stevem01
04-28-2001, 06:41 AM
I'm working through my final decision on the billing and customer management and would appreciate any advice anyone could offer on this subject...
I have read many billing threads and understand that this part of the business is particularly varied in the way it's done by different hosts, but any input would be great before I make a final decision...
Heres my situation,
-OLM reseller planning to launch in about a week.
-4 plans, from 14.95 to 49.95
-Separate ecommerce packages (or addons, not sure yet)
My concern is the ability to change a customers billing amount when they upgrade, downgrade, or require a different recurring amout due to extra features (bandwidth, space, additional domains, etc)
Another issue would be the procedure for moving those revecom accounts to a custom merchant account based system in the future...
Would customers say "Sure, here's my CC number again...But what did you do with it the first time????" :0)
Because I know, even being as explanitory as possible, there will still be some people that just won't understand that their host used a third-party billing service, but they have now changed over to handle it in-house and need their creditcard # again cause ...... blah, blah... you get the picture...
Does anyone have any experience with that? Is it that big of an issue? It concerned me because credit card numbers are such sensitive material, you would think the above scenario would rattle a few people, and that's the last thing I want to do...Build the the business, then have a bunch of people leave when I change billing methods...
Also, does anyone know if Revecom has (or is planning to) add any features that would make customer management easier?
For example, (from what I can see) If a customer upgrades I will need to delete the current recurring transaction and then have the customer sign-up again under the new upgraded account... apparently they will have to re-enter their CC and billing info?...
I would guess this wouldn't be a very frequent occurrence when starting out, but the lack of flexibility concerns me. I don't care if it makes a little more work for me, but if it burdens or confuses my customers I need to seriously think about doing it differently from the start...
If any hosts that use Revecom could shed some light on these issues I would appreciate it.
Any input would be fantastic. I've already learned so much from this forum, thanks for all the help!
I have read many billing threads and understand that this part of the business is particularly varied in the way it's done by different hosts, but any input would be great before I make a final decision...
Heres my situation,
-OLM reseller planning to launch in about a week.
-4 plans, from 14.95 to 49.95
-Separate ecommerce packages (or addons, not sure yet)
My concern is the ability to change a customers billing amount when they upgrade, downgrade, or require a different recurring amout due to extra features (bandwidth, space, additional domains, etc)
Another issue would be the procedure for moving those revecom accounts to a custom merchant account based system in the future...
Would customers say "Sure, here's my CC number again...But what did you do with it the first time????" :0)
Because I know, even being as explanitory as possible, there will still be some people that just won't understand that their host used a third-party billing service, but they have now changed over to handle it in-house and need their creditcard # again cause ...... blah, blah... you get the picture...
Does anyone have any experience with that? Is it that big of an issue? It concerned me because credit card numbers are such sensitive material, you would think the above scenario would rattle a few people, and that's the last thing I want to do...Build the the business, then have a bunch of people leave when I change billing methods...
Also, does anyone know if Revecom has (or is planning to) add any features that would make customer management easier?
For example, (from what I can see) If a customer upgrades I will need to delete the current recurring transaction and then have the customer sign-up again under the new upgraded account... apparently they will have to re-enter their CC and billing info?...
I would guess this wouldn't be a very frequent occurrence when starting out, but the lack of flexibility concerns me. I don't care if it makes a little more work for me, but if it burdens or confuses my customers I need to seriously think about doing it differently from the start...
If any hosts that use Revecom could shed some light on these issues I would appreciate it.
Any input would be fantastic. I've already learned so much from this forum, thanks for all the help!