I've been with 2CO about 8 weeks and have about 3 or 4 transactions per day through them. About a third of those seem to have problems with 2CO's servers, such as time outs, incorrectly saying authorisation failed when infact it didn't, etc., etc.

Not only that, but a customer of mine who used the card at 2CO had his details stolen and ended up with lots of unknown transactions on his card. The only time he'd used this card in the previous month was at 2CO :(

I wasn't expecting them to be great but this is dire and really starting to piss off my regular customers. Are they ALWAYS this bad ?

In a word. YES

Only use them if you have nowhere else to go.

I just signed up with them recently - although on paper it looks like a good option, I'm already seeing problems with their buggy interface, credit card charges showing up simple as 2co.com (instead of 2co-Company that is advertised) on peoples statements (I already foresee the disputes) etc.

Me thinks it's time to bite the bullet and get a real merchant account.

It seems they've had issues now and then over the past year or so. I think maybe they grew in customer size faster than they grew technology wise.

.This nothing new --Go right back through the thread and you will find Volumes written about 2CO and how bad they actually are from experienced Merchants who endured them

For me, I thought I was willing to put up with some issues as long as the service was "tolerable" because of the price.

But now I'm thinking that I'm going to have to bear the price of merchant account fees if I want to move my business up to the next level. I wish there were more options for Canadian merchants but that's another story I guess.

Merchant Fees actually worked out cheaper for us in GB.Paysystems has a lot of our money + many who use this forum, so do not go to them for goodness sake they are as bad and worse than 2CO.I do feel for you with 2CO, as during the last year we were with them their service was appalling, and we only wish we had gone then for the full Merchant account.. Get one now and save yourself a lot of hastle, you will not regret it.

Hi amos462001,

As discussed in the other thread, I have been trying to get a merchant account and have been quoted £25k deposit by Barclaycard so looks like I'll be with 2CO for a while to come.

Sorry to hear about Barclays digging in. You know when we applied we asked were we in anyway favoured as we had 3 accounts with them and the business account,totalling over 30 years non stop, and they said No, it did not matter who applied and where they banked.I am beginning to wonder though;)

Anyway,I have heard good reports about CCAvenue, a 3rd PP in India,they apparently are very reliable.You could try half and half.We put ALL our eggs in one basket with 2CO then did the same again with Paysystems, and well the rest is history, I would not recommend any repeat performances of the aforesaid!!:rolleyes:

2CO haven't always been this bad. I would say 2checkout's service has greatly deteriorated over the last few weeks. We have been using them since April 2003 and actually haven't had that much trouble with them. This month with 2CO however has been very frustrating. A lot of old customers are no longer able to pay with their credit cards, about 5% of customers get double-charged (likely because of transaction errors/timeouts) which means we have to manually check all payments every day.

It looks like they have taken too many new customers (as a result of Paysystem fiasco) and now simply cannot handle the amount of transactions. Plus they are still having difficulty implementing 'Verified by Visa' program properly which is causing additional troubles to the customers.

I hope that this increase in processing volume does not affect their fraud prevention system which has been very good so far (especially considering the fact that they accept all types of non-high-risk vendors from all over the world). Keeping chargeback rates under control is #1 priority for any 3PP. Lets hope they learned the Paysystems lesson...

2checkout's business has always looked somewhat unprofessional, but as long as it worked... it was ok. (It's always a pain to get a good payment solution if you are outside US). But now that we are starting to lose sales it's time to finally say goodbye to 2CO. We are already in the process of switching to a different billing solution.

brokernet,

As for your customer's credit card details being stolen - I HIGHLY doubt it happened because of 2checkout.com. I just do not see how is this possible at all with the way their secure payment form works...

I know, it sucks...

My experience is different. I give 2co A+ as a 3rd party processor.

Aiesh

Aiesh,

Are you saying that you don't have a problem with the reliability of 2CO's servers ?? How many transactions do you do per week?

Aiesh must be riding on a Rainbow!!

it is an old story again about them, infact i suggest you to change now to either of these,

paypal , or worldpay or IKOBO

you could also find some remarks over paypal here ( infact Bad ones)!

but IKOBO and worldpay are good enough,

If you look hard enough you'll find negative threads about everything on the planet. Problem is the threads are usually started by someone who got 'screwed' because they don't know what they're getting into and didn't read/understand the usage policy.

You need to realise that people who post consistently in these forums do know what they are talking about in general.You would therefore be very wise to heed what is written.You may think that by brushing these posts to one side everything will turn up smelling of roses for you, but you will eventually remember these posts when things turn out not to be so good after all,as you had initially hoped they would be,and you will definitely be kicking yourself for not heeding sound advice that is given freely to you now.

People do not write warnings just for the sake of themselves,they do it to save you, the next generation of Internet businesses making all the same mistakes as they did.Just because 2CO and similar companies are cheap to join may prove tremendously expensive in the long run, and will probably cost you far more money and lost business, than if you wisely take out a proper Merchant Account now.

Originally posted by Harmolodic

I hope that this increase in processing volume does not affect their fraud prevention system which has been very good so far (especially considering the fact that they accept all types of non-high-risk vendors from all over the world). Keeping chargeback rates under control is #1 priority for any 3PP. Lets hope they learned the Paysystems lesson...


I doubt the increased volume would affect their fraud prevention software system unless they are running all scrub attempts through just a couple of servers .. then yes it might bottleneck and cause timeout errors. Otherwise the software itself should work just as well on attempt #2 million as it did on attempt #1.

You are absolutely correct about high-risk vendors under 3rd party processing. The top priority should always be strictly controlling which vendors you allow under such an umbrella. A few bad apples can spoil it for everyone - which isn't fair to the good vendors. For everyones sake its imparative to enforce stringent monitoring of those few bad ones - otherwise you end up with a paysystems type breakdown.

Originally posted by multitaskerVic
I doubt the increased volume would affect their fraud prevention software system unless they are running all scrub attempts through just a couple of servers .. then yes it might bottleneck and cause timeout errors. Otherwise the software itself should work just as well on attempt #2 million as it did on attempt #1.

Fraud prevention does not just work on software level. A lot of manual order checking is done by 2checkout fraud department every day.

Moreover a lot of work has to be done by 2CO staff to verify new vendors. As you may be aware, they will always call a certain % of people who submitted orders through them to make sure the service has actually been delivered by the new vendor.

With such an increase in their processing volume it is critical for 2CO that their fraud department works as efficiently as before.

Originally posted by brokernet
Aiesh,

Are you saying that you don't have a problem with the reliability of 2CO's servers ?? How many transactions do you do per week?

Originally posted by brokernet

Aiesh must be riding on a Rainbow!!

Well, 2CO is the third company I have tried since 1999. I tried internetsecure, paysystems, and now 2co.

internetsecure did not have any thing you can call CC fraud prevention system, at least between Oct 1999 and Oct 2000. Simply, any valid credit card will passes through their system. Whenever you contact their customer support asking whether they can have a look into a transaction, they never give a decision, they simply leave it to you whether to fill the order or not.

Paysystems had CC fraud prevention system in place, but very bad merchant/customer support. Whenever you or a customer contact them, the answer is allways "No", they never treat problems case by case, and they never try to be in your side. They always dought their clients and treat them as potential thiefs.

Now. 2co has a very friendly customer support, little slow yes, but very friendly. When a customer contact them about a rejected transaction, they ask the customer some questions, and then they process that transaction. Whenever I contact them about a problem I am facing with their fraud prevention system, they always work with me shoulder by shoulder. I always feel that they are with me in the same boat. Their system needs improvement, but they are the best among those I tried.

I agree your own merchant account is always better than the best 3rd party processor, but if you have no chance like me to get a merchant account, then 2co is a very good choice.

I am processing around 160 transactions/month.

Aiesh

Hello Aiesh,

Thanks for the detailed reply. So out of that 160 transactions, how many generate complaints from customers regarding server errors, timeouts, double receipts, no receipts, transactions labelled as unauthorised when they were, etc., etc. ? 10, 20, 30, 80 ??

Originally posted by brokernet
Hello Aiesh,

Thanks for the detailed reply. So out of that 160 transactions, how many generate complaints from customers regarding server errors, timeouts, double receipts, no receipts, transactions labelled as unauthorised when they were, etc., etc. ? 10, 20, 30, 80 ??

Less than 5/month.

By the way, 3 weeks ago, I got a chargeback from a customer, and when I contacted the customer asking for the reason, I found that she was charged 7 times by 2co although it shows one charge at 2co admin. I contacted 2co and they have reversed the chargeback and refunded the extra transactions. Yesterday another similar case happened; a customer contacted me saying that he was charged 3 times for a single sale. I will contact 2co and I am sure their friendly technical support will take care of the issue. It is bad to have mistakes like these, but I can stand it as long as they have this friendly customer support agents who are willing to listen, something I used to miss with paysystems.

Aiesh

Originally posted by spechackers
it is an old story again about them, infact i suggest you to change now to either of these,

paypal , or worldpay or IKOBO

you could also find some remarks over paypal here ( infact Bad ones)!

but IKOBO and worldpay are good enough,

Not worldpay. Also has holes.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=2653877#post2653877

iKobo is a pain to setup. PayPal should be the way to go for those who do not like 2CO. Or... get a real merchant account of course!

Aiesh,

You must be the luckiest 2CO customer going. I had two transactions today and both of the customers had problems. Maybe yours are having problems but you don't find out about it ?

Originally posted by brokernet
Aiesh,

You must be the luckiest 2CO customer going. I had two transactions today and both of the customers had problems. Maybe yours are having problems but you don't find out about it ?

Maybe. However, if you are new with 2co, then I suggest that you give it a chance for a couple of months, I do not recommend that you base your decigion on what you read in WHT only. I learned during my 5 years in this business that satisfied customers do not bother to say that they are satisfied, they just keep quite, but those unsatisfied are allways wiling to tell everybody about it. So the number of complaints you read is not allways the best scale.

Aiesh

My opinion on 2CO has nothing to do with what is written here as I only discovered this forum a week ago when I wanted to see if I was the only one having problems with 2CO !! Almost every day I have to pick up the pieces left by 2CO's poor reliability: that is simply unacceptable when you're paying a 5% commission on every order.