Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Revecom 'quirk'

[akashik]

In case anyone else runs across this I'm about to tell you all about my last 24 hours, as it may affect people outside the US depending on your bank

My bank rang me yesterday to tell me they couldn't honor the check paysystems sent me. Turns out my bank draws directly on the Bank Of America for it's US currency exchange. As Paysystems is a US company all *should* be good. However the way they do it, is to release checks in the *local* date format of the country the company with the account resides. The difference between US and 'European' dates to the unknowing is the month and day are reversed.
6th March 2001 is
06/03/2001 (European)
03/06/2001 (US)

Up until now the dates have always turned out not to matter as the 06/12/2000 or 12/06/2000 etc have all been previous dates to when I cashed the check whether it appears to be a few days, or 6+ months. Currently however the date exceeds the month so that is where the problem lies...

I played phone/email tag with a guy last night to get it sorted and he explained the date difference. Just thought I should post it here in case someone else falls into the same category.

It should affect people if their bank draws directly from a US partner. Before going and cashing it, you may wish to take a look at the date and confirm with the teller whether the format works with their system.

One other note. The guy I talked to also said Revecom is moving into bigger and better premises. They are apparently growing at 180% a month so right now their support is in a bit of disarray. I called 6 times, got 4 answering machines, one stressed out receptionist, then finally the right guy.

Though I truly feel sorry for the receptionist, at the moment about the only way to really get through is to really b*tch her out, and hit redial everytime you hit a machine. Eventually you end up in the right place. Sounds like a complaint I know, but it's not really. The system is working fine, and it's taking a load off having to administer billing ourselves. I just hit a quirk right when everyone was packing boxes and moving to the new place. Should be all ship shape again soon...

Greg Moore

[CC]

Greg,
Are you based in the US or another country? Which format did your check come in? I just signed up with them so this is intersting to me.

Thanks,
Curt

[akashik]

CC,

Australian based, so the check arrived with the european date format. As I say it would be fine if my bank drew the check locally, but they draw straight from a US bank so there was the problem.

Greg Moore

[eva2000]

Originally posted by akashik
CC,

Australian based, so the check arrived with the european date format. As I say it would be fine if my bank drew the check locally, but they draw straight from a US bank so there was the problem.

Greg Moore

thanks for letting us known, especially since i am in Australia and intend to use revecom as well

[akashik]

No problem. My brush had a little more hair in it this morning than it should have, so I didn't want anyone else to suffer the same fate *lol*

Greg Moore

[teck]

2 days and counting for support questions.

[akashik]

teck,

yes, tech support is almost non existant right now. I hope they get their act together shortly. I don't need them often but when I do need an answer to something I need it straight away. I'll be giving them a while to figure it out though.. The hassle of moving all our customers to another billing system is currently outwieghing a lack of email from them.

Greg Moore

[teck]

greg,

how do you process overage charges? lets say a client wants an extra 20 mb per month or so. or if they go over bandwidth one month. it would not make sense to cancel the recurring charge, have them enter in their cc, cancel the recurring charge at the end of the month and start up another one for the average price... let me know since this is what i'm trying to figure out how to do it.

[akashik]

teck,

That's the problem with most non-merchant billing solutions. As people rarely overuse the bandwidth it's not much of a problem. We've personally never faced it yet. In the event it does though we have a system by which the customer is contacted and we let them know of the issue and present them with a few options. Whether upgrading the plan to another one with higher bandwidth, or buying a block of bandwidth.

Naturally as we use a non-merchant account we can't enter anything for their creditcard as it's highly illegal to do so. We don't even know what the number is for that matter *lol* It's all sent to paysystems via SSL directly from the order form.

The bandwidth one is simple, we just create an invoice and email the link (much the same as we do for design work), and the payment is just like another small account, depending on the amount of bandwidth they want. If however they wish to upgrade a plan then we just get them to re-sign for the higher plan and cancel the current plan (billing only). The actual domain is upgraded at the push of a button as it were so the domain itself suffers no visable interuption.

It's all a little unwieldy I know but the savings we have compared to a full merchant account gives us some slack in pricing (not having to build in the setup, and statement fees - etc). I personally actually like a more hands-on approach as it reduces errors if a glitch appears. There's always a hooman-bean in there somewhere manually doing something to make sure it's done right.

Account upgrades and downgrades are a fairly rare occurrence for us so it's something that doesn't take up a lot of our time. So far customers have been happy to go through the process to get the account they find they need.

Greg Moore

[teck]

The only problem I see is that it causes trouble for the customer to enter in all their info again. Also, for small charges like bandwidth and stuff, revecom's fees get me. I just rather not charge them at all.

[akashik]

teck,

Yes, that's the catch22 about the whole thing. As I say though it hasn't proved a problem for us yet. I suppose as long as you're good to your customers, they tend to return the favour if/when it's needed.

Greg Moore

[teck]

I just had a few people try to pay me and they kept getting ASP errors. This makes me want to get a merchant account so bad. Anyone have any ideas what's the best solution for me to collect cc number and enter them in manually somewhere and get it charged?

[astralexis]

I know PlanetPayment.com allows you to do that - key in CC number manually - and they can also provide you with a merchant account.

The thing costs 250$ setup + 25$/month + 3.5% on transactions I think, lower transaction fees available for some currencies but not for USD as far as I know.

[kunal]

monthly fee sucks.. isnt there any merchant service, which doesnt charge a monthly fee??

[akashik]

A full merchant account?

I don't think so. They seem to take delight in monthly fees, transactions fees, statement fees *etc etc* I think if you get high enough volume then it'll work out cheaper than say a Revecom or Instabill account but even then, Revecom seems to be coming down in price. I haven't seen it myself yet but someone I know claimed to have been only charged 30c or so for a small transaction ($6 or so). If you have a read of the news board in the revecom control panel they have some nice things planned for next month. API, partial refunds etc...

Greg Moore