Program Owners - Scrub, Good or bad?
 

I have a dilemma and wanted some advice.

I'm currently using Epoch as my processing gateway, though I have my own merchant account. I am looking at my daily denials, and I have 400.

That's 400 denials and about 225 approved sales so far today. So, obviously the scrubbing is very bad, as far as sales volume is concerned.

I occassionally mail a double opt in list to clickcash/ifriends. I mailed it twice this week (It is 80k total names), and got 110 sign ups worth $4000.

When I mail this to anything other than clickcash, I average 10-15 sign ups per mailing.

iFriends/Clickcash obviously uses their own merchant account, most likely with very little scrubbing which is probably why so many more transactions are approved.

So, my question is, how does someone like iFriends get away with scrubbing so little? Why are their chargebacks not just ridiculous with all the fraud?

Or is scrubbing really just overrated and overly cautious?

What are your opinions?

No advice, but I want to be your friend. :Graucho

wtf is wrong with this board now? why can't i get a response.. 3 months ago I would have had several good responses by now

My response isn't good enough for you? Dayum! :(

Actually, my opinion, for all it is worth is to try your own merchant account over Epoch. See what kind of approvals you get. If they are better (and not much fraud) use your m account. But you also risk losing it....
As for ifriends, they have their own merchant account (?) so they can better control the scrub and approval rate.
There are others better qualified to answer this, but I think they are at the Pheonix forum.

i am using my own merchant account. I am using epoch's gateway to talk to the card services. But using epoch's gateway requires using their scrub list... hehe, but I really appreciate your response.

Have you tried Netbilling? (surprised Mitch hasn't jumped all over this)
I can't imagine how large Epochs scrub list is. I think with Netbilling you can adjust the severity of the scrub. I have heard nothing bad about them from people using them, only from people pissed that Mitch is a little crazy on the boards. :2 cents:

Only thing about netbilling is that I would have to reinvent the wheel because their software totally sucks.

With epoch, I can use the same software that CyberCommerce clients use, so there is no outside coding required.. programmers are flakey.

I use to do my own billing for my 800 adult lines and I turned off the ANI database and other databases for a month and say an increase of over 50% in revenue but it ended up costing me a merchant account.

In this business you have to scrub, billers will make more money if they dont scrub but that money will be temporary and will end up leading to fines.

Scrubbing is good.

So why not reinvest all that coin you are making and become your own processor? That way you would have total control, and probably earn more through less stringent scrubbing to justify the expense it would take to accomplish it?

Out of those 400 denials and 225 approvals how many are the same people? In other words, how many of the denials are due to mistyped information, in which case the surfer corrects it and gets approved, and how many are from bad cards? Also, are blank/incomplete submits counted as declines?

Its been a couple of years since we've used Epoch so I don't know exactly what their stats show. 400 declines to 225 approvals sounds rather harsh.

By comparison primary credit card processor, every 100 unique credit cards will on average yield about 74 approvals and 42 declines. This decline figure only shows actual bank/scrub declines, it doesn't include blank/incomplete submits.

Where's KimmyKim (god bless her soul) when you need her?

I believe epoch lets you adjust your scrub rate for merchant accounts Donnie.

Donnie Gangsta,

Sorry for the delay as we were in Phoenix over the last few days. I'm not sure that problem or version of our software you have looked at, but programmers and merchants absolutely rave about our interface, software, and API.

Is their something that I can help you with? P00p was correct as you can completely control the fraud scrubbing with our system.

Let's talk!

Toll Free within the US: (888)357-8166
Outside the US: (661)252-2456


Thank you, Mitch Farber
ICQ #117496436 or AIM - Netbillme

You have no built in reseller support, and I don't like the way "product codes" (Epoch terminology) are made with you. And I don't know how the member Id stuff works (for per minute billing). Also Epoch has built in support for cross sales to other companies.

If you have your own customer support and merchant account its best to just run your own scrub list. If you run things customer friendly you can expect less than 2% chargebacks or fraud.

If you use epoch or other third party ,I would use their scrub list as they were most likely from another adult site anyways. And its very easy to cancel with 3rd party so they are just being irresponsible.

My two cents..

btw, contact me about mailings...l

im not pissing on netbilling, they look good, but for one of our sites we are trying out jettis on a merchant account. I think it should be good and will keep you posted. Add me to your icq and we can share our knowledge

good luck

Personally, I like to know the scrub is working. Otherwise, chargebacks start to rise, and then I can lose my ability to ever take Visa again. In a job where there is very little security, I take what I can get.

Are you sure you are talking about the right company? We do not have any resellers and our system is very, very flexible. You can use our direct mode API to support ay other companies or programs that you want to build in. We also have a member update module to cross/upsell to other Netbilling merchants as well.


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Datinggold,

Let us know if you would like to tour our system. I know you will be very impressed.

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Gothweb,

Knowing about the amount of scrubbing on your sites is very important.

Thank you, Mitch Farber





Thank you, Mitch

This may seem like a naive question, but if you have a credit card merchant account, why not go with more complete affilate tracking:

http://www.affiliatetracking.net/info/quickinfo.pdf

(licensing their software and using your own dedicated server)

and just use this for fraud scrubbing:

http://www.rightconnect.com/

?

DG --

If you are using your own merchant account and Epoch's gateway services you can tweak your scrub at anytime.

Tighten it down or loosen it up at http://www.epochsystems.com/tools/,

Select the option for "Filter Configuration".

Let me know if you have any questions.



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