad dressing? What was the FIRST thing ricky did when he heard about it? He determined COST! WHY? To set a price! Why did they stop? Because the price was too low(Lucy and ethyl never figured their cost)!

BTW the customer is GODADDY's!

I guess the only way to handle this is to use the API, and be STRICT about who can purchase, and to redirect access such that you always have full control until you KNOW you have been paid. THAT way there is no point in trying to cheat you, and you at least have the domain.

Steve

HI Jimtomas

I am a resller for WWD and did not know that they even did this . Yes you are 100% correct. If what you say about charge back is correct I would avoid Wild West DOmains at all cost I have opened a ticket with there support right now . Have you found an alternative yet ?
As it is an electronic product such as their hosting and it is charged back it has cost them Zero naught nothing apart form CC commissions and they sting you for the whole lot it is almost criminal .:mad:

alternative reseller program? check enom they are nice

the WWD system is a sort of hybrid reseller/affiliate system

you're not actually a reseller seeing as *you* aren't doing the selling, taking the money , etc all you're doing is referring *potential* clients - basically an affiliate scheme

with a twist of you taking 100% of the risk !

my advice would be to get a *proper* reseller account where you can make the descisions from say enom, and do your own fraud screening

As for the charge back procedure, you do not get charged for the entire amount of purchase.

If a customer makes a $150 purchase I get around $20 as commission.
If a customer makes a $150 purchase that is charged back I am billed $20.

This has changed since that thread was listed so the correct amount is listed above.

what happens tothe domain ? who owns it? godaddy/WWD or you?


with enom they waive the commission refund the money and charge you the domain cost and give you the domain where you can sell the domain for $5 or something and makeup little from you loss or even sell it for more and gain more money :D

As always it is so nice to see that everyone actually asks the company responsible for such horrid tactics what their actual policy is on the issue.

Have no fear for since I am a WWD reseller and am quite alarmed by what has been brought up here I went ahead and sent an email to their support (BTW it is support@wildwestdomains.com) and here is their response:

"When a Chargeback occurs on the Wild West Domain system the reseller is responsible for 100% of the domain name sales. This is because WWD cannot get a refund for the domains from the registry. The reseller is given the right to take ownership of the domains.

WWD absorbs the $15 charge back fee from the bank, and WWD only takes back the commissions earned from the sales of other products and services."

Now this seems like a fair situation to me. You do have the ability to view all sales on your system with WWD and I have called them up multiple times about dodgy looking purchases. Only one ended up being a fraud, and the WWD fraud team caught them in 24 hours anyway.

Check your sources before you start running around screaming that they sky is falling.

cat

if they caught it in 24hrs - 5 days they can delete the domain for you and charge you nothing?

good point.

my experience with WWD is that their fraud team catches a bad transaction in a few hours and reverses everything before the reseller sees the commission and therefore has a problem.

since they delay the commission payments by a month if there is a charge back i never have a problem with it as a reseller because it is handled before any commission comes to me.

one of the main reasons i like WWD so much is because they have a 24/7 fraud protection team scanning all transactions for irregularities. its saved some reverse commissions a few times.

cat

There's a famous Spanish saying, "Between saying and doing there is a great expanse" So I'd like to clear up some misinformation or misguided information that has been provided here.

So without going into great detail, I'll provide direct evidence to this issue. You'll see my comission view from the month this was posted.

http://www.pixpond.com/xx/wildwest.gif (note picture will be removed in 30 days)

So you can see that contrary to whatever policy was quoted above, when a chargeback occurs on the Wild West Domain system the reseller is, in fact, responsible for 100% of the domain name sales.

I apologize for responding to my own post that is so old, but I'd just like to clear up the unhelpful information provded above.

In WWD's defense I do have to say that chargebacks seem to have subsided greatly after I made them aware of this problem.

Nice read and to see where people stand