whenever possible, i called them on the phone. if you're nice to them at the beginning, they usually admit they used to card to access the site. then you tell them that since they used it legitimately, you will send them a bill for the months they used the site, plus contact their bank with proof through your logs that they did access the site.

let them know that if they do not pay that bill, you'll send a second bill with the site name on it, and then go to a collection agency.

most guys sent me money at that point.

when there was a woman's name on the card, it was usually the wife or girlfriend and the man in their life used the card without knowledge or permission. that one is a lot more difficult because the cardholder really didn't know, and just hadn't checked to see what the charge was month after month since it was small. sometimes if you talk frankly with them, and let them know you're not a crook like the news says, something can be worked out.

I haven't really seen where anyone has blamed CCbill..........

steffie i just sent you an email off your tapact site that may be helpful to you.

Well it was more the title of the thread, instead of just "chargebacks" the name of the processor was included, doesn't really make them look good.
And in steffie's first post she seemed to be taking her frustration out on CCbill's fraud department, when they really couldn't do anything about it.

Don't blame CCBill blame the CC companies.

Just because this guy doesn't want to pay his credit card bill doesn't mean he doesn't have to pay you. If you can reasonably demonstrate that it was him then I'd take him to small claims. Or at least threaten it.

If all else fails add his email to every spam list you can find. Also chances are he used the same password for his Hotmail account that he used with your account. Why don't you see what else he is up to and make his life a living hell? :D

B

No recourse whatsoever. You cannot prove that he actually signed up to the sites unless you can get his ISP to confirm if the IP address used was assigned to him at the specific times used.

And to get that, you'll need to subpoena the ISP.

Good luck :thumbsup

Since our name was mentioned?

EPOCH does ?work? retrieval requests. These are sent in advance of a chargeback. We provide as much data as we can and consequently, many transactions that would have been a chargeback never become a chargeback. So we are ?working? these Tony, assuming we are allowed and assuming the Issuing Bank follows the rules. We all know that they don?t, most of the time.

The unfortunate thing is that MCC5967, a card not present transaction, is too easy to chargeback by a cardholder. The benefit of the doubt always goes to the cardholder and against the merchant.

I know CCBill does what they can, as do we at EPOCH. Frankly I think we do as well as anyone could, regardless of who owns the merchant account. Maybe we do a bit better as we are focused fully on keeping our client?s money ? and ours ? and the only way that is accomplished is by reducing fraud and chargebacks.

It is strange however that a chargeback period of that length (over 120 days) is allowed by any banks now. That is against the rules, but, you know? they make the rules; they break the rules.

Bottom line is pretty simple here. The issuing banks decide what they will and will not allow for chargebacks, regardless of Visa or MC policy. I've seen banks in the states allow for 9 months of Visa cb's before, so it does happen.

What many of you fail to realize is that CCBill (and every other processor) is also assessed an administrative fee for each chargeback they receive, so they are already in the hole before they even begin to dispute or refute something they have almost no chance of changing, but will incur administrative costs of their own to attempt a reversal. They do NOT pass this fee along to the sites that incur these chargebacks at the moment, so they actually lose money on the transactions at this point.

If someone has their own merchant account, it may be worth it to them to attempt to refute cb's, since they more than likely don't do very many transactions... the large programs running on their own merch accts don't particularly attempt to dispute cb claims either from what I've seen over the years, it's simply not worth spending more money than you are already paying for it.

The point here is that processors like Epoch and CCBill do get notification before a charge back and its just not economically viable to dispute the many hundreds if not thousands of small amounts (relatively speaking).
But i would suggest the following.

Pick one or two offenders like the guy mentioned in this thread with 15 months of charge backs and make an example of them take time to track down the fraud and make a big stink about it. I believe the resulting publicity would at least make these guys who want to steal from webmasters think twice.

At present they know they can get away with it so why not?
Cindy xx
:2 cents:

Fortunately I don't get many chargebacks, the last one I passed along to the police department since he'd done this once before -- I recognized the email address and each time he uses different cards from different people.

I have, in the past, sent a nice little letter explaining what fraud is, telling them I understand finances may be tight but it's not fair to steal from me, blah blah blah. A few times people have paid :)

When people sign up up for my paysites and spend a day or two taking content while the processor approves the transaction (in grace period), if it's denied, I email them and tell them what they did was steal from me and I will prosecute, etc.

The last 4 times it's happened I got 2 people to sign up again with the phone billing, and one person sent a money order.

If you put a little pressure on them, people will often cave.

Putting them on mailing lists, spam lists, etc, is harassment and could land you in deep doo doo. Publishing their information on a public website -- in some states -- is illegal as well.

However, you can have them added to several fraud databases that are out there. I belong to several websites for Internet Merchant Fraud that maintain -- and share -- this information.

50!