Shannon
12-10-2002, 02:15 PM
We've been using 2CO since we went public with our hosting, and until today, I'd never thought of it as potential warning flag to customers.
Our system works something like this: clients sign up for hosting with us, then they're linked over to 2CO's payment system to setup their recurring billing... at the same time we link them over, an automated "Thanks for your order, once your billing is setup you will recieve all the information you need to access your account shortly thereafter, if you have not yet completed the billing signup, please visit <Insert 2CO link once more>..."
Now, we've had 'clients' in the past with whom we never recieve a payment notification, because they just never completed the process at 2CO..
The number of these instances has been low, I'd say less then 2% of all orders, and most of them, once the order is looked at by a real person, tend to raise enough eyebrows to make me think they're simple fraud orders, and enough of the info was false to cause 2CO to reject the order, and the person gave up and went else where. Things on the order such as a name "Georgia Smith" with an address in wisconsin, but the originating IP address is in the middle of nigeria, etc.
Anyway, or usual process with such orders, if the order *looks* like it was legit, but we never got their billing finalized is to send a manual email the 2nd time, letting them know we're not ignoring them, but that billing was never finalized.. include the 2CO link and let them know if they have any questions, issues, problems, that we're here to help.
Of the 2% that don't complete the billing themselves at the time of order, roughly 40% of those fall into the "Most likely fraud or someone toying with the system" category, another 40% are "Oh, we're just looking right now, we'll be back to actually buy later" or "I found a cheaper deal at cyberwings, etc"... and the remaining 20% we never hear from at all regarding the 2nd notice... Obviously at some point we just remove the unfinalized orders from our new account queue and consider the issue a non-point.
But today we got an email back that made me raise an eyebrow.. basically the potential customer stated they did not use 3rd party billing solutions.
Sent a reply back that we understood, and that we were sorry that we'd be unable to be of service to them at this time, and marked the account order as cancelled. But I got to thinking about this a bit...
How often does everyone else encounter a (potential) client such as this? That for whatever reason (I did not ask why, as I felt it was none of my business) sees a 3rd party billing system such as 2CO, Revecom, etc, and automatically assumes that either the host is un-reputable, or untrustworthy, or whatnot?
We use 2CO primarily for three reasons:
1) Fraud scrub. Sure, we've had a couple of orders come thru with "Possible Fraud" flags raised by 2CO, but I know there's been many more that we never heard from again, because the person WAS using a fraudulent card, and never made it past 2CO's system.
2) Ease of management. For the most part (last months psycho recurring system not withstanding) 2CO's recurring system gives us an easy way to maintain our billing without headaches.
3) Costs. Yes, costs. Every cost we incure as a business, at some point, gets passed down to our clients. This is known as common sense accounting. ;) In order to provide the 'best bang for our customers buck', we currently use 2CO as our billing solution. Sure, a full merchant account is cheaper on a per transaction basis, but there are extra costs (Gateway fees, statement fees, minimum fees, software, etc, etc) that make it a situation where you need a set amount of volume before that per transaction savings is really a savings. Not to mention the headaches that merchant account banks are placing on sellers these days (keeping your chargeback % down, etc, etc)
I guess on one had I can see a possible client being edgy about using a 3rd party.. "What, they don't even consider themselves big enough to do this themselves?".. but then again, given the occasional bad host that we see fly through these parts, as a client I think I'd feel better knowing that a virtual 'unknown' didn't have full access to my CC information.
Anyway, I'm rambling here, so I'll shuddup and just as my primary question:
Has anyone else who's using a 3rd party solution ever run into this situation before? and how often? I haven't seen it before today, so I'm not exactly worried just yet, but still, can't help but wonder how much of an impact using 2CO (or any other 3rd party system) is having on our sales, if any at all?
Comments? Suggestions?
Our system works something like this: clients sign up for hosting with us, then they're linked over to 2CO's payment system to setup their recurring billing... at the same time we link them over, an automated "Thanks for your order, once your billing is setup you will recieve all the information you need to access your account shortly thereafter, if you have not yet completed the billing signup, please visit <Insert 2CO link once more>..."
Now, we've had 'clients' in the past with whom we never recieve a payment notification, because they just never completed the process at 2CO..
The number of these instances has been low, I'd say less then 2% of all orders, and most of them, once the order is looked at by a real person, tend to raise enough eyebrows to make me think they're simple fraud orders, and enough of the info was false to cause 2CO to reject the order, and the person gave up and went else where. Things on the order such as a name "Georgia Smith" with an address in wisconsin, but the originating IP address is in the middle of nigeria, etc.
Anyway, or usual process with such orders, if the order *looks* like it was legit, but we never got their billing finalized is to send a manual email the 2nd time, letting them know we're not ignoring them, but that billing was never finalized.. include the 2CO link and let them know if they have any questions, issues, problems, that we're here to help.
Of the 2% that don't complete the billing themselves at the time of order, roughly 40% of those fall into the "Most likely fraud or someone toying with the system" category, another 40% are "Oh, we're just looking right now, we'll be back to actually buy later" or "I found a cheaper deal at cyberwings, etc"... and the remaining 20% we never hear from at all regarding the 2nd notice... Obviously at some point we just remove the unfinalized orders from our new account queue and consider the issue a non-point.
But today we got an email back that made me raise an eyebrow.. basically the potential customer stated they did not use 3rd party billing solutions.
Sent a reply back that we understood, and that we were sorry that we'd be unable to be of service to them at this time, and marked the account order as cancelled. But I got to thinking about this a bit...
How often does everyone else encounter a (potential) client such as this? That for whatever reason (I did not ask why, as I felt it was none of my business) sees a 3rd party billing system such as 2CO, Revecom, etc, and automatically assumes that either the host is un-reputable, or untrustworthy, or whatnot?
We use 2CO primarily for three reasons:
1) Fraud scrub. Sure, we've had a couple of orders come thru with "Possible Fraud" flags raised by 2CO, but I know there's been many more that we never heard from again, because the person WAS using a fraudulent card, and never made it past 2CO's system.
2) Ease of management. For the most part (last months psycho recurring system not withstanding) 2CO's recurring system gives us an easy way to maintain our billing without headaches.
3) Costs. Yes, costs. Every cost we incure as a business, at some point, gets passed down to our clients. This is known as common sense accounting. ;) In order to provide the 'best bang for our customers buck', we currently use 2CO as our billing solution. Sure, a full merchant account is cheaper on a per transaction basis, but there are extra costs (Gateway fees, statement fees, minimum fees, software, etc, etc) that make it a situation where you need a set amount of volume before that per transaction savings is really a savings. Not to mention the headaches that merchant account banks are placing on sellers these days (keeping your chargeback % down, etc, etc)
I guess on one had I can see a possible client being edgy about using a 3rd party.. "What, they don't even consider themselves big enough to do this themselves?".. but then again, given the occasional bad host that we see fly through these parts, as a client I think I'd feel better knowing that a virtual 'unknown' didn't have full access to my CC information.
Anyway, I'm rambling here, so I'll shuddup and just as my primary question:
Has anyone else who's using a 3rd party solution ever run into this situation before? and how often? I haven't seen it before today, so I'm not exactly worried just yet, but still, can't help but wonder how much of an impact using 2CO (or any other 3rd party system) is having on our sales, if any at all?
Comments? Suggestions?