Credit card rebills and consumer complaints...

Benji49

Benji49

New member
Feb 6, 2008
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Okay, pardon my stupidity, but this is driving me crazy and if anybody has any insight on this, I would appreciate it.

Credit card rebills: Somebody cruises the web and clicks on an offer. It's an "aggressive" rebill offer so the guy fills in the form, sees the $2.95 trial cost, doesn't read the fine print (or the fine print has been scrubbed out by a really scammy affiliate), and wham get billed for $50 or whatever in seven days.

The guys flips and phones VISA but can't get the charges reversed and is told to take it up with the merchant. Rotsa ruck if the merchant is especially scammy.

Okay, this is what I don't get.

Some of these offers MUST generate a lot of complaints. Like the call centre at VISA and Mastercard must get hundreds, if not thousands of call a day complaining about aggressive rebills. But the cc companies don't give a fuck, and from what I know, they don't take any action against the merchant. I mean, how hard would it be for VISA to do this:

VISA: Ring, ring..
Scammy rebill merchant: Hello?
VISA: Hey SRM, it's mother bitch.
SRM: Oh hi. Hello. Um how are you?
VISA: Not so good. We had another call centre team just up and commit suicide in the washroom. Blood everywhere. The complaints call drove them off the edge.
SRM: Um, sorry to hear that.
VISA: Yeah, like 745 complaints in 24 hours and guess what 80% of those complaints were about? Your shitty rebill offers.
SRM: Ooops.
VISA: Ooops? Fuck your oops. Fuck you. Fuck the horse you rode on. We give up working with assholes like you. We gave all the people their money back and we just raped your bank account. You have $1.26 left. Don't spend it all in one place.
SRM: You can't do that! I'll... I'll sue!
VISA: Laughs uproariously? Sue? SUE VISA? Sure, you go ahead and do that. Meanwhile, how about I ask Vinny sitting at the next desk to send a team of specials ops over to your office just to rape you in the ass? Just for funsies. Go ahead and sue, you dumb fuck.

To summarize: I don't get why everybody is trying to crack down on the SRMs EXCEPT the credit companies, who happen to have the data and the power to cut off the crap right at the source.

Yeah, I'm missing something. That's why I posted.
 


Did you fall into one of those rebills or something? Anyways what would happen if many complaints (chargebacks) come in then the merchant account is closed and they are banned by Visa & Mastercard (added to the Match List). So they would technically get in shit with visa. There have been tons of merchant accounts lost over rebills why do you think trial rebill offers get redirected and paused all the time? Anyways just my 2c
 
Interesting. So merchant accounts do get banned by the cc companies. But they must have a system in place to immediate create another merchant account. And so the game goes on.

FYI, I don't do weightloss, grants or biz opps. But I think some of these guys are playing so hard that it could unload a governmental regulatory shitstorm that affects us all.
 
Most of the complaints are from people simply not reading the TOS. As long as it is clearly put out and not hidden and a customer can cancel easily then you are fine.

some food for thought.

USA has the highest chargeback and refund rates compared to ALL other countries in a certain vertical.... ;-)
 
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one of my relatives signed up for a Revstravol rebill offer with a Fraud-Protection Internet Mastercard and they never got billed or received product. when I found out about it I told them to quick go and cancel their card as teh gyus are scammerzzz . so they called mastercard and mastercard told them, that the company billing was a known fraudulant company and they just blanket deny any charges from them...
 
I think the FTC now says that sites without the terms above the button/listed in full text on the checkout pages will get shut down if they see it (im pretty sure). But ya man they get added to the match list which is crazy. It stores not just company info but also if its done in the states with processing in the states their SSN gets put into the match. Then its as useless as tits on a nun to apply to any other companies because the first rule is to check this list.
 
Benji49 said:
Interesting. So merchant accounts do get banned by the cc companies. But they must have a system in place to immediate create another merchant account. And so the game goes on.
Click to expand...

Most of the (smart) rebill merchants have multiple offshore merchant accounts and processing. The sophisticated billing systems automatically rotate through each account as orders come in and are processed to spread risk.

Another thing that keeps these guys going is they maintain large cash balances with their merchant accounts to cover refunds and chargebacks. If you have this in place, you can sometimes get leniency from Visa/MC. All depends on your relationships. Some merchant accounts will require this balance simply based on your product and billing model.
 
If I understand correctly, the blacklist/match list is based on SSN's/EIN's/etc. I wonder how many merchant accounts are open with fake/stolen SSN's/EIN's? And I'm sure they setup new companies with new officers, since it's the name/ID #'s of the officers you generally have to report to open a merchant account.

These rebillers have obviously figured out how to get around quite a few rules/safeguards/etc. to continue doing what they do.
 
Well you know what there are some that have the less than 1% chargeback rate im sure its all about customer support i mean someone cancels and they let them cancel and someone wants a refund (lets say the product is still sealed) they get one and thats it life goes on and you consider the only expense is the payment to the aff so i guess if we would be willing to take the hit on a refund and lose the $40 or whatever then im sure companies would be more lenient but would we agree to that? doubtful. Uh also merchant accounts check your Credit so if it doesnt match the name on the bank and the name of the applier (and the scanned license/passport) then it wont work.
 
Having had to do a little bit of research into payment gateways, I can tell you that a lot of merchants actually are shitscared of the whole chargeback thing, but a customer can't get one if the merchant points out that they simply didn't read the T&C.

You get a certain number of chargebacks, regardless of how large you are, before the processors terminates your account.

Dickarmy's correct in that larger merchants who do run shady offers will have multiple accounts that they cycle through... kind of like load bearing servers. Share the load over them all and atthe beginning of the next billing cycle, the fun starts again.
 
This isn't as big of a problem as you might imagine, or maybe it is in mainstream. I used to run adult sites a few years back and we would run $1 24 hour trials and rebill all of them. When the customer wanted to cancel the rebill and called their CC company, they were directed to contact CCbill to cancel the subscription. The onus is on the user to cancel, not the CC company to do it for them.
 
Your on that there is a problem... But check this out...

If you call your card, they actually say, "Hey no problem, we'll reverse that right out." Because, it is a revenue source for them. We the merchant wish they'd say, "Have you called the site?" But they don't... I said to the CC company, "Why can't we just put the phone number in the bill?" They won't do it... They reverse the charge from the merchant, AND CHARGE THE MERCHANT $30 (or so).

The higher your charge back ratio is, the higher % you pay to the CC company. And if your % goes too high, they can cancel your entire account, and (we) could loose all future rebills that we had worked to build up.

See how scary it is for us?
Very careful balance.
 
DickArmy and HarveyJ are correct. Load balancing 5 to 10 MID's (Merchant ID's) is the key to ramping up large recurrning billing campaigns. Offshore merchant accounts also work much better. Furthermore, air tight customer service with scripts in place to deal with each unhappy customer and a chargeback department that fights each chargeback tooth and nail according to your T&C posted on the site all equals success in managing large CPA advertiser campigns.

Regarding the "list" you are speaking about. Its called the TMF (Terminated Merchant File) The way around being on the TMF? Use your wife, employee, mother, father, friend, etc's SSN and lock them down with an agreement. (If need be)

If anyone needs these kinds of services, contact me via PM and I can help you. We only deal with select merchants that do 50k or more in volume per month. As you can imagine, we dont provide these services to everyone who comes along. We accept ANY type of legal business including gaming, adult, supplements, biz opp, etc.
 
If your complaint rate goes above 2% of total orders and is sustained for 2 months you lose your merchant account. It has been a big issue for merchants so you will notice the pages have changed to include a lot of information such as "don't buy this product unless you are sure you are committed to long term weight loss" etc. It sucks for publishers but you will notice the CPA rate has gone up a bit.
 
Benji49 said:
Some of these offers MUST generate a lot of complaints. Like the call centre at VISA and Mastercard must get hundreds, if not thousands of call a day complaining about aggressive rebills. But the cc companies don't give a fuck, and from what I know, they don't take any action against the merchant. I mean, how hard would it be for VISA to do this:

VISA: Ring, ring..
Scammy rebill merchant: Hello?
VISA: Hey SRM, it's mother bitch.
SRM: Oh hi. Hello. Um how are you?
VISA: Not so good. We had another call centre team just up and commit suicide in the washroom. Blood everywhere. The complaints call drove them off the edge.
SRM: Um, sorry to hear that.
VISA: Yeah, like 745 complaints in 24 hours and guess what 80% of those complaints were about? Your shitty rebill offers.
SRM: Ooops.
VISA: Ooops? Fuck your oops. Fuck you. Fuck the horse you rode on. We give up working with assholes like you. We gave all the people their money back and we just raped your bank account. You have $1.26 left. Don't spend it all in one place.
SRM: You can't do that! I'll... I'll sue!
VISA: Laughs uproariously? Sue? SUE VISA? Sure, you go ahead and do that. Meanwhile, how about I ask Vinny sitting at the next desk to send a team of specials ops over to your office just to rape you in the ass? Just for funsies. Go ahead and sue, you dumb fuck.

To summarize: I don't get why everybody is trying to crack down on the SRMs EXCEPT the credit companies, who happen to have the data and the power to cut off the crap right at the source.

Yeah, I'm missing something. That's why I posted.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that people don't generally call visa or mastercard they call the bank that issued their card so complaints tend to get split across hundreds of banks.

However many larger banks will outright ban shady merchant processors, this is one of the reasons that you can see 20-30% changes in conversion rates depending on the merchant processors that the advertiser is currently using.
 
I guess I'll be the elephant in the room......

They use high risk merchant accounts, exactly what is that?

Well, let's say you got this great idea for a rebill, and you find a guy who runs a high risk merchant account. Something like CCBILL, well the thing is they charge about 5% instead of the usual 2% most people charge for fees.

Now you ask what the difference is, well as you know there is only 3 big companies really, visa, mc, amex, discover, etc. right? Well if you run a high risk merchant service, how do these companies let you just keep operating?

Simple? Money.

They pay them lots lots lots of money, as a high risk merchant account you are usually earning millions per month, do the calculation on the fees, and visa won't be banning you.

Money people, it's all bout the Money.
 
New poster here. High risk merchant accounts are typically aggregated with very low chargeback-history clients, to spread the risk. High risk merchant guys who run 5 % typically have a very liberal refund policy, and don't hit 5%.
High risk is simply a category of merchant who historically isn't in business very long, usually 2-5 years at a stretch. Adult is high risk because of the intial Rebill shedding of clients. Merchants who have very high chargebacks on first time customers usually go ACH or Check-21, then migrate the rebill clients who pay onto credit card.
I do alternative payment, ACh/Ch21, as well as high risk credit card accounts, and have been doing so for 10 years. Ask me what you would like to know. I DO DEAL WITH MERCHANTS BELOW 50K per month transaction volume.
 
xtacx said:
I guess I'll be the elephant in the room......

They use high risk merchant accounts, exactly what is that?

Well, let's say you got this great idea for a rebill, and you find a guy who runs a high risk merchant account. Something like CCBILL, well the thing is they charge about 5% instead of the usual 2% most people charge for fees.

Now you ask what the difference is, well as you know there is only 3 big companies really, visa, mc, amex, discover, etc. right? Well if you run a high risk merchant service, how do these companies let you just keep operating?

Simple? Money.

They pay them lots lots lots of money, as a high risk merchant account you are usually earning millions per month, do the calculation on the fees, and visa won't be banning you.

Money people, it's all bout the Money.
Click to expand...
5% for a high risk merchant? LOL Try 25% of transaction total.
I've been shopping around.
 
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