Fake Verotel Mail?
 

One of my clients got this in her email. It says her account was closed yet I was still able to log into it, so I think it might be a fake:

Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:46:58 +0200
Subject: Important message about your Verotel account
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

Dear merchant,

You have been a beloved Verotel merchant for the
last couple of years and we thank you for that!

However, we want to bring you some news about
MasterCard and VISA and their new registration
requirements.

These requirements include:

We need to identify you. This means that we
need a copy of your identification;

We need to register you with the credit card
companies. A total of EUR 500.00 application and
registration fee applies for your registration;

We board your account under a new service name:
Verotel Basic. This is the new name for smaller
accounts like the one you have;

You need to sign a new Verotel agreement that
outlines the do's and dont's within the new
registration requirements of both MasterCard
and VISA.

We have investigated your account and found out
that your total revenue per week is less than EUR 100.00.

We can understand that you cannot afford the EUR 500.00
application and registration fee. Therefore we have
terminated your account per today, April 19th 2012.

You may decide to pay the EUR 500.00 application and
registration fee. For your account that means that we
would like to receive this amount up front by wire.
Please do not forget to include your Verotel ID in your wire.

Please refer to the PDF file for the banking details.

If after one year your account is in good standing and
has an average volume of more than EUR 100.00 per week
we will not charge you for the following year.

If you decide to pay the amount of EUR 500.00 application
and registration fee please contact us immediately by
email ([email protected]) and we will re-authorize
your account again. Your payment should be available in
our bank account by May 1st at the latest.

Please note that all moneys owed will be normally paid
according to our terms and conditions.

Please note that the application and registration fee
are VISA and MasterCard fees per merchant; not per website.
So if you have websites elsewhere please consider the
possibility to add these website(s) to your Verotel Basic
portfolio.

We hope to continue to do business with you and are
looking forward to your decision.

Kind regards,


Verotel Merchant Services BV
J.W.A. Zuurbier

It also had an attached PDF. No news about this on the Verotel site. She is forwarding it to [email protected] but are there any Verotel people on here right now that can confirm if this is real or not?

Well, the email addresses the way you posted them are going to the Verotel domain.... Does your client see something different when mousing over? Is it phishing?

Call them.

"We can see that you're poor as shit and for sure won't be able to pony up the $500, so we helped you out by closing your account for you. "

lolzzzz I love Verotel, this sounds 100% like a legit email from them.

View source code of email. What is the senders email? The display email can display whatever they want to.

holy shit any given day in this business you can get that 1 email that blind sides you...no notice, no warning, plug pulled

this sucks I got the same email & they just suspended my account. No warning, no notice, nothing...

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!

Crap. It DOES say suspended in the Verotel account now. :(

Thanks for the suggestions, though.

Signs of the times...

i like wearing ladies panties...

LOL Wut? EUR 50 * 52 weeks = EUR 2600

You might still be able to afford to pay the EUR 500 fee and make a profit. It looks more like they decided to take the opportunity to try to get rid of some of the smaller players. There should have been some notice as well with this not just today we are "terminating your account".

For affiliates it looks like a lot of Verotel affiliate programs for smaller paysites are going to disappear.

They have me by the balls. I had a custom written application that only works with their flexpay system. Im gonna pay the fee but I'm pissed.

Just to check with the rest of you . .were you using the Verotel tickets system or Flexpay?

I have two different Verotel accounts. Only the flexpay(my newer site) got the email. I checked my older account and its still active and accepting purchases. Is it because it makes more money?

I call total bullshit, just forwarded this to Verotel as well

Yes. Sounds like only people who do 100 euro/week or less got this email.

please keep us updated what they will say?

We have had calls from a few other webmasters who have received this email today so you are not alone.

Its a legit email, what do you think is bullshit about it?

Hey guys,

My name is Joost Zuurbier and I am one of the Verotel founders.

We are cleaning up a whole bunch of very small accounts within
our system. These accounts do a few or a few tens of dollars
in volume / week.

We have terminated some of these accounts because of inactivity.

Since we have to pay VISA and MasterCard registration fees these
unused account are a simple cost and with terminating them we are
looking to reduce these costs.

Quick note on fees is that the entire industry will undergo some
dramatic changes in the next 6 months when MasterCard will make
it mandatory for all MasterCards acceptants, including all webmasters,
to register their identification and websites. This will effect all
IPSPs including our competitors, but also IPSPs like Paypal.
With such registration MasterCard will impose a fee.

We are trying to limit any costs as much as possible - and most
of the time we don't pass on the actual VISA/MC fees 1-to-1
but take this from our general gross margin. This may change
in the future since the fees that MasterCard intends to
charge might be a bit higher than normal.

We are currently in an healthy discussion with the credit card
schemes to make sure we can provide you excellent service,
with a decent rate, and 100% payment security.

Please note that Verotel is registered as a Payment Institute
with the Dutch Central Bank in the Netherlands and that the
Dutch Central Bank is overseeing Verotel's operations and
money held.

On another positive note is that we are close to open up our
new US office in California. This means that we can provide
even better support during business hours of all the people living
in the Americas.

Looking forward to continue to work with you all!
Warm regards,



Joost Zuurbier
Verotel Merchant Services BV
CEO

On a side note:

If there are webmasters that have received a termination email and have
multiple Verotel accounts, we can merge these accounts together
that will qualify under one 'umbrella' account. Simple shoot an email
to compliance[at]verotel.com and we'll take care of you!

Cheers,


Joost
Verotel Merchant Services BV

1. Couldn't you have given some notice about this to people prior to terminating them?

2. If it's really about the EUR 500 fee why would you automatically immediately terminate accounts making under EUR 100 a week when the webmaster might want to pay that fee and continue business anyway?

So Verotel suspended accounts with no advance notice ...?

If so, seems to me that's a warning sign to larger, currently unaffected, Verotel customers that trouble could be on the horizon.

Hey guys,

There was no advance notice because in this case MasterCard didn't want
to give us notice - the accounts were just too small. Most of them were
processing less than US$ 10 a week.

If we would give notice, MasterCard would still bill us for these unused
accounts. Of course we tried to mitigate in this but we have to play with
the rules and regulations of MasterCard Corporation.

Comment on Ron Bennett's remark about warning signs: as mentioned
in my previous posting MasterCard will impose new registration rules
and procedures for submerchants and webmasters that are currently
connected to IPSPs and Payment Institutes like ourselves.

Their request is to gain more transparancy - and to receive more income.

We are currently in a lenghtly negotiation process but to repeat myself:

"Quick note on fees is that the entire industry will undergo some
dramatic changes in the next 6 months when MasterCard will make
it mandatory for all MasterCards acceptants, including all webmasters,
to register their identification and websites. This will effect all
IPSPs including our competitors, but also IPSPs like Paypal.
With such registration MasterCard will impose a fee."

For any of these coming changes we know we can give enough notice.
And everyone can compare notes with the competitors since these
changes will affect everyone.

Kind regards,



Joost Zuurbier
Verotel Merchant Services BV
CEO

Are you still going to pay them any reserves due?

Pity about the timing. I just decided to start with the tube partnership thing. I've never been any good at the traffic generation game so I figured this would be a good move.

Any chance of an extension, Mr. Joost? I understand the move but it was a little bit sudden.

edit: saw the last post, yeah that sounds like the card associations typical MO.

I wouldn't mind if you applied 100% retention until the fee was paid, for example.

the pdf file says yes they will

Hey Guys,

For temporary reactivation just email compliance[at]verotel.com and we will
reactivate your account if you convince us the account is not unused.

And of course we will pay every penny.
warm regards,


Joost Zuurbier
Verotel Merchant Services BV

Well, I got my temporary reactivation, let's see if I can do something with it.

I'm in Los Angeles and emailed you guys hours ago and have not heard back. Not good.

They are 6 hours ahead EST, so 9 hours ahead PST

Here in LA name dropping usually doesnt help. In this case I emailed them copies of Joosts text from this thread and I got a response in about 8 minutes. Paul from Verotel emailed back and aked me to confirm my site ID. I emailed him and a few minutes later he emailed back confirming the billing services were live. Whew!

The timing could be sheer coincidence but Im glad I checked this board!

If any of you guys want to check out the website is questions its http://ready2burst.com . Its Wordpress on the front end with a custom built video-on-demand software package on the backend. Users pay each clip individually. There is no monthly fee or recurring billing. Add videos to the cart and then click checkout. You will see the cart data gets passed to verotel(using their flexpay) for billing processing. With a successful billing transaction verotel send the user back to the website and they can login(using php protected rewrite rules) to the videos they purchased.

What about those guys who were already paying the Verotel $1000 Mastercard fee?

Email sent. Hopefully can get our account(s) reactivated shortly.

I presume this only applies to merchants, not ticketsclub? I have a couple of dinky little sites which barely make beer money, wondering if they're about to be cut off.

While we're at it... how on earth do you determine what you're currently owed?

- Payment list only shows past payments, not any future pending/held payments

- Transaction list does not let you select greater than a one month's period

- Manually loading 100+ individual invoices (it's been a while) and adding up the totals does not really appeal to me


A summary that could cover several months or even years showing the total for each invoice plus either payout amount OR the cumulative total held below minimum payment, for each invoice, would be really nice. :)

I've got a ticketsclub account that only generates like $300/mo. Haven't gotten this email..

CCBill now offers a similar service. Converting shouldn't be difficult if the.code was well written in the first place.

I make more than 100 EUR per week with my account, why my account got terminated?

I see a very small website/account is re-activated , how long it will be activated? till what date? when is the final day to pay for the fee?

sent an email

please reply