Just to complicate things further... there are declines and there are unique declines. Some stats systems count only unique declines and some count all declines. Often a person will try to sign up and be declined 4, 5, 6 or more times - that's one unique decline but multiple raw declines.
The old CCBill system, for example, used to count every raw decline, but the new stats system throws out all but unique declines.
Last night between 8:03 and 8:15 I had some poor soul be declined 7 times ("That's what you get for having charged back asshole!"). In the old system this would have been 7 declines, now it is only counted as one.
My decline rate changed from 25 to 35% to 5 to 10% with that stats method change.
So I can confirm that I also used to see about 1 raw decline for every 2 signups, back when all my raw declines were counted. But it is considerably less than that now that only unique declines are counted.
Then to add another layer of complication... are declined rebills counted as a decline? This is where the person has moved or exceeded their limit or had a new card issued with a new expiry date. And what if, as Indeed and NetRodent said, a person is declined but then successfully signs up (they probably just screwed up entering their data the first time) - is that counted as a decline? So with all the different ways of counting, it is hard to do some quality benchmarking.
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And which processor, from your experience, has the less declines?
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Personally, I definitely wouldn't think about it when considering a processor. There are FAR more important considerations such as reliability (see the threads on ProBilling) and customer service (see the threads on webmasters having problems get a hold of their IBill rep). Scrubbing and declines are just the cost of doing business and the small price to pay for not having to worry about chargebacks.
I see a lot of people say that CCBill scrubs like hell. I wouldn't know, I have nothing to compare to. But 5 to 10% unique declines is fine by me. I think this talk of rampant scrubbing is just myth - webmasters bitching until it becomes urban legend. Sort of like the myth that MOST chargebacks are caused by wives finding credit card charges and forcing a chargeback when a husband denies the validity of the charge - myth. There are far more common reasons for chargebacks I suspect, including plain old bold theft, but who knows really since only the acquiring banks have that data. Webmasters bitch and spread falsehoods more than a bunch of menopausal, tea-sipping old ladies.