CCbill Chargebacks
 

Second time is a charm I guess. So here I go

Last year I had a guy charge back 12 month worth of subscription. I went rounds and rounds with the CCbill fraud department, screamed and bitched on here. How in the hell can they charge back so many fucking month. Nothing, not a thing I can do.

The answer I got was simple "Sorry we can't help you, he must have went to his bank"

Today I noticed some guy charge back 3 month worth (Same guy charged back 3 month) I looked up his user id and yup, he used it all the time, checking out liveshows etc.

I am pissed, I am upset. I don't get how they can charge back more than one month. Hell I can sign up on a site stay and play on that site for 12 month and than charge back the entire shit.

When I asked to talk to the Fraud department they told me I had to email them. hm,, last year I was able to talk to them, now email only.

This is very frustrating (btw it was a MC account)

I hate this shit, there has to be a way where they can only charge back one month.

Bullshit!
:321GFY

I should take his hotmail account and ad it to every gay, freak, fetish and wacked off site I can find.. Bullshit, bullshit

:mad:

Send a letter to his wife.

Steffie, thats probably the worst story of chargeback I've ever heard (15 months!).... I use ccbill myself, let us know if you get any resolve to this issue....

please, you have to do something, im frustrated and its not even my customer. let us know how it goes, you cant just do nothing! this guy used and abused your site!

It's credit card fraud plain a simple. If you really are pissed about it, contact the police. Get all your logs, get them to track down who was using that IP with warrents and get the motherfucker arrested :)
ZoiNk

Steffie, if you email or icq me with the specifics of his account, I can check it out and get back to you. Basically, when chargebacks are concerned, we only get notification that says,? We have charged back these payments for this person.? A chargeback is a decision made by the bank that had issued the card after communicating with their cardholder. CCBill is not the one that allowed the chargebacks; our position in these instances is reactionary.

Some good news is that some of the newer cardholder verification methods (CVV2, Verified by Visa, etc) allow a better and more accurate approach in confirming the cardholder and thus, make it increasingly difficult to 'chargeback' those transactions.

[email protected]
45471840

Does ccbill show street address details? You could bank on the fact that those details may be real, and he's just a bastard who didn't want to pay. Mail him an invoice and mention legal action if it is not paid promptly. You may also be able to sell the debt to a collection agency...

Take him to small claims court and file civil charges for fraud. You can really fuck up his credit.

Ya you get everything but his card number including his phone number and addy..

It is possible that it wasn't the person who owned the card. After all, who says the person you have a record of logging-in wasn't someone who stole a CC#?

Of course, that's just what's possible. In all likelihood, the guy who owns the caard just ripped you off. And that sucks.

Run his phone number and get the names and addys of his neighbors. Then call him and and tell him you're going to call them asking for credit references for your porn site because his past record with you is bad...

I thought they could only charge back 6 months?

This is bull shit, on our own merchant account we get written notification of any intended charge back or disputed charge, it happens with Visa, Mastercard and Discover and we fight any we think are not stolen cards.

But using a third party processor we never get asked and that pisses me off big time. These C-U-N-T-S get to see our shit download it then not pay and we the webmasters suffer. It has to change and change soon.

Cindy xx
:ak47: :ak47: :ak47:

Go pay the customer a visit, there was absolutely nothing CCBill could do to avoid the situation.

Brad

Except the reality of a chargeback on an internet subscription sale is that no matter what your response to the chargeback notification it makes NO difference because without a signature on a receipt you have NO recourse.

I just had ccbill call me,, here is the scoop

They can charge back basically as much as they want.
They just go to their credit card company

So

:321GFY :321GFY

I am going to use that assholes email address and ad him to every wacked site in the universe

That was always my understanding??

This is a Visa policy. However, she said the card was a Mastercard, so perhaps they have different policies.

Find all the scat sites you can. Then add his address to as many mailing lists as possible buy going to your local magazine store collect all those annoying postcards that they fill mags with and check off a few thousand advertisers.
Takes time but all the cards are free mailing.
Cindy xx

Post the fuckers email and let some of the spammers on gfy put it on their lists:winkwink:

My understanding is that there are general rules that the banks try to adhere to?and perhaps under certain circumstances, exceptions will be made. There are many different banks?I can only be certain of CCBills policies. Remember, this is not us making the decision; it is the issuing bank, after communicating with their customer.

That said, it would not be relevant in this case, as the chargeback was for 3 months. In the previous case that Steffie mentioned, there were not actually 12 chargebacks; it was a combination of refunds and chargebacks?and that was very unique case.

Get all the info from CCbill and post it here, Name, Addy, Phone# and Email Addy..
There's no law against it...

Make sure to tell ccbill to block his card and IP.

My partner has a mainstream site where someone charged back 12 months of recurring. It's all out fraud plain and simple.

They do that anyway ;-((

I am not going to post his name etc on here, since this would be a security issue (me thinks). However, I will deal with it myself.

Thanks..

Just post his shit, nothing about your site ect...

This is totally Unacceptable, the issuing banks are supposed to give the merchant a chance to dispute the chargeback and give their story, rather then issue every cardholder an instant refund everytime they say so. I have my own merchant account and if anyone tries to do a chargeback, I am contacted and get to tell my side of the story. Once the fucker that is trying to cheat me and Comit CC fraud finds out I am disputing his chargeback claim, most of them then just cancel rather then chargeback. CCBill you and the other processors have a duty to your webmaster affiliates to fight these chargebacks and not just simply accept this crap from the banks. I realize your scared right now about being forced out of the adult business with all the other issues going on with Visa and MC, but that is No excuse to be derelict in your obligations.

Like everything else in this industry, it's the scum that's ruining it for us...

If it were all sites like Steffies, where the only legit reason to chargeback is because you're a cheating bastard, or your wife found the bill, then that's fine, dispute away - but the problem is that most chargebacks are probably because the member has been or feels like he has been ripped off.

Look at Babenet - I'd say every one of the probably hundreds of thousands of chargebacks they got was justifiable, wouldn't you?

So it's fine to say that CCBill should dispute, but they can't just say "Oh, well this client is good, we should dispute his/her chargebacks, but this guy is chargeback city, just let it go through"..

Get my meaning?

steffie... sorry to hear, we've had some of these ass-hats pull this shit w/ our sites as well (we too use ccBill). now, ccBill isn't at fault here, these aren't 'refunds' of any sort, your user is just a thief. since you said this has happened twice now (3 months once, 12 months now) go ahead and look through the ccBill stats system and examine the IP addresses this thief originates from each time... if they are similar, block his entire IP subnet via .htaccess from your join pages, so he'd be forced to go through a different ISP (or proxy, but most common thieves don't know anything about proxies!). also, keep an eye on your joins, and if you see this guy return, just refund him and block him. again, real sorry to hear you got scammed this hard, the worst we ever had happen was someone called ccBill for a refund on a 4 month subscription, which of course was granted w/out argument, and *then* they did a chargeback through their bank! so we actually lost the amount from our ccBill account... fucking thieving surfers..!

http://twash.com/temp/angry.gif http://twash.com/temp/angry.gif http://twash.com/temp/angry.gif

I know here in Europe it´s a big fucking deal to make a chargeback. You need to write a whole document to do a chargeback and then you need to apply for a new creditcard - in the U.S. it´s almost like people just say char...then it's done!

And who is responsable!
I would say that the banks that condone this are basically encouraging credit card fraud, and should be held responsable!
This is the only reason that Visa is always crying about how hogh the chargeback ratio in this industry is high.
Imagine if you could just buy a car with your credit card, drive it for a few months, and then charge the whole fucking lot back
:glugglug

You can. And instead of bitching about it the dealer that sold you the car is either going to press charges on c/c fraud or repo your car.

Guys like this need some kind of response just to keep them from bragging to all their freinds and making it a regular occurence.
One send him an email asking why he charged back the use. Try to get him to admit using the site (may be handy later).
Two, record his actual address and send him a letter requesting payment and possibility of small claims court.
Three, go to small claims court and file. Send a copy of the filing and a little summary of your story to the local newspapers, mention the customer (deadbeat)'s name.
Then let the rest run its course.
If you get a small piece in the newspaper cut it out and send it to the guy along with the chance to pay before the court date where you inform him the press will be waiting to interview him about internet porn and his use and non payment. Give him a chance to pay half (at least it is something)....
anyway,
good luck mate

No, don't post his name or address here. The Internet is a vast place with millions of people on it - And some of them are assholes and scumbags. It doens't mean we have to stoop to their level.

But would the bank just allow the charge back with out any proof of that the cardholder was telling the truth?

Yes. The banks can't turn around and call their customers liars. They can't say "Oh yeah? Well prove it!"

The onus is on the merchant to prove the chargeback is no good. And they have to have some pretty good proof.

In the case of website chargebacks, you cannot get pretty good proof unless you can get the customer's ISP to confirm whether or not the IPs used to access your site were ever assigned to the customer doing the chargeback.

This thread really isn't fair to CCbill. This could have happened with any processor.
A refund is issued by the processor (ccbill, ibill, epoch) a chargeback is issued by the bank the customer got their credit card from.
The bank doesn't call ccbill and say "hey, is it ok if we charge this back?" the bank sends ccbill a letter saying "this is what we charged back, and oh, BTW, these are the fees you have to pay us now for us charging this back"

Is it fraud? Most probably.
Can you sue? Nope.

CCbill could sue them, but you can't. You could only sue them for fraud if it was your merchant account that the fraud was committed on.

VIP-ID used to do this. They used their own merchant account, did their own processing. Whenever someone charged back, they filed a lawsuit for the amount of the chargeback + fees, plus $3000 for defamation/damage to their reputation/whatever you want to call it.
And they won EVERY TIME.

BTW, I can never understand why people think their log files mean anything when it comes to charge backs.
All your logs show is whether or not the username/password assigned to that member accessed the members area and how often.
They DO NOT prove that the person who made the purchase was the cardholder. (Even though 99% of the time it was, it doesn't matter what you know, it only matters what you can prove)

Once the new verification systems kick in we should see less and less of this though.

:thumbsup

i think your the first person i've seen here that understands this!

I have to say. When I worked for a guy who had a merchant account and ran a site. We got a letter informing us that someone wants to charge back and it can be disputed. Without signature your going to lose most of the time but in the case of a 12 month cb I think you would have a very good case of winning. Things like this make me want to get a merchant account eventually because if its my account I have their info and I can go collect from them. I think the third party processing dont have the manpower to do this so it doesnt get done but in reality if they did investigate CB's. They would see what webmasters are thieves and they could be dropped. In fact if they had done that from the beggining instead of taking the easy road , policing it themselves .They wouldnt have the problem with cc companies they are having now. Also I cant understand how there is nothing they can do about a customer who gets a refund and then charges back. That doesnt make sense.

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.