Chargebacks Or Cancellations - What Is More Worrying To You?

As a program owner (or revshare affiliate) what is the bigger concern to you these days with surfers, chargebacks, or surfers who cancel immediately after signing up to a site so they dont rebill?

I have to admit, having had only 6 chargebacks in the last 12 months, my primary concern are those surfers who join a site, and within seconds of joining, decide to cancel their membership because they 'only wanted the trial option' (meaning they didnt want to rebill) even before they have seen the content inside the site.

So as program owners, and revshare affiliates, what are you more concerned with, chragebacks or immediate cancels?

Regards,

Lee

Although I don't run my own paysite, I guess I'm more concerned with immediate cancellations. A cancellation means I've got to find a brand new customer to sell a site. So, was there something wrong with the site? If it's one of my hubs, is there something I could be doing better to make it more appealing? Or, is it just a matter of too many people have been burned by rebilling so they cancel immediately and then re-join later if they want? And if this is the case, then this concerns me because I'm getting credit for the initial sale, but I've lost them after they cancel, but the site still wins if they rejoin on their own.

Michael

Cancellations are a far more serious problem for us. We have virtually no chargebacks (tho they cost us plenty when we do), but a good third of our members cancel within the first month. Because we're in a seriously niche market (celebs), I spose it just comes with the turf.

Our response to this rate of cancellation has been to redouble our efforts to provide a constant stream of updates (meaning new pics, vids and stories) to motivate our members to maintain their subs. We assume that a site like ours is similar to a magazine -- people keep their subs up because the mag delivers them new content on a regular basis.

chargebacks.

a lot of guys cancel their membership before they enter the site. when we were with epoch, we used to check times and guys would cancel within 1 minute of joining. i contacted some and every one told me he only buys trials ever. there's not much you can do about them except be glad you don't offer a $2.95 trial.

This REP's opinion: neither worries me.

Charge backs to our sites are so low that I can afford to piss off a bunch of members.

As for cancellations: I inform the members how to avoid re-bills, if/when they ask. If they want to leave, so be it!

My concern is the guy that joins Massive Cocks thinking it is a gay oriented site, but after entering he finds mostly straight action (main page) and retains the subscription without contacting me/us to say uh, wrong site, sorry.., or whatever. That makes me feel sleazy!

Not many people ask what options are available to them. And worse is not many read that which is right in front of them, like the cross sales they just opted for.

I do not like accidental, misdirected or such type subscriber - this makes me feel like a sleazy pimp!
I do not like forcing others to stay with us and I always provide options.

Both are bad but only chargebacks will get you shut down. ;)


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Some people are just going to take the absolute cheapest option, grab all the content, and run. There's nothing you can do about those guys, so if they sign up and cancel immediately, it's not that big a deal to me.

Chargebacks I am MUCH more concerned about. Both because 1% isn't a lot, and because most of the time, those folks have had the service for 1,2 3 months and then charged back. I think a very large % of the time it's fraud, and AJ and I are actually working on setting up a system to get very aggressive with fighting chargebacks (and bad checks).

I suspect that a well-worded certified letter, possibly on the letterhead of a nearly-retired attorney whose name we "rent" for the purpose, detailing the threat of criminal action will probably get 30-40% of these people to pony up the cash for their "fraudulent" transaction, and help to deter them from pulling the same shit with other sites.

For the few that are legitimate chargebacks (stolen cards, IPs obviously coming from nowhere near the cardholders home), we'll certainly take a copy of a full police report describing the fraudulent charge to "call off the dogs" knowing that filing a false police report is a crime in itself.

Frankly, I'm just annoyed about these guys that know they can get away with the chargebacks because Epoch and CCBill don't do anything meaningful to fight them. As for the guys cancelling, there's nothing really wrong with that. IF they like what they see, they end up signing up again, and we've probably gotten as much out of them that way than if they'd done the trial-to-full conversion anyway.