Should The Billing Companies Have their Own Pay Sites?
 

Now this is sort of fucked up I think. This post is from some biggie at Netbilling. It says they have their own paysites. Hmm, I guess that means, If I use netbilling for my paysite, and they have all the user information when that new surfer joins my site, hmm I wonder what happens next??? What a crock of shit. This is worse then when ABEN wants to use my videos for their feed and then they start selling to webmasters.

"Topic: Partnerpayouts.com - 1 post(s)

| View This Topic | Post Reply |

Hi All,

I invite everyone to check out partnerpayouts.com to promote our excellent sites. They offer great mconversions and excellent member retention as they are updated daily.

Teenuniversity.net is converting at 1:223 average for the past several weeks.

Payouts are every 2 weeks and we control the scrubbing. :-)

Signup at: http://www.partnerpayouts.com

Have a great week.

Mitch

NetBill ( Mitch Farber ) | Profile | Contact | Netbilling Services

Seems fine by me

seems fine? The billing company should not be competing with its own customers. That is a confilict of interests

Hmmm... I'd always thought that it'd be logical for a billing company to own paysites. I mean, if anything, they could at least use them for testing. Besides, just cause they don't need a biller, doesn't exclude them from the rest of the factors in running paysites... hosting, content, etc.

Here's a thought. Try to seed their mailing list.

Create an email account someplace unrelated to your paysite, and then use it when signing up for your site. Then see who spams it.

That's like saying "My neighbor fucked my sister!"

She was gonna get fucked by somebody anyway... at least it was by someone you know.

That is strange and that is a good question. Do you have to worry about them spamming your customers.

Oh come on, of course they are spamming your signups. They have all the info and they know that surfer is interested in porn. I would not be surprised if they scrub it hard, decline the signup, and then spam with thier own sites. Let's face it, adult webmasters are getting fucked by these companies left and right. IT is a scam if you ask me. I don't know what to do about it. Any effort to thwart it seem fruitless.

I like the part in the dudes email where he says :and we do our own scrubbing.

Netbilling im my opinion is not gonna mail your members..

What is the difference if a processor mailed your members to a sponsor program..

Bottom line is trust your processor

sure is a conflict of interest but what can ya do?

THink about it. YOu spend all your time getting the signup. Then your billing company has your signups info, spams the fuck out of them with their own program, who do you think is being the fool? I don't knwo what you can do but it seem pretty simple tome what can happen.

I know a dude at CCBILL that runs a few sites himself..

So Yea I would think quite afew of them run thier own websites as well..

To have a processor selling porn is weird. It does take away from them, if they cant sucessful doing just processing. Do you really want to use them? Also they have a huge database of people that buy porn and not to use it, you hope they dont but it can be a very tempting thing.

I agree.

Just because they run a paysite doesn't automatically make them more likely to spam your members then if they didn't. Either way they could sell the email addresses or some shit. They have the info, whether they run their own site or not.

Besides, after having been with Lancelot, I say anything that helps the damned processors stay in business is fine by me :helpme

The whole thing smacks of bad business if you ask me. I think it is wrong. If you are going to process for websites and the adult webmaster is your customer you should not be competing with him. They are in an unfair position to do that and I bet you are correct, I bet they are all doing it just don't come out and say so like this Netbilling guy. It is one big fucking scam.

Just a FYI you are supposed to have a privacy policy, if your processor is mailing your customers that puts you in violation of your privacy policy and you can be dropped by your bank.

What the hell difference does it make if your processor mailed your members to his paysite or to a sponsor paysite??

The fact they have there own paysites means nothing..

Oh, Give me a F.... break. Have you ever seen those privacy policies? They are like 900 pages long and all size 3 text. Anything could be in there.

What is the significance of this net billing guy saying "we do the scrubbing". Why should that make it any different then when they scrub foryour site??

Think about it, they scrub differently for their own shit than they will foryours. I think that he put that in the email says alot about what is really going on. Adult webmasters are being used to get the traffic maybe even the first signup if they don't scrub to hard, after that, your member is history. I deal with wbmasters all thet ime. Retentions suck getting worse all the time is what I hear. Let me ask you this. When you loose a member after one month say, do you find out why you lost? If his second transaction was scrubbed to get him away from your site and into theirs , would you know ???

the guy at ccbill probably doesn't publicize that - that is against their company policy.


I wouldn't have a problem with it - if a billing company - ran a paysite - especially for testing purposes -

the biller would end up building more tools that the paysite owners want. i'd be happy to get more of the best tools faster.

Right, I know a guy at IBill who has his own paysites.

But is it ethical for the company to be competing with you? Not really, is it ethical for them to use the info you give them to build an email list? DEFINATELY NOT.:feels-hot

Unfortunately this is a new industry and a lot of those in it are new businessmen and therefore not good. We have to live with that fact.

I was considering using NetBilling for processing on my content stores, would I consider them for paysites? NO, because if this is their ethics who is to say what else they will do.

The other thing is the blatant way they sent the email, no attempt to hide the fact they have fingers in both pies.

?

That is what surprised me too. No attempt to hide the fact. I am certain that almost all the companies do it so not dealing with one or the other is probably not worth the effort. But now they come out and just say that they do it really is disturbing. It is a fucking shame. The little guys always get used by the big guys. Never will change.

There is a ton of money to made just doing processing. I can't imagine why a processor would want to get into having porn websites. The only reason I can think of would be to generate enough bogus transactions to improve their chargeback ratio. A sort of "transaction laundering".

shall I give you 1 reason.....since you´re a bit slow?

having 1000´s of approved customers with all their info in a
database including the info what niches they like and how much
they spend is as tempting as Iraqi Oil to Dubya bush.

DynaMite :2 cents:

That is why I've never liked processor-ran affilliate programs. They have EVERYTHING then.

Here is a scenario.. I'm sure it would never happen:


You use XYZbill for processing & affilliate management. Your sites sort of suck compared to the competition, yet you somehow manage to bring in lots of affiliates still....

With all the information/data that XYZbill has, they KNOW which of their clients convert & retain the best.

Why would they bother setting up their own sites when they could use their clients? :winkwink:

Why wouldn't they sign up for theit best clients affiliate programs, then spam all of the cancellations from other weaker sites/programs to the stronger ones.

Same goes for affiliates that had decent traffic and are no longer promoting a weaker site.. I could see how a processing company might (via another company of course) somehow get that person to sign up for the stronger clients site (and get the referral credit).


It's not like your ever going to stiff yourself on payments :1orglaugh.

Some processing companies can (and probably do) make cajillions more than just those little ol' processing fees :)


It's sorta like playing matchmaker.. hook up the best affilliates with the best sites & hook up the surfers with the best sites.

HEEEY Thats a low blow dyna... Dubya isn't intersted in the oil at all. Hes interested in preserving freedom & eliminating terrorists.

Sorry you´re right afterall the US still for 14 years oil.....I was a
bit too early with this remark.....Sorry George no hard feelings. :winkwink:

DynaMite :Graucho

To the best of my Knowledge Mitch Farber and Company STARTED with paysites and got into the billing game AFTER they became dissatisfied with the billing solutions that were avaiable to them at the time.

Should they give up their paysites because they started billing too?

Nopes he shouldn´t.....but it would be tempting to snoop his
billing database.....I´m not saying he does.....don´t get me
wrong.....but in general sitting on a mine of CC info requires
a lot of self control not to use it I guess

DynaMite

Can you imagine the mailing lists these billing companies must have? Eveyone on their list has already signed up for a pay site.....

Stop it.....I´m growing wood already :eyecrazy
I´m sure I couldn´t resist......I would whore it out 1 way or
another.

DynaMite

I know someone who works at Ibill.. the employees that work there have access to everything but the email address.. when they login in to the cmi or admin panel with their logins they can view all information about transactions EXCEPT customer emails it just show "([email protected])" for all transactions.. I dont know what other processors do..

One.
Rpet

I am a long time Netbilling client who agrees that processors running their own paysites is NOT ethical. However, I believe they all either do it, or are especially "cozy" with certain paysite operators who may possibly "benefit" from the relationship.

As was suggested in a earlier post, I have periodically "seeded" my Netbilling account with signups from special dedicated email addresses that I check regularly and have set up to filter into special mailboxes.

Paranoid? Absolutely. I have been in this business since 1995 and in those seven years have seen more illegal and unethical business techniques used than I would have ever imagined.

However, I must say I have *never* found any Emails sent to those seeded accounts from any source. Now that does not mean that other people's accounts might not have customer email addresses "borrowed", or even that my accounts addresses could have as well. I do keep a pretty close eye on our business and Netbilling is aware of this.

Any processor who would do such a thing would probably use a "filtering" script to pull the addresses that they "borrow". This script could minimize any chance of them getting caught. They capture a tremendous amount of information on customers, including IP and billing addresses. They could filter out sales from IPs from certain countries, states, service providers etc. In any case they could certainly take the addresses from prior customers, or sites that have closed down.

Processors also have the means to dilute the chargebacks that their own sites (or their affiliates) might generate. This is especially true of 3rd party processors.

The new Visa/MC regulations probably make processor abuse a bit more difficult, however setting up dedicated accounts on an AOL Email address that is hard to track back, using a internet virgin credit card, or the help of a relative or friend, and then monitoring that address for spam is something that I think every site operator would be smart to do.

Just the fact that this is openly discussed, can help make sure that if a problem does exist, that those involved will think twice about the repercussions of being caught red handed by the industry.


JC

http://www.moneyxchange.com

Well now I think I can rest eazy. Our world is a you scratch my back I scratch yours, you fuck me and I fuck you...

I wonder why Net billing hasnt posted anything on this thread?

Drop them like a handful of shit. If Epoch started their own site i would run a mile . If this is a trend then why don't we all set up our own Processing Companies and give them a run for their money ? ( admittedly not as easy as opening an adult site ! )

Cindy xx

:BangBang: :BangBang: :BangBang:

Unless something has changed at CCBill recently, no one working there owns sites. I'm sure there was some sort of miscommunication digihax.

There is a difference between someone working at ccbill , on their own time they running a paysite and a processing company themselves running a website lol.

i would have a *very* large problem w/ this..

Actually CCBill allows neither to the best of my knowledge. And for very good reason.

Since our name was brought up...

CCBill remains very strict on matters that would result in even the appearance of a conflict of interest between ourselves and our clients. We have set internal policies and if it is discovered that this is any of our employees are violating any of those policies, the issue will be dealt with.

Sorry for the delayed response... I just saw the post.
------------

Sobegirl,

I can assure you 100% that we have NEVER, EVER, EVER used one email address of any of our clients. We have had our personal paysites since 1997 and started Netbilling in 1998 when we could not find a processor that we liked.
Netbilling has grown by leaps and bounds and the paysites have stayed the same. 99% of our time goes into working with Netbilling and our clients. Very little of our own time goes into the pay sites. However, we do have a non-Netbilling employee that does daily updates etc... We do do some traffic trades with some of our clients, but we would never steal or redirect and traffic, email addresses, or sell any merchant or customer information.
We have received many, many offers in the past to sell customer lists and would never do so. It is against our personal ethics and against our contracts with our processing clients.

If you talk to people I know and work with in the industry, you will without a doubt know that I (and my partners) are extremely ethical and would never do anything to jeapordize or take busines away from any of of our clients.

After talking to you personally on the phone a couple of times, I would have thought that you would have gained some sort of trust and understood my personal dedication to Netbilling, but I guess not.

------------

J.C.,

It has been a pleasure to serve you for some time now and I would be happy to discuss any concerns that you may have. Feel free to call me today at the office. (661)252-2456 x1002 or on my cell after 5pm at: 661-212-8967

Thanks, Mitch

I wouldnt use them.. too risky they'll contact your members.

DatingGold,

I'd be willing to bet a years worth of processing on it.

:)

Mitch

I've been surprised at the amount of people in this thread who are willing to overlook it. I can't think of any other industry where people would let such a gross conflict of interest slide.

Gutterboy,

You don't think that the owners of PPC search engines list their own sites? I can also name at least 2 other processing companies where the owners run sites as well (but I won't). If we were jacking signups or email addresses, we would surely do more than 30k per month in sales. As a matter of fact, we would be able to retire with all of the signups we could obtain. However, this would be against our merchant contract and our morals. As a matter of fact, we do not even promote other programs or companies when sending emails to our merchants unless it is something that would truly benefit them, such as a trade show announcement. You will not find a more honest bunch of business owners.

Thanks, Mitch

I wasn't accusing anyone mitch. I'm just surprised at the amount of people I've seen in this and other threads who just shrug their shoulders at the practice.

In any other industry the mere suggestion of a conflict of interest like that would have the subpoenas flying.

Gutterbiy,

Our best interest is always to put our merchants first, and we pride ourselves and do not hide the fact that we have our own sites. I publish it in interviews and speak about it at workshops too. It is one of the reasons why our processing gateway is so robust & flexible... we know first hand what the merchants need. We have nothing to hide.

Mitch

Mitch, I do have to say that you were very helpful when trying to hook me up with amerchant account. Very helpful indeed. Trust has nothing to do with this thread. WEbmasters getting fucked left and right does. I think it is a practice that is wide spread. In my opinion there is a terrible conflict of interest for those companies that do billing and have pay sites and webmaster programs at the same time. YOu can argue the point but it will not change my opinion. I say this with all due respect to you and your company. And I am not singling netbilling out for this. I am sure it is done by all processors one way or another.

Ditto from EPOCH. never have; never will. We have our hands full trying to be the best processor - next to CCBill :)

C