WTF! Verotel get your shit together!
 

I have been with you for years, and god knows how many times I've seen this:

Proxy Error
The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /cgi-bin/j01a.pl.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

Probably thousand times!
I never seen anyone complaining about that on GFY, maybe because people hope you will fix the problem soon! I get that error almost every time I want to check my stats. After 10-20 even 40 minutes of page reloading It finally show me my stats. I put up with that almost 4 years now!

Whats up with that??

Verotel is one of those processors you love to hate and hate to love.

My experience with Verotel:

1. Verotel don't have the correct UK counties on their signup page, for example there is no 'Merseyside' option.

2. Their usercodes/passcodes don't always work.

yes i love verotel. i was working and checking my stats. then i found i had to receive some cash so i was going to check my account info because i registered that so long ago and i didnt know if everything is ok. after asking me for my pincode, i gave there one bad try and when i wanted to send my pincode to email, my firefox freezes. i lost so many datas. so wtf? i tried back in ff again, again freezes! then i checked in ie, again freezing! w t f? i sent email there about freezing and getting their crap together, but only email i got is "your pincode is bad ask for new one" and from then no reply. ff and ie is freezing still, so come on verotel get your shit together! i can give you all my configuration to get your freezing problems back, cause you are the only site whats doing that! ooooh, just what i had in head and didnt wanted to start new thread ... ;) respect and best luck everyone with your sites!

Yah I see the proxy error timeout sometimes....I always figure this sort of thing is due to the large amount of business they absorbed last year. The "recent transactions" query never has this problem tho.

You need like 30 min of reloading to be able to see one of this things:

* Balance
* Credit card transactions
* Reseller transactions
* See active users for all websites

I know that verotel employees reads gfy so I hope someone will answer this.

from what you say I think the database they use is jampacked and this is why it takes so long to get any info out of it

pretty ridiculous if you ask me for a credit card processor to have such an issue

Luckily I can do most stats and customer support tasks from the CSV files they mail me (almost) every day. But in the rare cases I actually have to search their database, 30 minutes and a dozen reloads due to proxy timeout errors are pretty much standard. Worst is having to look up a customer by email address.

On a sidenote, for how many years have they promised to redesign their join pages now? Wonder what's so difficult about giving some kid 50 bucks to design a form that will look less daunting to customers than the current one.

Um... you probably haven't heard of it because it happens on occasion, or during peak internet times (I've ntoiced anyways). If it times out like you describe, then you click, refresh, then normally your stats will come up.

Since it's something so small, while still annoying, it's probably not worthy of drama llama.

Nope.

Happens several times on each and every search I do, no matter what time of day. I haven't received a search result without several proxy errors for years.

bump in vain hope for a statement from Verotel....

Interesting.

Have you broke down and called the Dutchies?

Perl. That's the problem. They need to port that "old shit" to PHP.

bump..............

It's only guessing but this seems to be the issue. With the processors you can only look at them empirically and guess what is up, unless someone is talking somewhere.

The thought that crosses my mind is that if all of this stuff was upgraded or fixed would my bottom line go up? Maybe it would. We do see some ratio variations sometimes that look like they are technically based, but there are just too many variables to know for sure.

I'm absolutely certain that the guys at Verotel are aware of all this stuff and that things are in the works. One big problem they face is that it is harder to upgrade a working older system than it is to make a new one, so I suppose they have some work cut out for them. So patience.

HAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA






































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Damn.... you must not know shit about PERL or PHP or you'd be laughing with me right now.

You should read up some more... Perl is considerably faster than PHP is. CONSIDERABLY... its actually SCARY how slow PHP is compared to Perl.. sadly...

I lol'd. Have you used Verotel? Sometimes it takes me all day (8 hours) of refreshing to pull up active user lists (multiple accounts). Sometimes I have to keep trying all night.


It's pretty hard to do customer support when you can't, you know, access any information whatsoever. Their cancellation page works great, however! :upsidedow

verotel - shit. about 6 years ago they dropped out few affiliates program without payouts to program owners and affiliates (me also).

better move to some normal cc processor before not too late.

also - these errors in stats can also affect sales - think about this.

:warning:Oh crap:ticking:Hollering:eek7:bigears

Is that a joke?

Yes I use them, and have for years! Funny, I have had little issues with them despite thousands of members over that time.

Interesting.

Also that stats page has done what you refer to on occasion. But all night, or 8 hours? Brother please.....

I have 6 websites that bill with them, and large member base and not had all these 'issues' you claim on the frequency you claim.

I see a lot of complaints in this thread with few people calling them. One thing I love about the ole GFY is a person sends an e-mail, and if they do not get a response in a few hours, they take it to the board w/o trying live chat, or simply calling.

Unbelievable. Much like your claims.

:disgust

Is it still down???

No. It's not been "down".

There is an occasional error that comes up from time to time. You refresh, and stats come up on the next round.

Checked a few minutes ago.

What I said is more than a guess, I have big experience in this kind of systems and load balancers

Not to mention that this certainly affects your bottom line, because they use this proxy for load balancing, for sure they not only load balance the stats but also the payment API :)

Heh.

Then do a simple audit.

Take your E-mail sign ups received.

Match that to:

The end of week report sent on Fridays in a spreadsheet.
Compare that to the sign ups in the stat's system totals.
Conversions on your website ratio report.

You will find that they match any time you do it.

Redundancy, and transparency is a beautiful thing.

:winkwink:

I have no idea what are you talking about, but I will draw you an example

lets say a customer is trying to fill the payment form, he clicks Submit button and the script connects to the API, API returns a proxy error and customer gets a white page or decline or something

he closes the page because 'somethign obviously does not work here'

How many times have you heard, and have proof of this happening?
:disgust

Been with them for years and never received an e-mail from someone saying they were having issues signing up. Much less anything like this.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:thumbsup

Come on, don't tell me you actually believe calling them and talking with some of their annoying support guys will do anything. Bumping a thread on GFY for a couple weeks or months is much more likely to have an effect.

Upgrading their system will be difficult and expensive, so it will take a lot of pressure to convice them it's inevitable.

Having their ancient butt ugly paypages redesigned would be cheap and easy. They've publicly promised to do that for several years. And I'm still waiting. :helpme

Been with Verotel for a good few years now and never ever had any problem :thumbsup

The very few questions which were raised where dealt with in live mode and answered OK.

Yeah. It worked WONDERS in both iBill, and PayMonde threads didn't it.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:321GFY

Which means it takes time.

Yet you stay with them. So they can't be all that bad then can they. :winkwink:

:thumbsup:thumbsup

I am not going to argue with you, there are things people without technical knowledge just do not see, this is one of these things


I did not come here to stir shit, I came here to give a little bit of my wisdom, believe my words or not

Fair enough buddy :thumbsup

I'm not saying they're all bad, far from that. Processing works fine with them and payments are reliable.

But their sytem is a total pain in the ass. I wonder why you're denying that.

I never said their system got a raise in my underwear.

I have said, on more than one occasion, that it has it's occasional quirks. No more. No less.

We are aware of the proxy error problem when trying to get certain reports out of the Control Center and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience it has caused. To provide our merchants with the information they need, we have implemented a new functionality: The Verotel Quick-Stats.

With Quick-Stats, you can see new sales, recurring transactions, refunds and chargebacks up to the previous day in one clear overview. In addition, you can view the same data broken down per website. The information can subsequently be downloaded in csv format for off-line manipulation. All critical transaction data can be accessed quickly and centrally with Quick-Stats. Transaction data from January 1st, 2006 is now available under MY SALES . Future scheduled releases of Quick-Stats will include graphs and trend lines of a site's key metrics. We have created a separate area in our database to run these queries to ensure a speedy delivery of these reports.

At the moment Verotel is also working on a long term solution which involves completely redesigning and implementing a new reporting database and we have already begun the preliminary work of adding new servers, specking out the functional design and installing the database, but we hope you will understand that such a huge undertaking will take SEVERAL months to complete, test, migrate and implement.

We appreciate your patience and your business, and hope that you will bear with us in the interim.

Sincerely,
Verotel Management Team

:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

Trust me, his claims are founded!

I'm the guy that yells at him to get the stats and i've literally watched Stew trying to pull these stats ALL day! (even all night) Maybe it's slower for us because we have double the number of sites and possibly a larger member base?

Whatever it is, we've been in contact with Verotel regarding the issue numerous times via email and the live chat system!

We're happy with them as a biller and will continue using them, we just wish they could attend to some of these issues that have been plaguing many of us for months!

Ok, that?s a tech issue, but certainly showing something about the company. A serious and highly professional company would build it?s empire only on 1st class tech solutions. Beside, being a reliable billing company sounds like a fairytale. As someone who had experience with all (and I really mean all) available billing companies, allow me to remind you that there is no such thing as safe and reliable billing company. Even the big ones went down easily (for example, IBill was really big once before). Since the risk is always there, would be wise to go for the proven solutions to reduce the risk. No doubt, nowadays it?s CCBill. Beside, they have absolutely the best affiliation system. If they process for almost all adult websites, they should process for you too. It?s a no brainer really. Second choice would be Epoch. Only if you can?t use CCBill or Epoch for some reason, you may consider other companies, including Verotel, but I would never put them in the first 10.

Recently I?ve heard a couple of good things about Verotel/Verza, plus I like adventures and new experiences, plus I can ?afford? such sport, so I decided to try them out. On the negative side, beside the previous posts, I recall they had a few black spots in career, broke a law here and there, screwed some webmasters, ruined a few businesses, but somehow got over it all and even succeeded in spreading positive words (search the GFY). However, from my point of view, ?being reliable? and ?paying on time? is the only way a billing company can function. Stop paying on time and in a few days you?re gone, but looks like lot?s of people catch on those slogans. This is what I can tell about Verotel:

1. Extremely slow service, no matter what you?re waiting for (approval, tech problem, simple email response). Bring tons of patience before starting business with them (I guess you wouldn?t gamble with already established business). Believe it or not, from the day I applied till the first processed transaction, passed slightly over two months. It?s not a typo - two months!
2. Very amateurish approval system and incompetent Risk Management staff. These guys wasted lots of my time and energy, showed ZERO knowledge about relevant laws, their implementation and scope, about content and domain ownership regulations, privacy subjects, etc. Not to mention their poorly written document named ?Content Compliance Policy?, which actually has nothing to do with actual ?approval procedure?, naive methods for authentication of relevant data and finally breaking the law in many different ways (very disappointing).
3. Tech issues caused me some serious trouble. I usually implement scripts on my own, but this time I wanted to see how Verotel do it. So, I kindly warned their tech guy to be careful, because I already have other billing companies set on the website and lots of existing members. He installed Verotel?s script, but ruined everything else, changed paths, file positions, permissions? Exisiting members were unable to login since he destroyed old htpasswd file, new subscribers were unable to signup and my other billing companies lost communication with their scripts (member management was impossible). Even if I haven?t warned him, it was obvious that website is already set up for billing with other companies and there were existing members. One could tell that only by looking at htaccess and htpasswd files, but he probably was drunk or blind, no other explanation. Oh yes, I waited 24 hours for him to get the scripts, files and permissions in previous state. Guess I was lucky since I waited much longer for everything else.

On the other side, I had wonderful and very kind communication with Verotel managers, especially those on higher instances. Unfortunately, it didn?t improved my experience and I certainly don?t recommend them.

Conclusion? Stick to CCBill, eventually Epoch. Can?t engage them? Well, maybe there is a way, think again! If you?re desperate, look for small, but highly professional company that is properly set up. It?s a plus if they are taking a good care of their customers. There are a few. Then enjoy while it lasts, because only Visa and MC are eternal.

:2 cents:

What are the alternatives ?

.

@Barefootsies

It's true bro. Something bothers you?

If they eventualy go down one of these days, those few bucks you earned by referring to Verotel won't be worth the trouble you'll have on your back.

And let's be honest, they make profit mostly on the fact that some webmasters can't use CCBill.

Verotel work fine with me

Bump..... Still getting these errors even the end of October 2007....
And nasty long waits to check transactions especially weekends.

Proxy Error
The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request GET /cgi-bin/j01a.pl.

Reason: Error reading from remote server


Perhaps Verotel should separate their Verotel Pro customers from the Ticketsclub customers in the database, or even separate their high Revenue customers...... customers that pay Verotel over $10,000 dollars in service charges every month deserve better than seeing the proxy error page and waiting for the page to reload.

I could not agree with my old friend Mr. Barefootsies more. We moved to Verotel after the Paymonde fiasco and have been extremely satisfied by their service and apparent transparency. I check stats every day and sometimes twice and, if while by no means immediate, it's not taking anything like 30 minutes to access the information. I believe they are committed to continuing their stats front-end, the changes they made at the beginning of the year were a HUGE step forward.

Holy thread bump, shit.

Don't trust Verotel ever - they are LIARS.

Here is why: I tested them thoroughly prior to brining any websites for processing, so I am free to say that Verotel is employing very incompetent people, they are having tech issues, their service costs more then competition - absolutely without the reason! Above all... they are liars. For example, they forbid sites with nude people on the beach (nudism, naturism). Quite ridiculous if you ask me. I am nudist myself and believe me, there is absolutely nothing to forbid. Being naked on the sun and swimming in the sea is the most natural scenery you can imagine, but these hypocrites forbid it. Google for Verotel's Content Compliance Policy and read it. Here is the text:

4. Nudist Content - Verotel DOES NOT process transactions for websites displaying nudist pictures, such as pictures taken at nudist beaches or nudist camps.

BUT they are liars and they DO process nudist websites! Go to beachhunters.com and check out the join page. So tell me, are they liars or not? Shame on you Verotel. (my applogies to beachunters owners, they are innocent in this thread)

They also forbid mentioning of the "teen" word, but guess "assholes" is what they really like to hear.

Brothers, I warn you to stay away from these liars. As I already said, rather search for small, but professional companies. There ARE such companies and will cost you as low as half of the Verotel's price. Yes, that's true - a half. Not a typo, LOL. Plus, you will enjoy much more professionalism in all aspects of business. You will be treated with respect, as a partner, not as a piece of shit. Of course you will be fully paid and paid on time. Don't catch on Verotel "paying on time", it's normal if they pay on time, nothing to be proud of. Every company must pay on time if it plans to stay in business for one more day. Even Paymonde/MVC was paying on time till the last month, like a clockwork, for years. So what?