Should I start taking checks again?
 

I use CCBill for my website billing. Around a year back, I stopped offering check options. We had been getting a ridiculous number of chargebacks. Plus, I look at it this way... there is no easier billing option to defraud. All you need is a check from someone to get all the info you need to spend their money online. Even if most sales aren't fraud, it is very easy to claim fraud and get your money back.

So, anyhow... Should I offer checks, or not?

I know we got a ton of refunds. I don't know what percentage, but it was a lot. Also, when I stopped offering check options, it didn't seem to affect sales. People just signed up using a credit card.

The thing is, I would like to take the chance to get more sales. I have mostly been told that checks are fine, and you make more than you lose. What do you think?

In my experience people with checks and NOT credit cards (or at least a visa debit card) haven't got the money to buy porn online anyway.

:2 cents:

That is a good point. I think some people prefer the check options, and still have a CC, though... Since signups didn't go down when I got rid of checks, just went over to CCs.

I only take cash.

Webmasters from all over the country send me sales, BUT they also go out and collect the cash.

Its great, so a webmaster in texas sends a sale. The customer is from New york, so i get a new york webmaster to go to his home and collect the money.

No chargebacks, no refunds.

What a great system. Why didn't I think of that. How does it work with referral payments? And recurring?

Lots of pens and paper my friend.

A check is money, I like money. If you are getting too many chargebacks is it really have to do with the check aspect of the enrollment? more options + more sign ups, but remember your affiliates, if you aim to have affiliates push your site, make sure the options you choose keep THEm in mind as well.

Good luck.

:glugglug

Chargebacks on credit cards are virtually nonexistant. They were at least 1/3, maybe 50% with checks. We don't get a lot of complaints and have a high occurrence of rebills (and re-signups, since we offer non-rebilling). What else but the inherent faults of online checks would cause that to happen?

My theory on my partnet plan is simple... The more money the site makes, the more money the parters make. The better the site converts clicks into dollars, the happier my affilliates will be.

Along those lines, if we get a lot of returned checks, either the affilliates eat part of that directly (CCBill has that as an option) or I have to offer them less $$, which doesn't work out well for anyone. So personally, I think the risk of refunds is something that would concern my referral partners.

I'm still not sure what to do, though. As you say, moe $ is more $. Maybe it comes out better that way in the end. I just got sick of all the fraud.

Gary is right,
Cash or Jesus Dialer only.

If you cant trust Jesus, and cold hard cash who can you trust?

Amen

Heh. Well, assuming I have a weird penchant to go for online, instant access options only, what should I do? Just credit cards, or credit cards and online checks? Has anyone else but me given up on checks? What sorts of % are people with paysites seeing on check revenues?

With my methos, you do give instant access. Trust me, once one of my guys show up at their door, they never refuse to pay.

Gary how do they cancel? or they prepay for 2 years and tell they guy please dont come back? LOL

Checks can add about 10% to your bottom line if you use them correctly and you realize what you are getting into.

Personally I wouldn't offer checks as a primary option, but it would be my immediate fallback on a declined credit card.

If you have resellers sending in traffic then just set it so they don't get credited for 7 days from the sale date on check sales. That greatly reduces the webmaster fraud, which is insane on checking, especially if you pay per join.

By not taking checks you are shutting out the guy who's only got one credit card and it's at the limit or he's been declined for other reasons.

So you lose a little bw on people that do pay with nsf -- which is a large part of the problem -- no big deal, I see it as part of the cost of doing business.

Checks will never be 100% secure, only atm or debit billing from the checking account is close. When you think that the grocery store knows you have money when you write a check, that's not correct -- most of them either run your info against their own db of deadbeats, or they use a service like Telecheck which does the same thing, figuring if you write a bad check once, you'll do it again.

We go back to their home every month and collect whats due. All our members stay on until they die or move out of town and we cant find them. Nobody can beat us, and only Jesus Dialer comes close.

KimmyKim,

Thank you for the thorough answer. I appreciate that. :)

I had been considering offering checks as a fall-back option (credit card fails? send them to check page) but I was not sure if that would make a real difference. We're not getting a ton of credit card declines, so unless *all* of them would use a check, I don't know if it would make a big difference.

Also, what do people think about offering different options on checks? (Either as a backup option, or a primary one.) Anything from only offering one-month memberships (rather than our 3 and 6 month ones), to only offering the longer ones, to charging a premium for check signups. Good idea? Bad idea?

I am currently thinking along these lines... Use checks as a backup only. Offer a few signup options, maybe not all of them-- but charge a premium for checks to help make-up for fraud. (If the premium were high enough, I think it might also work to push people towards credit cards.. but I think that would leave the door wide open for fraud, more than anything.)

Well currently you are limited to US checks, except one place that takes Canadian checks -- however I hear in Canada people don't right checks they use their Interact cards --

so -- perhaps with some IP checking and a little help from either a programmer or someone at CCBill since they are processing you, it wouldnt be a bad idea to send your US credit card declines to a checking option page, after all how else but with a check would they pay their cc bill? ;)

Our audience is mostly US, though we have a good international audience. I am not too worried about showing non-US traffic the check option, as it won't be much of a hassle for the few who get to it. (No more than when we offered it as a primary option.)

Am I right that I can automatically send declines and so-forth to the check page as part of the options? Do you (or anyone here) know if that can be done with the old-style forms?

You can send declines to any html page you designate -- what I would suggest is having a decline page with some more options on it -- since some people do only have one cc, why send them straight to a cc secondary, thats only frustrating them.

I'd have checks as the first option, second cc as the next one, then a dialer, paypal or other type of billing as the third one.

If they can't pay with four tries, you dont need them.

Sounds like a plan. :)

At this time, though, I only offer CCBill, no backup processor... I want my affilliates to get their % on every single sale they send. So I suspect the check would be my only backup.

Actually CCBill does have a dialer program in place with Profit Plantation that carries the affiliate codes thru I think. Can't swear it's done and have no clue how it technically works.

Dialer as in "one-off 1-900 charge", or an actual dialer, with per-minute?

Actually you need to talk to your sales guy about it, I'm not sure how it finally worked out -- if it's pay per call or pay per minute -- it was launching as I was leaving, so I didn't get involved in it.

I just sent my rep an email. Thanks. :)