Dear 2co Staff and Fellow Vendors,

I’ve been unhappy with 2co for some things, and I’ve recorded my complaints on this forum.

But you know what? There *is* a forum. I think 2co deserves a hell of a lot of credit for having this forum, responding in a timely way to everyone’s questions, not censoring, and basically being visible and real.

I see a lot of almost-personal abuse of 2co staff for some of their policies, and I think it’s really out of line. When you run a business, you make certain policies, and they can’t please everyone. This is out of the hands of the staff; they’re doing the best they can under the circumstances.

Example: I despise PayPal, I truly believe that they are an out-of-control outift that victimizes innocent merchants and ruins businesses for insufficient reasons or no reasons at all, and that they need to be regulated as banks are. But I know PayPal well enough to know that we vendors not being allowed to opt out of the 2co-enabled PayPal option is the price that 2co had to pay to make their deal to offer PayPal as a funding source. I sincerely hope they will renegotiate, but it’s not staff’s fault.

Even when it’s an internal 2co policy (refunding customers without notice to me or any chance to respond, which happened *again* just recently), this is not the staff’s fault.

I have found 2co staff to be unfailingly courteous, professional, and helpful within the limits of what they are able to do. I wish they could do more, because I think that they would do more.

Thanks 2co Staff, and a prosperous 2008 to you. You should know that for all the abuse you get, there are some of us who really appreciate the effort you have made to set up and use this forum (and the blog), and the real communication you now have with your customers. To me, it’s a real selling point.

Now, back to bitching about those refunds without notice…

Mike

Hi,

Once again, I got a note from lpruitt@2checkout.com letting me know that someone claimed that the transaction was fraudulent. The transaction is from April 24, 2007. That’s over 90 days!

What the 2co policy on aging? How long do I have to wait until I know that the money that I earned in exchange for my services — which were all delivered within 30 days, in other words more than 60 days ago — is safe from the predations of either (a) fraudulent customers or (b) people who may have been defrauded, but only read their credit card statements every 90 days?

At some point, we need to have closure on our revenues. They can’t always be up for grabs!

I’d appreciate it if someone from 2co would explain this.

Thanks, Mike

Hi,

2checkout is very quick (as they were today) to issue a refund to a customer, but what about when the customer is out and out fraudulent. I’m not talking about someone using a fake card, I’m talking about a verified customer lying.

Today, I was corresponding with a customer who wrote in, unhappy with one of our policies. I wrote a reply within 20 minutes explaining why our policy existing, but as soon as I hit “send,” I noticed a mail for 2checkout saying that the order had been refunded! The explanation – the customer claimed she hadn’t made the order.

I know this to be untrue, because I was just corresponding with her! I wrote to 2checkout about this, asking them to investigate, entered comments in the order details, wrote to them again, and I have received no reply.

I guess it’s always the merchant who has to pay for fraud. I would have given the customer a partial refund, but I never had the chance. 2checkout unilaterally reached into my pocket for me!

I wouldn’t use the forum to air this complaint except that 2checkout hasn’t bothered to respond.

Has anyone had similar experiences?

Mike