2000charge - another one bites the dust

**Chilihost** · 05-20-2004, 09:45 PM

From the 2000charge admin page:

Credit Card Transactions (May 20):
Please note that we no longer take credit card transactions if you do not have your own Merchant Account, in order to apply for your own Merchant Account,
please contact sales@2000charge.com. Your recurring will continue to run beginning of next week, please note this does not effect clients with their own Merchant Account, or any of our alternative billing clients in any way.

another one gone.....but not a big surprise, it did not charge the visa fees and went against their cross-border processing regulations. But still, it is another sad day for adult industry.

cheers,
Luke

**Lee** · 05-20-2004, 11:10 PM

Unfortunate.. yes Unexpected.. No.

That just leaves the only processor left who isnt charging the $750 Visa fees to go under.. anyone want to place bets on how long Verotel are going to be around now?

Regards,

Lee

**Chilihost** · 05-21-2004, 12:36 AM

Verotel did that big restructure and have bumped their small clients to the ticket club...that may save them for a little while longer.

cheers,
Luke

AusCoding Allan · 05-21-2004, 05:50 AM

It's sad to think that a great deal of the funds that are being processed in the adult industry are being processed on Visa, I for one want to see everyone get some other form of payment (how dare they rule the industry) but unfortunately it's probably a bit too late for that now, not many processors are left now.

My $0.02

Cheers,

Allan

rick · 05-24-2004, 07:29 AM

Originally posted by Lee
Unfortunate.. yes Unexpected.. No.

That just leaves the only processor left who isnt charging the $750 Visa fees to go under.. anyone want to place bets on how long Verotel are going to be around now?

Regards,

Lee

There is another one, based in the USA, and they work directly with Visa yet aren't required to charge the fees.

Verotel restructured severely, and if I'm not mistaken you do have to pay some fees for Visa if you process under $1k a week

mansites-craig · 05-24-2004, 10:44 AM

Hey Everyone,
I am going to take the other side and get everyone mad, but so be it.

The reason for Visa's institution of the $750 fee was to eliminate the ability of webmasters to set up sites, abuse their clients, and then simply run away to another processor. Now they are trackable, and as such held responsible for their actions.

I have to ask, why would someone in the industry, who is taking this role as a professional, not want to be registered. Our company depends on small webmasters, but we want them to be responsible.

Visa accounts for about 65% of the industry's transactions. Yes they are large, but does anyone stop and think what they would do with 65% less income? The fact they are trying to work with us is a positive sign. They held out a proposal that while seemingly expensive to little webmasters, is nothing to the larger ones. So the obvous step is to help the smaller webmasters make enough money to afford the fee, rather than run and hide from them.

I don't think a lot of the webmasters are too far removed to remember some of the antics that caused the registration to be needed in the first place. (Anyone here that can remember companies that used the following: double billing, blind upsells, impossible cancelations, credit card list trading; to name a few)

I will get off my soapbox, but it needs to be said, "We Need to Work With Visa, and Every Other Billing Option To Be Here For Our Surfers"

taboo_gal · 05-24-2004, 01:35 PM

Originally posted by mansites-craig
Hey Everyone,
I am going to take the other side and get everyone mad, but so be it.

The reason for Visa's institution of the $750 fee was to eliminate the ability of webmasters to set up sites, abuse their clients, and then simply run away to another processor. Now they are trackable, and as such held responsible for their actions.

I have to ask, why would someone in the industry, who is taking this role as a professional, not want to be registered. Our company depends on small webmasters, but we want them to be responsible.

Visa accounts for about 65% of the industry's transactions. Yes they are large, but does anyone stop and think what they would do with 65% less income? The fact they are trying to work with us is a positive sign. They held out a proposal that while seemingly expensive to little webmasters, is nothing to the larger ones. So the obvous step is to help the smaller webmasters make enough money to afford the fee, rather than run and hide from them.

I don't think a lot of the webmasters are too far removed to remember some of the antics that caused the registration to be needed in the first place. (Anyone here that can remember companies that used the following: double billing, blind upsells, impossible cancelations, credit card list trading; to name a few)

I will get off my soapbox, but it needs to be said, "We Need to Work With Visa, and Every Other Billing Option To Be Here For Our Surfers"

You've not made me upset. All you've done is speak truthfully.

As in any business, there is money spent to operate. Maybe if more looked at this as a business there would be more honest business, less kids in the industry, less belly aching and less issues.

**Huskyhunks** · 05-24-2004, 01:58 PM

What I want to know is why did companies like Mansights sit on the news of the pending Visa regulations for a year and not alert "small webmasters" to the new fees and regulations that were going to be implemented.

Adult Check and Tri Tech were quietly building ACPay and Clear Card to capitalize on the new fees and regulations set up by Visa, while small webmasters were left in the dark for a whole year. We could have used that year to save money for the new fees, but instead, the larger avs companies like WCD chose to use this information for competitive gain and keep small webmasters in the dark.

**Huskyhunks** · 05-24-2004, 02:08 PM

I gotta say one more thing on this cause it wouldn't let me edit and add this to the last message.

WCD went from $15 to $20 payouts right as the Visa news hit. You knew that alot of webmasters wouldn't be able to afford 3rd party processing so basically everything was in place to profit from this and you have the nerve to blame someone else. Unreal.

Jason · 05-24-2004, 02:44 PM

This is exactly the reason we are excited to be offering 123Bill to adult webmasters at this point in time. I responded once to a similar thread about adding 123Bill as a billing method to your sites as a way to help suplement the loss of income that has accompanied all the changing fees and regulations. However, I think a few were confused...thinking I was suggesting using 123Bill as a replacement for credit card processing. So let me be very clear.

We DO NOT recomend that anybody use 123Bill as their ONLY means of processing (although that's certainly fine with us). What we would suggest is that you offer your potential customers as many options as possible...including the option to pay using 123Bill. As we all know, the more opportunities a surfer has with methods of payment, the more likely he is to sign up. Additionally, credit card processors are having to scrub so hard that a lot of declines are, in reality, perfectly legitimate sales. Even if you only offer 123Bill on your decline page you'd see an increase in sales.

We are the only company offering GUARANTEED payout to merchants regardless of collections and since we're waiving our setup fee, there's really no reason for any of you to NOT put 123Bill on your sites. If you have some, please let me know as I'd love to address them.

I don't blame the credit card processors for what they're doing. I just think it's time we stop putting all our eggs in one basket...and start grabbing eggs from baskets that we didn't have before.

Thanks for that moment...and please...contact me any time as I'm truly looking forward to doing business with a lot more of you.

mansites-craig · 05-24-2004, 03:02 PM

Sorry Husky Hunks,
Not even close to what "actually happened".

First of all, we did the raise to $20 payouts, but simply as a holiday gesture to our webmasters. We got such a response to it, that we kept the payouts at that level. I think our webmasters were glad we did. Nothing to do with Visa.

Secondly, we didn't sit on any news. We were building new programs based on the information we had, and as soon as the new Visa program hit, we found out our new programs didn't work in the new Visa model.
This set us back almost a full year, and there are several content providers and webmasters who know this as they were a part of the development.

These new programs are still coming out, but until we knew what Visa plans were regarding the avs model, nothing could be done. Now that we know what the models allowed are, we are implementing EVERYTHING, in our power to assist small webmasters. This you will see soon enough.

As far as profiting from this, I don't think you will find a former AVS who acted faster with news than we did. Simply remember back to June 28th, last year when we announced we couldn't use the term AVS anymore. 10,000's of webmasters were informed within 24 hours of us hearing the news, and no, they weren't please with hearing it, but it was the truth, and we needed to get it out. We were then the first model that complied, insuring our future for our webmasters. That requirement alone allowed other companies to profit from our rules that they themselves didn't follow until later, if at all. So how we profitted, I'm still not sure, as we and everyone else took immediate hits.

Had we known earlier, you would have as well, as that is how we have always acted. When you and everyone else sees our new programs and realizes these were expected a year ago before Visa changed things, you will have a better understanding.

NO ONE knew what the $750 registration fee meant for avs models, and no one benefitted from it. If you really understood this, you would also understand that our webmasters weren't affected by the fee, as we are FREE! We don't use visa for the free sign up.

Feel free to post your comments, but feel free to contact me if you aren't sure of the details.

BDBionic · 05-24-2004, 03:15 PM

I'm of the belief that no one should ever start a business without a sufficient level of start up capital on hand to do it. It's poor planning to go about it any other way.
Just as you want to have at least a few months of content on hand before launching a content site.
Just as you want to have your servers and hosting issues geared up and ready to go.
Just as you should want to have established traffic sources/trade relationships/business relationships set up before launch.
It's just the wise way to go about starting up a business - adult sites included.
If you can't afford the Visa fee right now? It's not a guaranteed "right" to launch a website how and whenever you want and expect it to be successful. Hold off until you do have the capital. Acquire a partner who can foot the bill. Something.

I saw enough mainstream companies go under during the dotcom bubble-burst on account of not having a thought out business model and capital base to keep themselves up and running through difficult periods. That squandered and wasted the money they made during healthy periods only to find themselves broke and hopeless during difficult periods to the point of having to close shop.

I'm all for the Visa fees as they are right now. Why? Because as a legitimate webmaster I have absolutely no problem with efforts to legitimize others. As Craig said, no one has to look very far to find webmasters who operate with shady and shifty tactics. Screwing consumers and the rest of us with the way they run their "businesses". Any reasonable step to weed those out and keep the rest of us secure is fine by me.

For the people out there running illegitimate businesses designed to fuck over customers, something like a Visa fee is a punitive step. For those of us on the up and up, it's just a regular old start up/operating cost.

My 2cents.

**Huskyhunks** · 05-24-2004, 05:23 PM

Well,

Visa started instituting the fees right after they lost the court case with Walmart and the other retailers. So, what did they do, they stuck it to the easiest target - the adult internet. I would hardly use them as the most ethical company to model a company after.

As for the $750, I didn't and won't pay the fee because I already pay a premium for selling my adult content. I lost thousands of dollars worth of rebills simply because I won't give into dishonest business practices that Visa institutes. There is such a thing as principle to stand on, which might come as a surprise with all the nepotism that occurs here, it may just be clouding alot of good judgement.

I think if there is such a thing as karma, then I believe it's played itself out on most dishonest adult webmasters and businesses which is a good thing.

I really respect "small webmasters" alot more than the typical company person. Most everyone here seemed to be employed or deeply affiliated with a larger company, and that's cool, but my hats off to the single webmaster who has had to deal with dishonest sponsors, processors, content providers, ... the list goes on without the backing of a larger entity.

Xstr8guy · 05-24-2004, 05:41 PM

I don't think a lot of the webmasters are too far removed to remember some of the antics that caused the registration to be needed in the first place. (Anyone here that can remember companies that used the following: double billing, blind upsells, impossible cancelations, credit card list trading; to name a few)

Hmmm... sounds like you're describing the "free" AVS model.