Taking payments through ibill or instabill creates a bad impression resulting in less sign-ups....

How many of you people agree to this statement?

Hmmm, it wouldn't make a difference to me.... As long as it's a secure site.... besides, it keeps customer credit card info off of the server.....

But will you trust a venture site to a company not having its own merchant acc?

Yes, I would..... what matters most to me, is if my credit card info is secure.....

Using instabill and others are just fine. I've seen a lot of big companies still using them and in some instances, it might be safer to have a "true billing company" handling my card, rather than an unknown hoster that may or may not be on the up and up.
With a third party billing company you have a better chance of stopping the charges (and contacting a tech) than many one-man hosting companies. Besides, with the one-man hosting companies, letting someone else handle the billing can be a blessing.
Plus, if you compare the cost of hiring a bookkeeper (if you need to) to the cost of letting a thrid party company handle it for a percentage, you might come out ahead.

Keith
just my opinion

Thats good!

Can you please tell me one or two big companies using services like instabill or ibill?

I am going to start a huge investment veture and don't want to waste my dollars by making a mistake.

My company is not big but I'll email you thr url so you can see it.
As for others, do a search for instabill and revecom and you'll find a lot of hosting companies here that use them.
That's what I did before deciding which route to go.

Keith

Previously whenever I signed up for a hosting company I would look carefully at the billing page. If it was something like instabill or another third party system i'd assume they were a reseller or a very small operation and I would go elsewhere. Since then, i've learned a lot about how the hosting business works and I know that these could easily have been a great company. For what I look for though, I still wouldn't touch a host that used billing this way. When I look at a hosting company I like to see that it has a good history behind it and that there's a reasonably sized group of employees working there. The ones that have this covered rarely seem to use this billing method.

Originally posted by HostHawk
Thats good!

Can you please tell me one or two big companies using services like instabill or ibill?

I am going to start a huge investment veture and don't want to waste my dollars by making a mistake.



I'd have to say that often using a 3rd party billing service (for hosting), isn't always perceived as a good thing. It just doesn't trnaslate well to some things.

Often, in other businesses however, 3rd party billing is quite common, such as telco companies. It may just be a matter of time before it is accepted. Although I used to shy away from it before, now (after learning about it and using it myself), I wouldn't hesitate submitting an order, so long as everything else checks out.

I'm just a consumer - so this is just my personal view as
a consumer.

In general, unless the company is a big and reputable
company (or at least a known entity to me), I would
hesitate about releasing my credit card information to
it to purchase something. This is especially so with
web hosts, where there are bad hosts who overcharge and
even bill when an account is cancelled. When testing
out an unknown company, I tend to trust the third
party billing companies (like Kagi, Clickbank, etc)
a bit more since I have had a lot of experience with
them and have not been overbilled by them before.
This means that I'm more likely to purchase
accounts (etc) at these new companies if they use a
third party system.

Maybe it's just me (since the people who posted earlier
seem to have a different opinion). I wonder if I overlooked
anything in seeing things this way...

I did credit card factoring b4 i knew that it was illegal. But i have done that with no problem with instabill when i did'nt know about it. But i still know a few people involved in the practice. Is it really a serious crime if you have no intention to use cc in a wrong way?

..."credit card factoring"? What is that?

Just curious.

Wazup

Is it really a serious crime if you have no intention to use cc in a wrong way?

Utilizing anyone's creditcard information can be considered a criminal act and carries possible jail time. It's serious enough that even if I trusted customer offers their creditcard number to me directly I'll still point them to an order form and ask them to enter their information personally.

The only people legally capable to enter cc information are companies with full internet merchant accounts.

I do understand what you're saying though. It would make things easier, and some people even give you written permission. But people do fall out with each other and may decide to bite the hand that fed them. In my eyes it's just too risky...

Of course having cc numbers around does increase your risk in other areas too.. ADDR can atest to that :)

Greg Moore

Taking cc numbers without having a merchant account and then usind it on the services like instabill yourself instead of directing customer to their page. Its a crime :D

Even with the best intentions one can come in big trouble/ break the law and all.

Thanks alot for letting me know, I was`nt aware of the fact.

Wazup

wazup,

I wouldn't feel too bad. There's a lot of people in the same boat that don't know it's illegal. It's quite possible you'd go half your life doing it without a problem, never the wiser yourself. Then one day someone may take you to task on the issue. With the way government and police agencies are cracking down on fraud these days, I think it's only a matter of time for most people to get caught (whether they knew it was wrong or not).

The only real shame is it's usually the shifty ones that cover their tracks well enough to get away with it...

Greg Moore

How does Paypal compare to these companies?

Paypal's limitations (no rebilling every month), make it an unpopular choice generally.

I dont think that a merchant account makes hosts look unprofessional at all.