what really is causing these chargebacks
 

I thought this was very interesting
http://209.61.190.23/news2002/nov02/...wednesday.html

is it fraudulant webmasters and people running stolen cards etc. through porn and mainstream?

Are surfers more savvy now and know they can get away with not paying when using a credit card online?


Or do you really think its becasue paysites have a shitty members section or they don't have exclusive content.
maybe its because they have deceptive marketing like Free trials etc.


So who is really to blame? the Surfer, Visa and mastercard or the companies selling the goods

everyone is saying the adult industry did this I don't think so

it seems to be a problem for every online company





:2 cents:

It all has a part in it!






:winkwink:

Exactly my point...

I'm just tired of people thinking the adult industry is at fault.

so what do we do? any thoughts

everything that is within your control.

deceptive marketing

free memberships that convert to $49.99

pre-checked cross sells

I don't think so... if that is the problem why does mainstream have such a problem.
I think alot of programs need to clamp down on the fraudulant webmasters. i bet most of the chargebacks are from people running stolen cards then the surfer gets there bill and charges back.

Report: E-commerce will bleed $285M in fraud
Nearly $300 million in e-commerce will be lost to holiday fraud scams this year, says a new report from the CyberSource Fraud Survey. About $285 million, or 3 percent of the overall online earnings for 2002, will be siphoned off by credit card hoaxes and the like, even though retail respondents said that they are taking more precautions than they did last year. About one-third of the respondents think credit card fraud will increase this year over last. E-commerce has grown at a tremendous rate this year. Sixty percent of the online companies surveyed by Shop.org and Bizrate.com reported revenue increases of more than a quarter during the first two weeks of November compared to 2001. The fraud problem haunts big companies as well as small. Amazon estimates its fraud rate at about 2.5 percent so far in 2002. More retailers are thus taking precautionary measures. The number of companies using AVS, a credit card verification system, has increased by nearly two-thirds this year to 71 percent. And 59 percent of sites plan to encrypt stored credit card numbers.

spouse disputes charges = high

Excellent find.

Looks like some people need to go together and hit up congress. It's probably the only way...

greed

You don't think 30 minute free memberships that convert to $49.99/month cause higher chargebacks than normal?

Nope we are well under 1% and we have free trials.

most of our chargebacks come from affiliates we catch trying to run cards thru our system. we shut them down but they hit us up with many acounts having like 1 or 2 sales.

if we get a clamp on that I think we all would be fine.:2 cents:
but its hard to catch them sometimes so its an ongoing battle

I agree with this. I just checked one of my sites CB's for the past 6 months and my CB's are .004%

Looks like the days of approving all affiliates with references may be just around the corner. Fine by me.

they know what the price is after there free trial.

If you went out for dinner at a nice resturant and the bill came out for alot more then you expected and the food was shitty
would you charge back? Probably not and I'm sure this has happend to many of us.


but if you knew you could get away with it like most surfers know they can with paysites. I'm sure everyone would chargeback things that they were not happy with. the dollar amount is differant for all of us.

what if you bought a book for $50 bucks and you weren't happy with it when you were done reading it. Should you be able to chargeback?

I think if we can stop the fraudulant webmasters and censor the free porn out there we would have less problems.

make the surfer pay for there porn. when they see they can't get it free they will pay. then we won't have to worry about free trials etc.

and Sponsors working together keeping the fraudulant webmasters out will also help alot. :2 cents:

If these two things are done everything else will fall into place.
cut off there supply and see what happens.

and then maybe everyone else will get off our backs

I can't believe how many of you think its all just
Porn sites having free trials and cross sells etc. deceptive marketing.

I have a question for you to ask your friends maybe you already have.

ask them if they would pay for porn online and see what they say.

Just ask a couple of your friends not in the biz and post there response.

(I bet they will all say why pay when I can get it free)

Good points, Rog

Why don't us sponsors start and share, a database of known fraudulant webmasters.

we probably should it was brought up before.

There was a problem of a webmaster or affliate being maliciously put on this fruad list.

but I think it should be built and the only way someone would get blocked or shut off. Is if a few sponsors put them on the list.

then it would be up to each sponsor wether or not to shut them off. wish would be in there best interest

but we need to start working on it together

I think the preselected cross-sales really contributed the most to the excessive chargebacks. While surfers can read and unselect the cross-sale, they simply don't bother in my opinion and decide to chargeback the whole set of charges they get. Just my 2 cents...

WG

Man... I am all for this one, like the way back when of the BBS age... You filled out your application, if you were a lame fuck who did not know what you were talking about then your ass was not getting into the BBS.. If you were in the know, then your all good..

Im all for this as well

Media

I worked as a supervisor for Wells Fargo Credit Card Division for over 3.5 years. I very clearly remember the calls from DMR Internet and Ibill. Of all the calls that were escalated to me, only 1 ever admitted that SHE had actually made the charge.

I used scare tactics to get them to call the companies directly to stop the rebills because I knew they were doing it themselves and were full of shit.

I would tell people that we will be happy to help them dispute the charge and then go into detail about how easy it is to catch the person because of IP's and so forth....And that we would be happy to prosecute ANYBODY we catch who made the charges.

I would also stress the fact that whoever made the charge clearly knew the card owner personally because of the personal info that has to be entered to make the charge in the first place. This of course means that we will be prosecuting your friend and or family member and you will be the one signing for this.

At this point, the typical response went something like this "Oh, I better check with my brother first to make sure that he did not do this."

My favorite ones to fuck with were the mothers who called in because there were re-occurring charges on their son's Student Visa that Mommy and Daddy were paying the bill for. :1orglaugh

80%+ of the fraud that was occurring on the Internet back then was done by the cardholder themselves. This is a proven fact, NOT my opinion. I have seen the numbers first hand. I can only assume that this percentage has increased with the popularity of the Internet and the education of surfers on how to fuck the system.

So...Now with all this responsibility and fees being passed to the site owners, WTF are we paying the billing companies for? Customer Service? Yeah right....Just today we had an issue where one of our members was charged but could not access the site. They contacted the billing company and received no help. Finally they emailed us and we got it straightened out. That's not our fucking job.....Most of you would be sick to your stomach if you knew the dollar amount that we pay monthly for our billing service and we are not pushing anywhere near the volume as PornKings or many of the others.

Personally, I hate the idea of a pre-checked cross sell but the fact is that surfers are smarter than we give them credit for. They see the boxes and they leave them checked. Hell, they probably even visit the other sites and then simply forget to cancel in time before they get billed.

This whole situation reminds me of the fuckers who are screaming for tougher gun laws when the government does not do enough to enforce the ones already in place. Start prosecuting some of these fuckers instead of making us site owners eat it. Watch that shit get on the news.

HEADLINE:

Porn companies strike back by prosecuting those who make charges then file fraudulent claims.

These are the fuckers who are committing crimes, not us. Post their fucking pictures on the front page and see how quickly this shit stops.

Does that answer your question Roger? :winkwink:

See you in FL. :glugglug

I agree and stress deceptive marketing. If I were a surfer and a site promised one thing and then delivered another thing...if I could not get a refund...I too would charge back. In addition if I were a surfer and joined a site only to learn that it was basically a cookie cutter site that had for the most part the same leased content that the previous site had...if I could not get a refund...I too would charge back.

When these password lists are posted...sometimes with literally hundreds of sites...I usually check some of them out and if I were to have signed up for 90% of them if I could not get a refund...I too would charge back. They are so shitty and so often have the same tired content combined, with deceptive promotion, they are basically just a rip off.

I return products that I purchase from the brick and motar businesses that I am not happy with, for one reason or another, and with 99% of the businesses it is not a problem.

Now there are some that have posted that someone has been a member for weeks if not months and then charged back and that person is a crook. Some one that has been a member for a short period of time and is simply unhappy with the content being offered and cannot get a response from the Webmaster or Billing service...let alone get a refund...in my opinion a charge back should be legitimate.

So bottom line...in my opinion...is deceptive promotion.hahahahahahahaha cutter sites with basically the same content as a hundred other sites...and shitty sites that don't even rise to that level...is the reason for a charge back...in other words a very unhappy customer.

The internet is the best tool ever invented to commit fraud.

Surfers deny visiting and paying for adult content because there is a stigma against consuming pornography and onanism

Site owners make join pages where there isn't even a checkbox for the cross sale, and the cancel page doesn't work because the adult web attracts a different type of merchant who is more driven than most by short term profitability and a 'breaking the rules' or anti-authoritarian mindset.

:glugglug

AaronM hits it on the head. Read again what he said.

yep some of you get it and some don't.

Have you ever gone out for diner and the food sucked. did you just not pay for it or do you chargeback?

so what do you do when you go out to eat and the food sucked or yours friends refered you but you didn't like the spices or whatever and you didn't like the food.
did you still pay for it?

Roger, if surfers playing the chargeback game are the real problem, then why is it that some sites have 4% chargebacks and some sites have 0.4% chargebacks?

There have actually been a few occasions where I did complain about the quality of the meal and the restaurant apologized and either asked me if I would like to order something else or told me that there would not be any charge. Of course I did not eat the whole meal...just a couple of bites of this or that. I never order red meat in a restaurant anymore as I like my meat cooked a certain way and restuarants cannot seem to accomplish this.

I am sure that you must be aware that most businesses, big and small, have a general policy of "the custormer is always right".

Sure, but if I was offered a 5 star gourmet meal for 20$, and I got a cold happy meal... I wouldn't pay.

I haven't seen your member areas, but some sites I've seen have absolutely fucking horrible member areas, something I would never-ever consider joining if I knew what was inside..

Amazing how "savvy internet surfers" are to blame, yet not everyone has chargeback problems.

And yes...if I went out to dinner and ordered something that was listed as "free"on the menu only to get hit with $120 in charges, I'd charge it back.

Good point...and a relatively easy answer (in my opinion)...customer satisfaction on the one hand and customer dissatisfaction on the other hand...much for same reasons that I expressed in my previous post.

what we all need to do is stop talking about it and do what we KNOW is right. im sure we can all agree the right way to make the customer happy...

no crosssales, they dont want to join some site for $50 a month that they have never seen.

content, if your members area looks the same as the other 15 sites you own but its a different color.... you know what im getting at.

pricing, come on now. remember that a big chunk of the rest of the world... particularly the ones who sign up, are only making a grand a month. they cant afford this shit. i really think we all agree the price should be capped at $30 a month MAX probably $25 is a better number.

chargebacks, we need to share these customers emails with each other. no one likes giving away targeted emails, but i mean shit.. it would really help each other out so the same guy doesnt go from site to site pulling this crap.

retention, if everyone would put more effort into retaining the member instead of finding them... i bet chargebacks would drop a shitload...

thats just my :2 cents:

The amazing thing is that only 50% have clicked the last option. To not think that ALL of the above contribute (and the amount each contribute will vary hugely from site to site) is idiocy. How hard can it really be to open your eyes and see the whole picture?

Thank you!



:winkwink:

are the site with 4% getting traffic thru a program. If so I bet they are getting scammed by fraudulant webmasters with stolen cards.

we monitor our acounts daily and we are well under 1%

Just our experience I don't know what others do

I agree and thats why we have trials call it a taste test.
it there fault if they eat the whole meal and forget to complain.
they can always cancel during the trial not only do they see what the full price is when they join they get emails notifying them what the charges will be.

who says its free. its a free trial.

don't you use the 2 for one coupons buy one meal get the second for the same price etc.
why do you think they do that?

to get you to come in and then they know you will buy drinks and a salad etc. its all about upsells and getting people in the door.

I wouldn't know about charge backs, I don't really seem to get too many. Most PPS sponsors don't show them and I don't have my own paysite, but the few signups that do get counted, I rarely get any credits or chargebacks.

I guess when I start my paysite, I will find out huh? :(

Do you really think dropping the charge will keep them retaining?
we have tried all models and it doesn't work. most surfers can't afford an extra $10 a month.

they just are curious and its all an impluse buy when they are done wacking off they will get a bill and cancel or chargeback.
there are always exceptions to everything.
this is just my opinon and I'm just trying to see waht others think.

we try many things we have a site thats $6.95 a month reacurring at $6.95 it retains the same as our other sites http://www.megaporn.com/
and it has a shit load of content in it.

I personally think most of the chargebacks are do to fraudulent webmasters running stolen cards and surfers charging back knowing they could.

yes i really do think it will hlep retain.. think of it like this for a minute. pretend your not making a milliion bucks a year, but say only 20k instead.
you join a site for $1 for a month. you like the membership and want to keep it. but you cant be spending 40-50 a month to keep it.. thats just out of the question.. but you might stay if the price was say $25... but thats just MY opinion. i havent done any testing or anything. i just know that 40-50 bucks is alot of money to alot of people.....